What’s your take on how the anti-drugs battle is waged?
Police officers display seized drugs during a news conference in Dar es Salaam. PHOTO I FILE
What you need to know:
The war against drugs is very difficult as it involves economically powerful syndicates and well established networks. You may have noticed that even in countries and blocs with efficient law enforcement agencies and sophisticated technologies and harsh penalties, like the US and EU the problem is still big.
A reader is calling for co-operative efforts by parents, teachers and religious leaders to instil positive moral values into young people, as a means of protecting them against involvement in drug abuse and trafficking
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The war against drugs is very difficult as it involves economically powerful syndicates and well established networks. You may have noticed that even in countries and blocs with efficient law enforcement agencies and sophisticated technologies and harsh penalties, like the US and EU the problem is still big.
Joseph Lugakingira
We should, as a permanent strategy, inculcate positive morals into our youth. We should pursue a moral rather than law-based approach to fight this evil.
We should combine the two, but place special emphasis on the former. If we have a society whose people have good morals, drug abuse and trafficking will cease.
Parents, teachers, religious and community leaders should strive to promote good morals. The media and political leaders also ought to make the war against drugs a top agenda item.
Lastly, the government should, through Parliament, enact tough legislation to deter people from engaging in the business, including confiscation of ill-gotten properties and long-term jail sentences without the option of bail or parole.
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In order for the war against drugs to succeed, Parliament must amend narcotics legislation to give it teeth and make such offences strictly unbailable. The authorities should quickly visit China and Hong Kong to procure machines for detecting drug traffickers at all entry points.
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In reality, we don’t have an anti-drugs war. Powerful people are the beneficiaries of the trade and will always use their power and influence to save drug barons caught by police.
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Tanzanians and the governing authorities who are engaged in the drugs trade or who turn a blind eye to it, such as at international airports, must realise that they are courting disaster. Mexico went down the same road 20 years ago.
Look where they are today-60,000 dead and rampant drug ‘wars’. Tanzania is just beginning to follow the trend.
