He Is No Outlaw

The global war on drugs seems to have been lost. Over the past 20
years, nearly two million people in the US alone have tested positive
for substance abuse. The US continues to be the world's largest
consumer of illegal substances.

Law enforcement agencies in the West are showing signs of frustration
over the method and strategy of deterrent laws. A realisation is
seeping in that it may be better to treat rather than punish drug abuse.

While legalising narcotics remains a distant dream for young addicts,
its easy availability in European and American cities tells its own
tale.

Drug enforcement agencies seem to believe that energy wasted on trying
to prevent flow of drugs into the US could have been better spent in
curbing demand.

Judges increasingly seem to use the carrot and stick policy, as
substance abuse treatment has grown 50-fold in the 90s. Law
enforcement agencies have realised that treatment is less expensive to
society than jail and interdiction.

Is drug addiction more of a disease than a crime? Thanks to clues
thrown up by medical science, state after state and country after
country has opted for treatment over jail terms for addicts.

Just last year, California approved Proposition 36, and New York is in
the process of rewriting its draconian Rockefeller-era drug laws.
Americans believe that more people are likely to die of heroin
overdose than in car accidents.

Therefore, they would like to shift the focus of repressive drug laws
to rehabilitating drug users. How do drugs work on the human mind?
Morphine works by docking with the cell receptor called Mu.

When this receptor is stimulated, transmission of pain to the brain is
slowed down and release of dopamine is increased. Methadone can even
be taken orally and its effect lasts for about 24 hours instead of
four hours, as in the case of morphine or heroin.

Cocaine, heroin, nicotine, amphetamines and other addictive drugs
alter the brain's pleasure circuits. These circuits are activated by
one's favourite food, by sex, by winning a lottery or by being
complimented about one's dress or appearance.

Pleasure circuits communicate in chemical language from neurone to
neurone, affecting the firing of other neurones and producing a sense
of happiness and euphoria.

An MRI snapshot of the brain reveals that at first during the
rush-phase, there is a surge of energy and euphoria because of the
increase of concentration of dopamine in the brain's reward circuit.

The only difference is that the drugs increase concentration more
rapidly and more intensely than your favourite meal. Chronic use of
drugs produces lasting changes in the brain, as it reduces the number
of dopamine receptors.

With fewer dopamine receptors, there is a greater need of the drug for
attaining the same high. The decline in the dopamine receptors leads
to impotence, irritability, anxiety and depression.

While the initial use may have been about feeling good, its addiction
results in distress and despair. Gradually, withdrawal symptoms
deprive the addict of the only sense of joy.

That is why medical science likes to define drug addiction as a brain
disease. While drug use may have started as a voluntary act, it is not
easy to give it up. Counselling therapy and training are the new
weapons in the armoury of a drug court.

Sixty drugs are now under study as treatment for cocaine addiction.
Beating addiction requires every weapon and not the draconian
sentencing policy.

Unfortunately, Indian law enforcement agencies have refused to take
into account recent developments in medical science. In 1985, a stiff
legislation was introduced, providing for deterrent punishment for
drug trafficking offences which were made both non-bailable and cognisable.

Legislators came down hard on drug cartels and peddlers, prescribing
that no sentence awarded under the Act can be reduced or commuted and
even recommended death penalty for second conviction.

More than 15,000 people are in jails in the country, having been
accused of drug offences. Sixty-three per cent of the prison
population of those arrested for drug offences are undertrials whose
guilt or innocence is yet to be established in a court of law.

Thirty-four per cent of these are young prisoners whose cases are
still under investigation. Out of 15,452 drug prisoners who were in
Indian jails in 1994, only 1,245 were convicted and 3,165 acquitted.

In 1998, the prison population of drug offenders came down to 12,061,
perhaps because the number of acquittals mounted to 5,712. The law
needs to consider the hardship caused by stiff prison sentences to
young people.

Even when someone is found in possession of small quantities of opium
or poppy husk, which could be used in Indian sweets or made into oil
used for culinary and edible purposes in vast areas of the country,
they could face long years in prison in the company of hardened
criminals without bail or trial.

Such harsh laws have been given up in the West. A re-evaluation of the
law is urgently required.