Go after drug lords, not drug addicts

All the pieces matter: As shown in the TV series ‘The Wire’, the drug trade is complex and if one follows the drugs, one never goes beyond street level drug dealers; but if one follows the money, there’s no telling where one might end up.

The Health Minister is right to decriminalise drug addiction; we need to focus on stopping the kingpins instead.

“MALAYSIANNESS” is not a very well defined thing. Indeed, thinking about what makes Malaysians Malaysian has long been a personal preoccupation of mine.

If I had to choose one characteristic that I wished defined Malaysians, I think it would be compassion.

There’s a small book that could be written about that alone, but for today, I thought I would reflect a little on recent comments made by Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad regarding the decriminalisation of drug abuse.

When decriminalisation was first announced in June 2019, Dr Dzulkefly described the initiative as a game-changer.

He said the idea was to move towards “the removal of criminal penalties for possessing and using a small quantity of drugs for personal use, ” while maintaining that drug trafficking would undoubtedly remain a criminal offense.

What is driving the move to this policy is compassion, and the understanding that (in Dr. Dzukefly’s words again) “Drug use and addiction is a complex chronic relapsing medical condition.”

Recognising drug addiction as a medical problem rather than a criminal activity is indeed a game changer, and a welcome one.

It indicates a marked departure from the old, one size fits all approach to the ‘war on drugs’.

This older approach calls to mind the saying: if the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

In this particular analogy, the hammer would be punitive criminal prosecution.

Once we start understanding that not every layer of the drug problem is the same nail, we can start thinking about what tools are the most fit for purpose for each layer.

The name of my column comes from a TV series called The Wire. This show may be the most profound, multifaceted meditations on how multilayered the drug problem is. Indeed, it may be one of the most profound, multifaceted pieces of literature I have ever experienced.

The Wire examined the drug problem from the perspective of addicts, low level drug dealers, high level drug kingpins, multinational drug suppliers, police, politicians, lawyers, educators, journalists, and people who made a living robbing drug dealers.

What set The Wire apart was its understanding of how the drug problem was not one driven by addicts, but one driven by the people who made the most money from the drug trade.

The same character in the show who uses the phrase ‘all the pieces matter’ talks about how if one follows the drugs, one never goes beyond street level drug dealers; but if one follows the money, there’s no telling where one might end up.

Malaysia’s previous focus on criminalising drug abuse similarly represented a misplaced priority.

When Dr Dzulkefly launched the initiative in June last year, Al Jazeera reported that “just half of the more than 65,000 inmates in the country’s prisons are there after being found guilty of drug possession.”

If this statistic is true, 32,500 people in jail for possessing drugs seems to be an extremely unreasonable strain on national resources – not least because putting drug addicts in jail may reduce the number of drug addicts out and about, but it does not significantly reduce the number of drug addicts.

This is what Dr Dzulkefly alludes to when he correctly identifies drug abuse as a medical condition.

Friend, medical doctor, and fellow columnist Dr Khor Swee Kheng (who for my money has all the makings of a future Health Minister) says about the medical aspects of drug addiction: “Addiction is complex, but is best explained by the biopsychosocial model. This model says that someone is addicted to drugs for biological, psychological, and social reasons. Simply jailing them does not resolve any of the three reasons, so we must have multiple solutions that address those three specific reasons.”

Once we understand this, we can pivot our resources from apprehending and incarcerating drug users, to rehabilitating them and refocusing the efforts of the police on the real actors driving the drug trade.

In The Wire, there was a very tight nexus between drug lords, corrupt police, and shady politicians. I certainly don’t have any solid evidence to suggest that the situation is the same in Malaysia, but I suppose this is something one must be perpetually wary of.

Too often, entrenched interests conspire to keep money flowing a certain way – sometimes at the expense of the health and well being of tens of thousands of everyday working people.

Unless these interests are tackled, we will only ever be dealing with drug symptoms, not drug problems.

The example of Singapore is instructive here. All too frequently, we hear of drug mules being sent to the gallows – often heart rending tales of poor Malaysians who resort to this work, knowingly or unknowingly, because of a lack of economic opportunities.

We almost never hear, however, of the authorities in either Singapore or Malaysia catching and prosecuting a single drug lord who masterminds drug trafficking via mules, and who profits the most from this unholy trade.

In some parts of the world, it’s not even that the authorities don’t know who the drug lords are. It’s about political will to go after those who are truly at the top of drug organisations. Let’s hope that that’s not the problem we are facing in Malaysia.

We could incarcerate 30,000 drug addicts, or we could incarcerate 300,000 drug addicts – neither would make the drug problem go away.

We must give credit where it is due, and in this regard, our Health Minister is very much on the right track, and deserves all our support. I particularly appreciate his sentiment about how this initiative is not about scoring political points, but about doing what is right.

If we are sincere about helping Malaysians who need help, and upholding justice for all, then we need to stop persecuting victims, and start bringing the law down on the individuals most responsible for pushing hard drugs on a large scale.

NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant. He spent much of the last month working on some really cool ideas he hopes to share soon, and can be reached at [e-mail]