Editorial

President Maithripala Sirisena made headlines in Manila last week with a single remark when he said the whole world must follow the example of his counterpart in the Philippines on how to tackle the drugs (narcotics) curse in that country through a campaign of “neutralisation”.

Either wittingly, or otherwise, he raised global eyebrows because over 5,000 deaths caused mainly by Government forces in the Philippines have been the subject of concern over the manner many of the extrajudicial killings have taken place. Drug lords, peddlers and addicts are the target. The Philippine President is on record even pledging to promote junior police officers if they shoot their superiors who are hand-in-glove with the drug dealers.

Initially, the anti-drugs campaign earned President Rodrigo Duterte the support of the people, but when it became a crusade that went too far with several innocent people caught in the crossfire, that support waned. The drug lords, meanwhile, managed to circumvent the blood-letting and though their business was wounded, it was not dead.

The Presidential remarks, not surprisingly did not find traction back home. For one, the President has now acquired a reputation for making bombastic statements in public and either doing exactly the opposite as in the case of appointing his once denounced predecessor in office as his PM, or for another, doing nothing to follow up on his promises. Frequent pledges to combat high-level corruption have not materialised into a single conviction. Nor has the imposition of the death penalty for drug related crimes for which he got Cabinet approval some months back, materialised.

There is no doubt that the narcotics business is gathering speed in Sri Lanka. Vigilance and detections at entry points to the country have either been lax, or corrupt, or both. The country has already acquired a reputation as a trans-shipment stage while also having a burgeoning local market from ganja in the North to ‘pot’ and hard drugs in the South.

This week, which has been declared a Drug Awareness Week ironically saw the police bust a network of Americans, Afghans and locals importing  about 100 kilos of heroin, the street value of which is in the staggering millions. Police believe the stock was destined for the back-packing tourists at Hikkaduwa and its environs. On December 31 last year, 278 kilos of heroin was recovered involving Bangladesh nationals, including a woman who had 32 kilos in her possession. Police believe foreigners posing as tourists are well entrenched in the distribution game as suspicion on them is low.

These new detections are said to be a result of new teams given in charge of gathering information and conducting raids. The narco business involves huge monies. The worldwide illicit drug industry has been valued at US Dollars 360 billion. Narcotics have also found a new revenue avenue through opioids (pain killers), the abuse of which has become a major issue in the US today. A notorious Colombian drug lord of yesteryear, Pablo Escobar was said to have had a personal fortune of USD 30 billion. More than what many nations had in their Treasuries.

It has transpired in evidence in the current court case in a US Federal District Court in New York of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the Mexican drug lord, that a one-time Mexican President was on his payroll. His office has denied it. Ministers, judges, journalists, police and customs officers were mere putty in the hands of these drug lords. If you don’t play with them, they were simply eliminated. It was the DEA (the US Drug Enforcement Agency) that went after these big-timers when thousands of Americans became addicted to narcotics.

Presidents, Ministers and officials around the world, especially in poor countries get dazzled by money dangled before them. They are coaxed into their honey-traps with campaign funding. These mafias can run countries. In Colombia, until Escobar was disposed of, the drug lords ran one-third of the country; the terrorists ran one-third and the Government only the remaining one-third.

Official statistics of drug seizures in this country speak for themselves. In 2015, there were 26,458 cases involving 26,539 persons and 46 kilos of heroin. In 2018, it was 40,972 cases involving 40,998 persons and 730 kilos of heroin. Average cannabis detection in the past three years is over 4,500 kilos. Heroin and cannabis are the narcotics of choice, but with the influx of cheap-end tourists, cocaine has now joined the list.

Understandably, the people ask what happens to these synthetic drugs once taken into custody, and why there are so few prosecutions of the drug lords. There is no transparency in what happens to the drugs once detected. They must go from the police to the Government Analyst and then to court. There seems to be seepage in transit. On the other hand, our prisons are full of ‘sprats’ arrested for possessing relatively small quantities of illicit drugs, or peddling them. The ‘sharks’ are at large.

Of the total number of those in Sri Lanka’s jails, as many as 40 percent of the inmates are those convicted for drug related offences.  Given the congestion in prisons, the courts have begun sending offenders for rehabilitation, but Drug Rehabilitation Centres around the country are only six in number and a Sunday Times team that visited the centres at Somawathiya and Welikada found them overcrowded. There is too, the challenge to get addicts from the Western and Southern Provinces, where drug abuse is the highest, to go to these far-off centres for treatment, let alone stay there.

New users enter the equation every year and the system is fighting against the odds to keep them away from destructive dependence. International conventions favour education and treatment to prison terms. Some argue that prison can be also be breeding grounds for drug abuse due to the proliferation of the substance within its four walls. The Government estimates that it costs Rs. one million to rehabilitate one addict.

There is considerable debate over the imposition of the death penalty. The death penalty is not required as a deterrent if the kingpins of these cartels can serve a life in prison – in solitary confinement, and not be allowed to operate from within. It is proven that these drug lords run front companies that launder their money and spread their ill-gotten wealth, especially in the purchase of real estate.

This week, the President asked the Singaporean Government for assistance in cracking down on drug trafficking. Need it be a President that must ask for this help? The Government can create a DEA style supra agency – with hand-picked personnel akin to how the Special Task Force (STF) was created in the 1980s, to combat this growing menace. The STF is currently helping in the anti-narcotics drive, but a separate, elite unit is required. In Mexico, because the regular law enforcement agencies were so corrupt they had to get the Marines engaged. Paying lip service to fighting drug cartels will just not be enough.