PRESS RELEASE
Thursday, December 16, 2010
AKUFO-ADDO’S POLICY STATEMENT ON DRUGS
Combating the Illicit Drug Trade
Drugs are undermining the very fabric of our society. They
are destroying our young people, misleading many about easy
and fast money while sullying our reputation in the
international community. This problem has been with us for a
long time. They are not an NPP problem. They are not an NDC
problem. They are a national problem. In fact, the scourge
of narcotic drugs is a multi-billion dollar global problem.
Over the past two decades, the impact of the world-wide drug
menace has been a source of grave concern for all
law-abiding citizens of this country. The nation has been
sorely embarrassed by disclosures that have implicated a
number of high level state officials in the illicit drug
trade. Undoubtedly, narcotics drug trafficking and the
menace associated with it are strongly enabled by corrupt
and inept systems of prevention and control.
An Akufo-Addo Government will firmly and courageously
implement a number of well-considered measures to embolden
the capacity of the nation to effectively combat the drug
menace.
The key highlights of the policy will include:
• Review of relevant laws with a view to enhancing their
capacity to deter public officials from engaging in narcotic
offences.
• Turning the Narcotics Control Board into an agency, to
give it an overarching responsibility, across departments
and agencies, in all cases to deal with drugs.
• Creating the position of a ‘Drug Czar’, by elevating the
position of the head of NACOB to Cabinet status.
We don’t produce cocaine in Africa and yet West Africa has
seen the biggest growth in illegal drug movements than
anywhere else in the world. Geography favours the drug
traffickers. Ghana’s geography does not favour us. West
Africa is just 4,000-miles away, across the Atlantic, from
the coca fields of South America. It is also closer to
Western Europe. In Europe cocaine seizures have quadrupled
over the past decade and prices for the drug are now double
those in America as consumption has grown by up to four
fold. Compared to 1.8 percent 10 years ago, Spain, where
much of the cocaine through West Africa is destined, 3
percent of the Spanish population now uses cocaine. The
demand has made Europe a far more lucrative drug market than
America: apparently one kilogramme of uncut cocaine can
fetch twice in Europe, what it can in the US, according to
UN figures. Intelligence reports say to elude European
airport security and coastal patrols more easily, smugglers
ship drugs in bulk to Africa's western seaboard, where they
are parceled out to hundreds of individual smugglers who use
fishing vessels, sailboats and their own bodies to sneak it
north into Europe.
Why is Africa, particularly West Africa growing in
importance as a transit area for cocaine trafficking between
Latin American countries and Europe? Records show that
between 1998 and 2003, the annual cocaine seizures on the
entire continent averaged about 0.6 metric tonnes – a very
minor proportion of global seizures of cocaine. However,
since 2004, African seizures have been above 2.5 metric
tonnes, almost five times more than before. The UN's Office
on Drugs and Crime says the world's total supply of cocaine
is around 1 million kilogrammes a year. Interpol says
200,000 to 300,000 kilogrammes of the drug enters Europe via
West Africa. The United States Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) at the
Department of State compiles an annual ‘Major List’ of
countries considered to be posing the biggest global threat
in the drug trade. On September 14, 2007, U.S. President
George Bush approved and sent to Congress the Majors List
for 2008.
The 20 countries on the list were: Afghanistan, The Bahamas,
Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Colombia, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
Ghana is nowhere on that list. But, we need to do a lot
more. We cannot afford to be complacent.
The New Patriotic Party believes that a robust comprehensive
drug control policy can achieve measurable progress in
curbing the supply and abuse of drugs and blocking the
trafficking of drugs through our shores to consuming
nations. Evidence from elsewhere and from our own experience
tells that illicit drug trade corrodes social order;
bolsters crime and corruption; undermines effective
governance; facilitates the illicit transfer of weapons; and
compromises national security and law enforcement.
The legal framework provided by the Narcotic Drugs Control
Enforcement and Sanctions Law 1990, PNDCL 236, as amended,
and other legislation provides some of the tools needed to
crack down on the availability of drugs and reduce the
misery they cause. But enforcement alone will never be
enough.
We need to ensure that young people have all the information
they need to make informed decisions about drugs – which
means resisting peer-pressure and the lure of fast cars
associated with the illicit drug trade and that we follow up
tough words with indiscriminate decisive action. To make
drug smuggling a no-go area as a career option for our young
ones calls for partnership between citizens and law
enforcement officers.
A Focus on Young People
Crucial to our fight against drugs is the development and
implementation of programmes that prevent illicit drug use,
offer no refuge for drug pushers in our neighborhoods and
provide a safe and secure environment for every Ghanaian in
every corner of our land. We do so by reclaiming every inch
of space from criminal gangs. Linked to our fight against
drug abuse must be a comprehensive preventive measure aimed
at protecting our children from a life of crime.
• Ghanaian families have a difficult but necessary task to
teach young people to avoid using drugs. What is required is
a structured anti-drug education policy for our schools. We
must be bold but sensitive in confronting young offenders
with the negative effects of their behaviour on their
victims in novel and compelling ways. We must provide
purposeful and engaging activities for the youth, especially
those in real or potential conflict with the law. We must
continue to increase access to education from pre-school to
the tertiary level We must expand childcare facilities in
urban and rural areas
• Education on the dangers of illicit drugs is key. There
should be an increased awareness of the dangers of drugs. A
more proactive parental involvement, education, and
community action are key to protecting our youth from the
menace of illicit drug – as users, couriers or pushers.
• Evidence elsewhere has shown that we can use the power of
media to make the use of drugs a very, very unattractive
option for our young people. My government will invest in a
long-term media campaign aimed at increasing perceptions of
the harm of drug use and of social disapproval.
We must secure the future of our children by:-
• Building stronger neighborhoods
• building stronger families as bulwarks against juvenile
delinquency and criminality
• improving parental competence and teaching self-control
and street smarts
• helping young people resist drug misuse in order to
achieve their full potential in society
• reducing the harm caused by drugs in the community
• protecting our communities from related violent crimes,
such as aggravated street mugging
• improving the quality of life
• implementing specialized social welfare programmes to
address problems of youth alienation and despondency, and to
assist youths to withstand peer pressures to experiment with
drugs
• implementing a youth-oriented education campaign to assist
youth in resisting the temptations presented to them by the
criminal underworld, particularly in armed robbery,
drug-trafficking, prostitution
• enhancing police-community relations and promoting
community policing
• dismantling the criminal gangs that traffic in drugs
Securing our borders
Drug trafficking is linked to cross-border violence and
money laundering. We make meaningful headway against drug
trafficking only by treating it not as a merely Ghanaian
problem. Through partnership with other sovereign nations in
our region and beyond, we can combat all of these serious
threats to border security. West Africa is drawing up a plan
to fight drug trafficking, in particular of Latin American
cocaine and Asian heroin being smuggled to lucrative markets
in Europe. Going forward, we must have a transnational
strategy that aggressively polices our seas to ensure
increased disruption of cocaine flow and continued
disruption of trafficker means, methods and modes.
We shall focus on a strategic review of international drugs
activity - with a clear overall commitment of all the law
enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic agencies in the
West African region, especially, to reduce the flow of
illicit drugs, to and through our shores.
Expanding the level of cooperation with partner nations
across the transit zone will deny traffickers the freedom of
movement they enjoy within the territorial waters of
nations, such as ours, that are struggling with the means to
interdict them.
Abdullahi Shehu, Director-General of the Inter-Governmental
Action Group Against Money Laundering and Terrorist
Financing (GIABA) in West Africa, who heads West Africa's
programme against money laundering, received an additional
mandate in August 2007 from the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) to fight drugs cartels. We need to
continue on this regional front. We shall also explore, with
our neighbours, the possibility of a joint ECOWAS coastguard
unit, involving our respective naval units.
‘DRUG CZAR’
I believe the creation of an overall Drug Czar, with the
requisite powers, will go a long way in our fight against
illicit drugs. With this, I am proposing an equivalent of
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a
Cabinet level component of the Executive Office of the
Presidency, to be established by law and headed by a Drug
Czar. The Drug Czar, with enhanced powers, will also combine
the powers of the Chairman and the Executive Director of
NACOB under a new reformed structure. My government will
re-designate NACOB as an Agency, which will give the new
body a greater overall mandate over and control of the drug
situation, and harmonise its collaboration with other law
enforcement agencies and Ministries.
An Akufo-Addo presidency will also pay special attention to
the classification of narcotic drugs and review the
penalties for drug-related offences, with particular
attention to increasing the prison terms of those convicted
for the supply or possession of drugs with intent to supply.
The object would be to ensure that Ghana becomes “a no-go
country” for drug dealers, both domestic and international.
We aim to tackle drug supply at every opportunity:
internationally, nationally, regionally and locally, to
focus on all points in the supply and demand chain. The
fight against drugs should be part of a wider range of
policies to regenerate our communities, expand access to
education, skills training and jobs. The more we intensify
our efforts in providing opportunities for all and in
apprehending the criminals, the less attractive the illicit
drug trade becomes.
I am determined to tackle the drugs problem. But the fight
is not just for the Government or law enforcement agents. It
is for mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers, pastors, imams,
chiefs, community groups, and Ghanaians who cares about the
future of our society. The problem does not simply go away
by politicians adopting a pre-occupational attitude of
merely, constantly telling the general public that Ghana has
a drug smuggling problem. We owe it to our children’s future
to come up with truly imaginative solutions. Drugs are a
very serious problem in Ghana, in West Africa, in Africa, in
Europe, in America, in Asia and everywhere – it is a global
problem from which our geographical location has not been
spared. No one has any illusions about that. Drugs are a
threat to health, a threat to a productive future, a threat
to our personal security, a threat to our communities, a
national security threat. Let us approach it with the kind
of responsibility Ghanaians demand of their political
leaders.
In the end, it must be noted that security is not a
commodity the state buys and the Police imposes on the
populace. It is the result of the entire citizenry working
together to respect the laws, to ensure social justice, to
take care of the economically weak and vulnerable, and to
support law enforcement agencies with credible information.
Security comes about when citizens do the right thing in
accordance with law.
My vision for Ghana is to create a free, healthy, confident,
educated and prosperous modern society. I believe we can do
so and still avoid the side-effects of modernisation – the
harm caused by growing misuse of drugs - that is common with
western societies.
The Policy Statement was delivered at the 2008 Busia
Foundation Annual Lectures held at Holiday Inn on the 14th
of July 2008.The theme for the Lecture was “Democracy,
Security, and The Rule Of Law”
