The war on drugs

Mao Tse Tung said that ‘war is politics and war itself is a political action.’ This could not be truer for the supposed ‘war on drugs’ that has popped up from time to time across the world. 

The first time this phrase was coined was in 1971 when US president Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one” in the midst of the Vietnam War and his own political problems. In 2011 the US government concluded that “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

In a more recent incarnation of the war on drugs, populist president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 commenced his fight against narcotics resulting in the deaths of at least 12,000 citizens. At least 2,500 of these killings have been attributed to the Philippine National Police and Duterte and other senior officials have been accused of carrying out a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity. To the surprise of no one, drugs continue to be prevalent in the Philippines while the value of human life and the rule of law have deteriorated significantly. 

It seems it is now Sri Lanka’s turn to take up this tried and failed propaganda gimmick. As of mid-December, President’s Senior Advisor on National Security Sagala Ratnayake, Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles, and Acting Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon have launched their own war on drugs. As per reports over 16,000 individuals have been arrested in these two weeks. The media coverage has been equally sensational with news crews and video cameras accompanying the raiding policemen into people’s bedrooms. For all these efforts the quantity of hard drugs seized remains miniscule.

There is no doubt that narcotics and substance abuse is a problem that requires attention. Unlike in many other countries, the Sri Lankan people are reasonably aware of the specific individuals involved in large scale trafficking of narcotics. They are prominent politicians, businesspeople and even media tycoons. None of these individuals nor any other large scale drug dealers have ever seen the inside of a courtroom for their crimes. In fact, they enjoy political patronage if not being in politics themselves and playing king makers.

On the other hand, Sri Lankan prisons have been overcrowded with addicts for decades. Rather than treating this as a health problem that requires treatment, narcotic users have been thrown in jail along with hardened criminals. The current spate of arrests goes against this knowledge and years of efforts to reduce prison congestion caused by drug users.

The two individuals who are now championing the war on drugs, Minister Alles and Acting IGP Tennakoon, have made the news recently for the wrong reasons. In recent weeks, the Supreme Court found Tennakoon guilty in a case of torture adding to the myriad of reasons why he should not be the IGP. Alles, who was once indicted for transferring money to a terrorist organisation to influence the outcome of a presidential election, was recently cited in the Pandora Papers for owning shell companies that have at best concealed his wealth and its sources.

A war on drugs is definitely a good distraction to the actual problems within the police and the criminal justice system of the country. One need not look further than the minister in charge of the police and the acting IGP to understand where the fixes need to be made.