Give drug barons more punishment

Page 20: March 5, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has called on governments to apply the law proportionately when prosecuting drug offenders.
That, it said, was necessary in order not to undermine efforts to effectively implement the conventions that those laws sought to enforce.
It said some countries still spent disproportionate effort in targeting low level offenders and drug users “as compared to the more pressing issues of identifying, dismantling and punishing those who control or organise major drug trafficking activities”.
These were contained in the 2007 INCB Report launched in Accra yesterday.
While highlighting the need to provide alternatives to imprisonment for drug users, including access to treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, “the board urges governments to pay adequate attention to high-profile cases of drug abuse”.
It said “celebrity ‘endorsement’ of drug-related lifestyles is particularly relevant when it comes to the issue of deterring drug use among youth, who are often most vulnerable to the cult of celebrity and its attendant glamour”.
It explained that young people were quick to pick up on and react to perceived leniency in dealing with such offenders, particularly celebrities.
A member of the INCB, Dr J. B. Asare, who gave highlights of the report, noted that 50 per cent of remand prisoners in Ghana were drug-related offenders.
He said a proportionate response required equality before the law so that powerful drug trafficking organisations and individuals would not be allowed to escape justice.
He said care must be taken in order that justice and prison systems were not overloaded with low-level offender cases.
“Justice and health care systems must work together and drug-related crime committed by drug abusers must be addressed in an integrated and individualised way,” he added.
Dr Asare, a former Chief Psychiatrist of Ghana, urged the government to consider establishing and using treatment courts as an option to addressing crimes committed by drug-use offenders.
He said a major issue of concern in the report to Africa was the increasing abuse of cocaine in Africa.
He said there was also a growing number of cases involving smuggling of drugs through the Internet, and postal and courier services.
“The board calls on governments to accord adequate importance to the detection and investigation of such cases and undertake all necessary measures to ensure that legislative and regulatory provisions are in force in their territories to counteract such illegal transactions,” he added.
The UN Resident Co-ordinator, Dr Dauda Toure, in a speech read on his behalf, noted that the fight against drug and narcotic trafficking could not be won without the support of the citizenry.
A Deputy Minister of the Interior, Mr K. T. Hammond, who launched the report, noted that the increasing abuse of drugs had serious implications for health delivery systems and drug-induced organised crimes.
He pledged the commitment of the government to meeting the challenges imposed on the country by the emerging drug menace.
He said it was as a result of this that it amended the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act (Act 714) to ensure that no bail was given to drug-related suspects until the cases had been determined by the courts, and the passage of the Anti-money Laundering Act, Act 749, to prohibit the illegal transfer of monies which aid illicit drug-related activities, human trafficking and other criminal activities, among others.
Mr Hammond described the report as a critical tool for policy makers, law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders involved in the fight against drug abuse and trafficking and their associated criminal activities.