Sustaining the war on drugs

Page 34: Daily Graphic, February 23, 2009.

Article: Albert K. Salia

“...Anything which, and anybody who interferes with the survival, safety and well-being of the people, should constitute a national security threat. The problem of narcotics should be appreciated in this light because it is a subversive criminal menace.” K. B. Quantson.

THE drug problem is certainly not new. It keeps on growing, getting worse with each passing year as concerns are raised about the failure of the system to deal with the problem in a transparent way and also to mobilise Ghanaians to get involved in the fight against drugs.
Aggravating the situation is the perception that there is neither the political will nor determined enforcement measures to deal with the situation.
It was therefore refreshing that all the political parties expressed their determination to deal with the problem in their manifestos and during their interactions with various sections of society. In particular, the Minister of the Interior, Mr Cletus Avoka, resonated the message of President John Evans Atta Mills when he recognised the enormity of the challenge during his vetting and expressed determination to deal with the menace.
All the views expressed by President Mills, Mr Avoka, all the other political parties and patriots in the fight against the drug menace confirmed the pronouncement by a former UN Secretary-General, Mr Perez de Cuellar, in April 1990 when he addressed the Special Session of the UN General Assembly to deliberate on the threat posed to the world by drugs. He stated inter alia: “Let us not underestimate this threat. We are talking about personal tragedy, severe damage to health, the destruction of society, economic breakdown, the undermining of democratic institutions, corruption, violence and death... Drug abuse is a time bomb ticking away in the heart of civilisation. We must now find measures to deal with it before it explodes and destroys us.”
There is, therefore, the need for a concerted and sustained effort to deal with the menace, especially because of the harm it has caused to our international image. At least, the embarrassing searches that top executives no matter who, are made to go through at international airports is most humiliating.
The claim that Ghana is a transit country is outmoded and ridiculous. It used to be a transit country 15 years ago but now Ghana is a consuming nation and we must accept that fact. As Mr K. B. Quantson, a former Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board, disclosed recently, the level of involvement and use of Ghana in the drug trade has earned it the characterisation “Cocaine Coast”.
According to him, ”the distressful shame was at one international conference on drugs where we (Ghana) earned the most shocking characterisation as the COCAINE COAST. We used to be known as the Gold Coast. The contradiction between GOLD and COCAINE in every aspect and dimension, should be a reprehensible national burden on our heads”.
If President Mills and Mr Avoka are to achieve their aim of dealing with the menace, it is important that they clearly understand the problem so as to be able to take the entire Ghanaian population and well-wishers along in fighting the war. Because without the involvement of society, no government can single-handedly fight the drug war.
In his book, the White Labyrinth — Cocaine and Political Power, Raslar Lee III, an expert in the cocaine industry in South America, encapsulates the problem of society when he relates the drug industry to corruption. According to him, “...when a criminal organisation as large as the cocaine industry searches for protection, corruption is spawned on a massive and unprecedented scale. Cocaine traffickers have bought into the political system and can successfully manipulate key institutions, the press, the police, the military and judiciary”.
The question that arises from Ghana’s problem situation is: Why are we in this mess? Foremost among the UN recommendations to deal with the problem is the need for political will, which most experts agree that without, no country can make any headway in the fight against drugs.
A weak political will manifests itself in an ineffective enforcement and regulatory environment. There are concerns about the apparent incapability of the enforcement and regulatory bodies to measure up to the problem, especially the failure to apply the full sanctions provided under PNDC Law 236, notably the prosecution and confiscation of assets of drug dealers. The failure of the system to deal with the problem in a transparent way, clearly identified enforcement personnel who have been infiltrated and compromised into the human assets of the drug cabal.
A weak political will also manifests itself in the failure to appreciate drug dealing as a security-related criminality as it provided the platform for other security offences such as armed robbery, violent crime, money laundering, currency trafficking, terrorism among others. It is like an octopus and spreads out to reach every facet of life.
For sometime now, a close study of the operations of the Narcotics Control Board reveals that it does not respond to the UN multi-disciplinary approach to dealing with the problem, which should reflect the enforcement, education and prevention, treatment and rehabilitation and social integration aspects of the drug problem.
That inevitably could account for the unsatisfactory recruitment procedures that do not take into account the attitude, aptitude, loyalty and competence of persons being recruited. This obviously creates the opportunity for bad personnel to be recruited in the system arising partly out of an unprofessional recruitment mechanism which allows unqualified and unsuitable persons to be recruited and partly out of a structural defect that allows bad personnel to remain in the system. One result is that people go there for other considerations. Arising out of this is indiscipline, inefficiency and corruption.
In a corrupt environment where accountability is thrown overboard, enforcement and other efforts at dealing with the drug menace are certainly undermined. Also, priorities are misplaced and resources are misdirected.
These internal challenges have resulted in allegations of investigations into drug cases being very abysmal and deliberately truncated to suit the interest of certain personalities. Follow-ups after arrests are not done and when done, is only to gain monetary rewards from the drug organisers. Outcomes of some cases are skewed in favour of the drug dealers.
There have been suspicions that arrests made during the period had fizzled out with nothing to show.
Another area of concern is the membership of the Governing Board of NACOB itself. The board must be constituted by institutional representatives to reflect the multi-disciplinary concept championed by the United Nations to deal with the drug problem. It should not hand pick cronies or associates onto the board.
The terrible scourge of drugs must be appreciated in all its total seriousness because it undermines the entire democratic process bringing good governance, probity and accountability to naught.
Mr Quantson puts it succinctly: “It corrupts the nation physically, morally and spiritually. It distorts and subverts the economy. It shames our national identity and tarnishes our national interest. It is a huge threat to our national security.”
It is also important to appreciate that another problem that has challenged the efforts to fighting the drug menace has been the attitude of the people, who see nothing wrong with drug trafficking, they worship wealth; the invasion of money into the political system and the perception that the drug cartel has bought into our political system. Such was the situation in 1931 when the notorious Chicago gangster, Al Capone, lamented that “Virtue, honour, truth and the law have vanished from our lives.”
The complicity of society in the fight against drugs should never be underestimated. The cocaine traffickers earn friends and supporters within the society by spending money within the society. The traffickers donate huge sums of money for local development projects or by simply giving money and gifts to the poor. Their charitable and public works reach areas the government cannot reach, earning them a popular following. This tend to serve as an important protection shield.
But we all must rise up to overcome the challenge otherwise our society would reach “a stage where property confers rank, wealth becomes the only source of virtue, passion the sole bond between husband and wife, falsehood the source of success in life, sex the only means of enjoyment and outer trappings are mistaken for inner religion”. Did I hear someone say we have reached there?
The UN has made it clear that the drug problem is a problem of the people and suggested that the solution should be found in that context. It is therefore important that sustained awareness programmes are embarked upon to sensitise Ghanaians not to go into drugs and commit themselves to the war against drugs. The good thing about such educational programmes is that the people would be encouraged to expose drug dealers.
The nation will hold President Mills and his government to their promise to rescue the nation from the stigma of the cocaine coast.
An investigation into the life cycle of cases dealt with at NACOB since 2006 in particular, could help in shaping up a policy and its implementation to address the challenges of the drug menace facing the country.
Maybe, setting up of a Commission of Enquiry as has been suggested by experts on narcotics to have a holistic discourse on the problem and appreciate the full extent of the problem would help. The findings and recommendations made by the commission should help drive a national agenda to dealing with the problem.
There are many outstanding issues that have to be revisited to provide the gateway to resolving the drug problem. These include the Georgina Wood Committee’s report and that of the Kojo Armah Committee into the missing cocaine at the Police CID Exhibits store.
In spite of the fact that the Government of Ghana has taken an important step in an attempt to address the threat of Money Laundering (ML) and Financing Terrorism (FT) in recent times, by the enactment in 2008 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act. 749, Ghana’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-financing of Terrorism(CFT) regime remain ineffective. This is because the aspect on the proceeds of crime was taken out of the AML law before its passage by Parliament. The absence of the Proceeds of Crime Act weakens the enforcement measures required by the investigative agencies. The new Minister of the Interior must move on to ensure the passage of the Proceeds of Crime Act that have already been drafted.
The government must also ensure that the Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) are established, given resources and the necessary staff to obtain and process financial disclosure information and support anti-money-laundering efforts.
The task on the Mills’s government to deal with the drug menace is onerous. It should not be underestimated.