Drug ‘reform’ madness

The May 10 editorial, “Drug reform still pending”, makes me think of the oft-repeated quotation of the phrase attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

It is my experience that those on the front line of the struggle against drug addiction in Thailand have long been aware of the road block in drug reform. I recall participating several years ago in a seminar held in the Bangkok Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) premises where realistic assessment of Thailand’s drug problems were presented, an admission of past failures to control drug traffic in the kingdom, and, finally, a clear and hopeful proposal of change which would be based in large on a policy of decriminalisation of drugs. Several foreign participants were present, and one of them came to ask me whether the message we had just heard implied a serious move on the part of Thai authorities. My answer was, no, it did not. The forces of insanity were not participants in the seminar, and would continue on their blind path.

There is no doubting the gravity of the problem. About 72% of our critically overcrowded prisons are crammed with men and women condemned with utmost severity on drug-related crimes, while a few token and showpiece drug treatment centres are half empty. The director of one such centre told me that he did not understand why so few drug cases were referred to him. At the same time in Geneva, a government representative assured the Human Rights Committee that Thailand had reform centres which were undertaking rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Unfortunately, Thailand is not alone in its drug problem insanity; the Philippines has become an arena of bloody murder in the streets in the name of drug suppression, and won support in the recent Asean meeting in Manila. Insanity thus becomes a regional norm.

Of course, the always asked question is, if not the path of suppression, what other path is there? Yes, there are other ways, and there are countries who are bravely taking the path of decriminalisation and rehabilitation, most notably the policy of Portugal, which introduced a new programme on drugs in the year 2000. The new law does not deny that drugs are dangerous, but admits that repression does not give better results and endangers people’s health.

The problem of drugs is one of the most serious human problems ever encountered in human history, and its solution cannot be quick or facile. Success is counted in complex statistics which monitor a stop in growth of the drug epidemic. The problem involves human perceptions and behaviour and one of the great successes of Portugal is in changing the perception of a whole nation to accept that a person addicted to drugs is a patient in need of treatment, rather than a criminal to be persecuted.

In 2003 when Thailand changed the method of execution to lethal injection rather than death by machine gun, a team from the Department of Corrections was sent to the US to learn the new technique of killing. Surely it is opportune to send a similar team to Portugal to learn the technique of restoring life to those trapped in the way of death.

DANTHONG BREEN Union for Civil Liberty