Ghana marks Day Against Drug Abuse

Page 16: Daily Graphic, June 27, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THIS year's International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking has been marked, with a call on the government not to be content with successes in the enforcement field, to the neglect of other key sectors of the drug war.
The Chief Psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health, Dr Akwasi Osei, who made the call in a keynote address, said effective drug control had three components, namely, law enforcement, demand reduction and the effective treatment and rehabilitation of people indulging in drug abuse.
The celebration, which was on the theme, "Do Drugs Control Your Life? Illicit Drug Trafficking", attracted a large audience of students to the Holy Gardens in Accra where it was held.
To effectively address the challenges of the drug menace, Dr Osei reiterated the need for the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) to be raised to that of an independent commission adequately resourced with both human beings and logistics.
He explained that the functional location of the board at the Ministry of the Interior made it impossible for it to execute all those three functions effectively.
He said it was inconceivable for an agency to be given more resources than its sector ministry, hence the need to make the commission independent of any ministry.
"Such a commission will then relate to the respective agencies like the Ministry of the Interior for supply reduction, the Ministry of Health for demand reduction and the research institutes for the research component. The commission will then serve as a co-ordinating body. This is urgent if we are to see our country make any progress towards being on top our drug situation," he stated.
According to Dr Osei, raising the status of NACOB into a commission would also mean modifying the current drug law.
He also recommended the establishment of a National Drug Abuse Centre to become a one-stop shop of all information on drugs in the country, including medical, legal, research findings and any other information relevant to drugs.
He further called for a comprehensive national drug policy to spell out not only the illicit drugs but even which psychoactive drugs to be made available, in what quantities, who could possess, purchase and use them, among others.
He reminded Ghanaians that it had not become difficult to tag a country as a purely producer country, distributor country or transit country and cited Ghana as an example of a country which was becoming a user country.
He noted, for instance, that the Accra Psychiatric Hospital recorded 876 cases of drug use, representing an increase of 70 cases over the previous year’s figure.
Dr Osei said winning the drug war also meant appreciating the fact that drug abuse was an issue of mental health, for which reason the Mental Health Bill must be passed, just as the Tobacco Bill.
He said Ghanaians must remember that tobacco and alcohol were gateway drugs for narcotics and expressed regret that the country did not even have a national alcohol policy.
The Executive Secretary of NACOB, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Robert Ayalingo, in a welcoming address, noted that the magnitude and the rising trend in illicit production, demand for and traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances posed serious threats to the health and welfare of human beings and adversely affected the economic, cultural and political stability of every society.
He said a more worrying situation was the exploitation by drug traffickers of various social groups to traffick in or abuse narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, particularly children who were being used in many parts of the world as drug couriers and consumers.
"In Ghana today, drug abuse has ceased to be an urbanisation issue but a nation-wide canker eating deeper and deeper into the fabric of our society. Drug consumption has become so rampant in almost every educational institution in Ghana, filtering down from tertiary institutions to the junior high schools in the country," he said, adding that "indiscipline at home, in schools, in society are all products of drug abuse".
A former Executive Secretary of NACOB, Colonel Isaac K. Akuoku (retd), who launched the celebration on behalf of the Interior Minister, admonished the youth to stay away from drugs before drugs controlled their lives.
He urged them to stay close to their books, since education offered a much better and fulfilling life.