One drug offender caught every four minutes

KUALA LUMPUR: One drug offender is arrested every four minutes, leading to many lives being destroyed and close to RM150mil of economic potential lost.

A total of 129,604 people were detained for various drug-related offences in 2021, working out to about 355 a day, or one every four minutes.

“If we take, say, RM100 from 97% of them, as these individuals’ economic contributions a month, it would mean that the nation lost RM150.5mil,” Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Razarudin Husain said in an interview with The Star.

The cost of rehabilitation could be even higher, hitting more than half a billion ringgit every year.

“Such amounts could have benefited various sectors, especially the healthcare and education sectors,” he said.

Of the 129,604 people detained in 2021, 52,632 (40%) were arrested for positive urine tests, 51,637 (40%) for drug possession and 25,277 (20%) for selling drugs.

The bigger fear is that this could only be the tip of the iceberg.

“In 2019, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that for every drug user detained, there are seven others on the loose.

“Based on this calculation, the number of drug users in Malaysia could reach 861,973, or a ratio of one drug user for every eight families,” he said.

If the menace is not curbed, the ratio could easily become two drug users for every eight families in a decade’s time.

The rehabilitation of drug addicts is also costly, Razarudin lamented.

“The cost for each addict at the rehabilitation centre is RM45 daily.

“In 2019, the National Anti-Drug Agency reported there were 128,325 drug users in the country. If 25% of them, or 32,401, are in rehabilitation, it will cost RM1.46mil daily and RM532mil yearly,” he said.