The war on deadly drugs

DRUGS are scourge that worldwide ruin lives, destroy families and undermine societies. Young people, and tragically it is primarily the young, become victims to narcotics and are then enmeshed in the downward spiral of addiction and degradation.

The craving for drugs causes the loss of all decent instincts, as the addicts find they can think of nothing else except their next fix. If they do not have the cash to pay their dealers, they will beg, borrow or steal to get the money. It is this pathetic decline, this appalling loss of any sense of proper values that causes narcotics to have such a dangerous and corrosive impact not just on friend and family, but on wider society.

It is, therefore, appalling to learn the latest statistics on narcotics seizures and arrests in the Kingdom. In the last year, investigators have arrested over 1,000 smugglers and dealers and seized more than SR 11 million in cash. Moreover, the street value of drugs recovered by the authorities, just in the last three months of the last Hijra year, approached SR 900 million.

These figures are both staggering and shameful, the more so because almost a quarter of the dealers and smugglers arrested, some 207, was Saudis. The remainder were from 32 other nationalities, including 174 Yemenis. It is hard to conceive of the sort of person who would knowingly put bread on their own familys table by committing crimes that bring desperation and heartache around the tables of other, entirely innocent families. Yet it is equally hard to understand how kids, many of whom have been taught the evils and dangers of drugs use, still chose to experiment.

And there are far worse consequences as a result of the international narcotics trade than the mere destruction of hopeless addicts. Drugs are a prime funding source for terrorists. Though it claimed to be cracking down on opium production, Afghanistans Taleban government and its Al-Qaeda allies, actually encouraged the farmers who cultivated and grew the opium poppies. That exploitation of this evil crop has continued since the Talebans ouster and has funded both the insurgency and Al-Qaedas attacks.

What is so disturbing about the latest news on the success of the clampdown on drug peddlers is that it is relative. The amount of narcotics and drugs proceeds seized here in the Kingdom, huge though they may seem, are only a little part of the wider picture. Regardless of the jurisdiction, anywhere in the world, it is acknowledged that law enforcement officials only seize a small proportion of the narcotics that are out there. There are the occasional big busts, where whole smuggling and dealing networks can be identified and rolled up. However such coups, though on the increase, are still fairly rare. Nor do mass arrests slow the deadly trade for long. It seems there are always more smugglers and pushers anxious to move in on this trade of death.

What is more, seldom do the drug squad dragnets ever catch the key drugs barons, who finance and organize the worldwide spread of their poison. Such are the huge profits that they amass, that they are able to pay to bury themselves well out of view of the authorities. And if they are ever identified and cornered, they can use threats and corruption, in the classic Mafia manner, to avoid or frustrate prosecutions.

It has been argued that the only way to defeat the drugs trade will be to make narcotics legal, to decriminalize their cultivation, trading, possession and use. This it is claimed, would somehow drive the criminals out of business and also, through quality regulations, make narcotics somehow safer for users.

This is a short-sighted counsel of despair. It is almost certain to increase the market for drugs, among young people, who no longer fear prosecution and believe that society has given a green light to experiment with narcotics. More users means more production and more production would mean more addicts. More addicts will mean more wrecked lives and families. Indeed it is hard to believe that any sane person could promote the notion of surrendering the future of young people and decent societies around the world to the evils of narcotics.

The war on drugs may be massively expensive and dogged by setbacks and failures, but it simply has to be fought. We cannot let the drugs barons win. Nonsensical talk of legalization should cease. Would a society legalize murder, because it could not stop killing, or theft because it could not stop thievery?

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The war on deadly drugs