Politicians must make dealing in narcotics unpopular
When I consider the way issues of narcotics are discussed and handled in this country, I get the uncanny feeling of a people who secretly look up to the trade with some level of appreciation and not condemnation.
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Else, why would the two leading political parties engage in a game of ‘equalisation’, when something so serious and cancerous was staring us in the face.
It would do this country a lot of good if the matter of narcotics was devoid of politicisation. Because when we play politics with it, we take our eyes off the ball and allow miscreants to carry on with their mission without any proper checks.
What we should do now is to bow down our heads in shame – all of us and resolve that we are going to plug any loophole that exist in order to save this country from shame. That is what we should be doing and desist from engaging in a struggle of tit for tat.
The problem with narcotics in this country did not start today. As far as I can remember, I first heard of a case of narcotics way back in the 1970s.
The practice was rare at the time. All the big cases one heard was from Columbia particularly and other countries in South America, the USA and Europe. We felt far removed from the conundrum. But as the world turned into a global village, we now have the problem at our doorstep and we have to deal with it.
For a very long time, Ghana’s problem with narcotics had to do with marijuana, popularly called wee or weed in these parts.
Reported cases of Ghanaians arrested abroad for offences of engaging in narcotics was over wee and not the more potent drug, cocaine.
It is an open secret that quite a sizeable number of students in second cycle and tertiary institutions smoke weed.
Hundreds of students have over the years been suspended or sacked from schools countrywide for the offence of smoking marijuana which is a banned substance.
At a point, many students engaged in the act because they believed it could help them learn. But many studies have proved otherwise and many, who did not take the advice seriously, have been led to their downfall.
Reports trickled in at a point mainly from Europe that it had medicinal properties. This gave the drug an amount of respectability, and as such its control, particularly in Europe and America, has been difficult to the extent that some countries such as the Netherlands and some states in the USA have lifted a total ban on the narcotic substance.
But these are societies with the necessary safety nets and infrastructure in place to take care of those of their population who may suffer adverse reaction.
Can the same be said for us here in Ghana? According to accounts from the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, a number of male inmates at the facility are there because of substance abuse.
The females, it is said, are there mainly for suffering emotional breakdowns.
I wonder how school heads are going to cope if students should progress from marijuana to cocaine. That is why we must do everything possible not to make the trafficking or consumption of the drug look attractive.
And politicians must lead the fight against narcotics. Society too must stop according undue respect and attention to people who become rich overnight and whose sources of wealth are questionable.
Each of us has a role to play to eliminate the threat of destruction of narcotics on society. The police and drug enforcement agencies must be open and aboveboard when dealers in narcotics are arrested.
The recent case involving a lady who was arrested at the Heathrow Airport has really dented the image of the country. Now all travellers from Ghana into the UK and other European cities would be looked at with skepticism and strictly scrutinised.
If care is not taken, even Members of Parliament from this country may be made to undergo insensitive checks when travelling abroad.
So, rather than engage in shouting matches in Parliament, our honourable members must begin to put their heads together and come out with laws that would make it difficult for couriers and the big guns behind them to operate in this country.
Let’s bear in mind that the negative fallouts from drugs trade, especially on the youth, and the economy outweighs any dividend there may be.