How to do drugs right - India’s repressive narcotics law has not served its own ends

By Romesh Bhattacharji, former commissioner of the Indian Central Bureau of Narcotics

Recently, two states in the US, Washington and Colorado, liberalised their narcotics laws and decriminalised recreational marijuana. Marijuana for medical use has been legal for a while in 18 US states. This is a big step, even though the federal government is trying to override these laws with its own court rulings. India though, is years away from even a debate on these lines — though our repressive position on narcotics has clearly not served us.

India’s strict narcotics laws have been ineffective. Supply and demand for all narcotic and synthetic drugs has risen rapidly after the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) (1985). All the police does is arrest the most defenceless in the drug chain — drug users, and those who sell small quantities to pay for their addiction.Over the last 10 years, Punjab made 55,867 arrests, of whom 25,003 were sentenced. In Delhi, of the 4,155 arrested, 2,052 were sentenced — of whom only 103 were traffickers and couriers and the rest were addicts or peddlers. Those who are arrested live on the streets and those who consume at home get away. Can the authorities jail all Punjab’s users, estimated at 72.5 of the youth by Guru Nanak Dev University’s department of sociology?

There is another way to regulate drugs: don’t jail the drug users. Decriminalisation is a repugnant idea in India, though it has increasing support in Europe, the US and Latin America. If no drug users are arrested, the police will have to tackle traffickers to show progress on the problem. Portugal showed the way in 2001, treating addicts as “patients needing help, not dangerous criminals needing to be locked away from society.” This brave and successful innovation was scoffed at by all, till 10 years later a survey showed improvements in all the indicators, and trashed the fear that addiction and crime would rise. Many US institutions have grudgingly appreciated Portugal, and many in the UK are advocating a similar step.

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