DRUG USERS 'SHOULD BE HELPED NOT JAILED'

ABU DHABI - An overhaul of the nation's drug laws could mean
offenders no longer face prison sentences.

Anti-drugs officials told The National that Sheikh Saif bin Zayed, the
Minister of Interior and Deputy Prime Minister, had ordered all
concerned authorities to evaluate current anti-drugs laws and suggest
reforms.

Generally, the overhaul will consider new methods to punish or treat
convicts, especially repeat offenders, such as social and community
services.

Brig Gen Maktoum al Sharifi, the head of Abu Dhabi Capital Police,
welcomed the idea of reforms, saying the law should not consider a
drug offender a criminal, as it currently does.

"A drug addict is a sick person and he should be treated as such,"
Brig Gen al Sharifi said. "Alternative punishment would be more
effective. A drug offender could be just an addict, not a criminal,
but after locking him up for years he could come out involved in
crimes such as stealing, drug dealing, et cetera."

Alternative punishments police have proposed include community
service, such as cleaning the streets, schools or voluntary work.
Major reforms proposed by rehabilitation centres include allowing
family members to turn in drug offenders to avoid prosecution.
Currently, only if abusers themselves seek rehabilitation will they
avoid going to jail.

"Addicts would be under the influence of drugs and would not think
clearly, so those around them should be allowed to help them," said Dr
Hamad al Ghafiri, the general director of the National Rehabilitation
Centre (NRC) in Abu Dhabi. "We want to encourage people to seek
treatment, so we should assure them that they will not face prison for
doing so."

Another major reform, Dr al Ghafiri said, would be the creation of a
data-tracking system that would link clinics across the nation to
avoid prescription "shopping". He said many patients had used old
prescriptions for addiction-treatment medicines provided by the NRC to
obtain extra doses by visiting different clinics across the country.
Abu Dhabi, he said, had already linked its clinics and pharmacies.

Experts said drug offenders were usually treated as criminals rather
than victims, or even patients.

Saeed Abdul Baseer, the Chief Justice of Abu Dhabi Criminal Court of
First Instance, said that he would prefer to send patients to
rehabilitation centres or give them lesser sentences, but that he was
restricted by the law. The minimum sentence for drug crimes is four
years - a regulation especially punitive to expatriates who cannot be
admitted to rehabilitation centres.

"I would be very happy to give them a lesser sentence or send them to
rehabilitation centres," the chief justice said. "It is not an easy
thing to sentence a young offender to four years in prison. But I have
to follow the law."

Faiza Moussa, a lawyer who deals with drug cases, said jail sentences
were not an effective deterrent.

"Drug addiction is more of a psychological problem," Mrs Moussa said.
"I dealt with defendants who lapsed too many times. They go to prison
and then they are released, they would not have been properly coached
or rehabilitated."

She suggested toxins should be removed from the body of drug offenders
before considering any punishment. After removing toxins, she said,
the offender should be referred to a specialist, who would try to turn
them away from lapsing back into drug use. She also suggested jails
should have workshops to train inmates on how to be a productive
member of society after leaving prison.

"Most of the drug addicts are either unemployed, uneducated or with
social problems," she said. "If they teach him a certain profession to
start a business after they leave prison, I think most of them would
not return to drugs."

The danger of prescription pills

The most common drugs seen by National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC)
officials lately are prescription pills that have been tampered with
to alter the effect, officials say.

"Before, the most common cases were hashish and heroin, but there is a
new trend now where some of the well-known medical pills are
manufactured illegally," said Dr Hamad al Ghafiri, the general
director of the NRC in Abu Dhabi. Next page

He said the medicines were formulated differently, giving them
properties much different from what their prescription equivalent would be.

"Drug dealers take advantage of this and smuggle these pills to the
country to sell them," he said. "They could cause spasm and there were
cases where people died from them on the streets or at their homes."

An International Drug Policy Consortium held by the NRC today and
tomorrow will help identify such types of illegally produced medicines
across the world.

"The ones sold here are different from the ones sold in North or South
America," he said. "So, through interacting with international experts
at the symposium we will be able to identify more of these types." In
terms of abuse of legal substances, the age at which people start
smoking has decreased from 17 or 19 to 12 or 13, he added.