The Need For An Immediate Review Of Ghana's Drug Policy System

The Writer

On Sunday, 19th February 2017, I came across an interesting story about a 43-year-old barber Peter Baffuor who has been jailed for a month and fined one hundred and twenty Ghana Cedis ( Gh¢120) for smoking marijuana as “medicine” to fight his asthma. According to the news, the man is to spend two extra months in jail if he defaults in paying the fine.

Two questions comes to play here;
1. Is the forty three year old man an addict, a normal random user or a trafficker?

2. Is imprisonment the best way to prevent him from smoking herbs?

It was interesting to read that the Ghana police service have an anti-narcotic operation department/section which regularly clamps down on activities of drug peddlers in some municipalities. What have they advised the government or probably the Narcotic control board to do as per their findings? How many of those convicted have come out of their addiction or probably stopped using drugs?

In recent times, it is even easier for inmates in prisons to have access to marijuana in various cells. There have not been just one or two reports on this issue, but several reports.

Imprisonment according to reports by West Africa commission on drugs and other respected agencies have proved not to be effective. The best thing that needs to be done is to channel resources into our rehabilitation centers which seem to be in a dilapidated state to combat drug use and help problematic drug users. The rate at which our judicial system handle drug situation in Ghana has crippled many young people who could have changed through rehabilitation and public health.

I am not saying the action was right: but an alternative punitive approach such as communal activities coupled with a public health could have been the ideal point of change in the individual behaviour and act. Many people according to the world health report and United nations office on crime and drugs die in prison as a result of having to undergo withdrawal symptoms.

A lot of users who need help have been thrown into prison with some not having the privilege to a fair trial. This kind of treatment threatens our social security since many of these users end up having the hate of society at heart. It is true that the escalating arrests of West African drug traffickers at foreign airports, container shipments of cocaine seized off the West African coast and the collapse of the entire African states under pressure from global drug cartels, are some of the images used by international drug-control experts and the media to illustrate West Africa’s growing role in the trade in heroin and cocaine both in the past and recent time but it still remains a fact that about 70% of the youthful population in the region have succumb to the use of drugs which has affected and threaten the health and economic system in West Africa.

The war on drugs has killed many and destroyed lives and properties just as implied by Kofi Annan’s statement: "Drugs have harmed many but bad policies have harmed many more ". Drug users need help and not incarceration and criminalisation.

Drug users are not criminals but people who require public health and counseling. If we want to curb the drug menace, then we should revisit our drug policy system.

West Africa has been at the centre of global drug trades for centuries. Mind-altering substances, such as kola; a light stimulant still lending its name to a popular American beverage which was traded extensively within the sub-region and across the Sahara from the 13th century onwards.

The drug problem started years ago and policies used so far have not provided any results but instead proved futile. We need to draw the curtains on how to deal with a trafficker and a user because the two do not correlate.

By Juana A Boateng
Drug Policy Expert and Human Rights Activist