Drug Abuse Wide Spread in Maldives :: Dhivehi Observer

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Editorial
Drug Abuse Widespread in Maldives

A.S.I.Moosa (Sappe’), Dhivehi Observer, 05 April 2005

It is not hard to establish the correlation between drug addiction and Gayyoom’s rule in the Maldives. His education and vocational training policies were inadequately funded from the very beginning which meant that several thousands children have no or very little education and hence are unable to get jobs and fend for themselves. So, the best thing Gayyoom could do was let the drug use be allowed and create a huge population of drug addicts, whose only need is drugs and will do anything to get it. In return, this will also allow him to mobilise these disgruntled youth to be used for his heinous policy of creating fear and insecurity amongst the population, reinforcing the need for a ‘wild’ police force.

There is hardly a family in Maldives, in the capital Male’ or in any inhabited island, that has not been affected by the drugs pandemic. The most ample proof that this was something Gayyoom had done purposely is the available data and statistics of drug use convictions in the Maldives. Over the past 27 years, Gayyoom has very successfully increased the number of drug addiction in Maldives. In 1977, there were only 3 reported cases. Gayyoom came to power in 1978 and within 20 years the number increased to 460 cases (1998), which is a staggering 15,333%. The number now is in thousands. Hence, if anyone is to be blamed for the drug addiction in Maldives it must be none other than Gayyoom. Further proof of this is the UNDP report which stated that drug abuse has increased 40-folds in Maldives since 1977. Gayyoom has been in power since 1978.

There is no easy way out of this but the means to bring an end to this pandemic is to stop or reduce the inflow of drugs into Maldives, which can only be achieved by strict customs control and check at the sea and air ports. In Maldives there are two ports, the Male’ Port and the Male' International Airport, with relatively small number of flights and ships calling per day. So, if Gayyoom was serious about curbing this pandemic he could do it quite easily and effectively but he does not. This is another fact that clearly proves that he does not want Maldives to be a drug free country. He cannot live such a lavish lifestyle if he has to educate and create jobs for this huge portion of the Maldives population who are addicts or are being sucked into the habit. What Gayyoom does is arrest a few small time dealers like Shaneez (who was not even 18 when he was arrested but was sentenced to life when he reached 18 on 9th March 2005). In actual fact, it is the very high ranking officials in Police and top government agents who are deeply marred in this lucrative trade of drug dealing. Another proof is that it took Gayyoom 24 years to bring a sniff dog to be placed in the airport and none is used in the sea ports.

In July 2004, in Dhivehi Observer forum it was written that “ Drug use cannot be curbed through retribution. To all you smokers out there - how many times have you tried to quit unsuccessfully? Well, drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and 'brown sugar', are infinitely more addictive than cigarettes. How can you expect the addiction to go away by locking people up? Some of the messages on this guestbook have suggested that we kill all drug users - of course we may be able to get rid of some individuals, but drug abuse would still persist as a social problem. There would be waves of new drug addicts to fill the places of those we 'kill', and as such, 'killing' drug users would be most absurd and futile, if we are to deal with the issue rather than target specific individuals. We can only deal with this and other similar social problems, like housing, income disparities etc., through a more democratic and accountable system of government. Thus our problems lie in the political sphere. As regards substance abuse, we have to effectively identify and restrict the channels through which these substances are brought into the country, build more effective institutional mechanisms to deal with drug abuse as a social problem grounded in a more rehabilitative approach, easy access to counselling and support structures to operate with existing [or ideally strengthened] familial ties to identify and deal with new drug users and recovering drug addicts - instead of locking them up, more informative and substantive awareness programmes need to be conducted at schools and the like with talks by recovering drug addicts and experts on the reality of drug abuse. Of course this would require that we build an education system conducive to breeding qualified sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists for one thing.”

There is only one way to bring an end to drugs pandemic in Maldives. Oust this tyrannical regime of Gayyoom and install a fully democratic people’s government that care about social issues and aims to bring prosperity to our nation.

Current Superintendent of Police Abdulla Riyaz was training in UK in 1997 and during an informal chat at Rosemont Avenue kitchen in London as was the tradition, I asked him "What can you do if you found out (with hard evidence) if Commissioner of Police Adam Zahir was a big drug dealer?He went silent for a bit and said "I can't do anything!". I rest my case.