The Anti-Drug Alliance says money spent on criminalising dagga should rather be spent on rehabilitating drug users.
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The Anti-Drug Alliance is calling for the decriminalisation of dagga, saying money spent on criminalising it should be spent on rehabilitating drug users.
In a report, “At what cost? The futility of the war on drugs in South Africa”, released this month, the alliance’s chief executive, Quintin van Kerken, said legalising dagga would help to make the government money, as it would be able to tax it.
“Regulating and controlling illegal drugs would collapse the illegal markets and get the drug smugglers and dealers out of this business,” he said.
“If we want to really get tough on the drug-dealing gangsters let’s take away their biggest source of revenue and try to collapse the illegal drug business for good.”
In 2011, Professor JP van Niekerk, managing editor of the South African Medical Journal, made a similar call for dagga to be decriminalised.
Portugal became the first European country to decriminalise all drugs. Drug users are provided with therapy instead of being imprisoned.
In the Czech Republic, a fine for the possession of certain drugs equals that of a parking ticket.
While legalising drugs such as crystal meth (tik) made “no sense”, regulating the dagga industry “would make fiscal sense”, said Van Kerken.
“Years of fighting drugs seemed to have been (almost) pointless and futile… The war on drugs is the real enemy, and people fighting addiction are its victim.”
Van Kerken said that if criminalising drugs was effective there would be no drugs on the streets, all the dealers would be in jail, and there would be no recreational users of drugs, and no addicts.
He had been an addict for 10 years and had spent an equal number of years in recovery working with the alliance to do research and help with rehabilitating drug users.
They “fully agree that drugs are dangerous and must be controlled”.
People arrested during raids were “rarely the drug dealers and even when drug dealers are arrested, the drug trade continues in a different area while prison populations increase, which is a burden on the taxpayer”.
Trying to eradicate dealers, who were “simply supplying a demand”, made no sense.
“No matter how many dealers we arrest or smuggling networks we ‘smash’, the void is always filled by the queue of willing replacements, hungry for the extraordinary profits prohibition offers them.
“Arresting dealers and confiscating drugs simply funnels business elsewhere. It does not stop the supply of drugs; it simply slows the flow down.”
neo.maditla@inl.co.za
Cape Argus