POS Foundation members with journalists in Tamale
The Executive Director of the POS Foundation, Jonathan Osei Owusu, is advocating that drug addicts ought not to be incarcerated but rather rehabilitated.
Speaking to media practitioners in Tamale, he urged journalists to support the implementation of the Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019).
The media engagement formed part of a project being implemented by POS Foundation, International Drug Policy Consortium Africa, and the West African Drug Policy Network with funding from the Open Society Foundation.
According to him, the act deals with drug traffickers and traders but when it comes to drug users, they should be seen as public health matters or human rights instead of being criminal.
He noted that people who are addicted to drugs have a problem adding that they are ‘sick’ and that majority of them wished to quit but they are unable to do so and therefore needed help.
“As much as people suffering from malaria and other sickness are not arrested and locked up in prisons, the drug addicts must not be arrested and imprisoned either. when these drug addicts are arrested and sent to prisons because of addiction, they often devised ways and means to smuggle these narcotics into the prisons just to satisfy their addiction.”
“That’s why when you go to our prisons, we have what we called pumping. They go to every extent to even get wee and send it into the prisons without being caught. ”
Mr. Owusu noted with concern that when these drugs addicts are arrested and imprisoned, they often get mixed up with hardened criminals, get influenced and when they are done serving their terms and freed, they go back to their communities and start terrorizing people and called on the president to activate article 72, grant mercy to those who use drugs with emphasis on none violently drug users.
“If a person has not gone to commit a crime has not beaten anybody, not stolen from anybody but using just a drug that we called illegal and has been sentenced before the passage of this law, the president should activate article 72 to grant mercy to these people, give them second chance into societies, so that they can go and take care of their families.”
The Executive Director assures that if the president grants their request and needs their support to help rehabilitate the victims; together with their donor partners, they are ready to support government walk the victims through weeks or months of treatment in other to effectively reintegrate them back to the society.
Before the enactment of the Act, it was a crime to cultivate cannabis in the country. Many people were imprisoned for the cultivation and the usage of cannabis, hence the appeal to grant them amnesty.
However, the new law states that cannabis of not more than 0.3% THC dry weight is legal in the country. It has also converted the prison term for drug possession for personal use into a fine, which meant instead of sending people to prison for up to 10 years for possession of drugs for personal use, they would be offered alternatives.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale