MARCH 14 — Every year in the second or third week of March, the United Nations hosts an event called the Commission on Narcotic Drugs or for short, the CND. The CND is an annual event held at the UN Office in Vienna, bringing together government delegates from all over the world to discuss developments in drug laws and policy worldwide and in their respective countries.

This is my second CND; and I am glad to report that there are many positive advancements all over the world in regard to drug policy THAT ACTUALLY WORKS. In Malaysia, we have implemented incarceration-based drug policy for 62 years (since the enactment of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952). Today, we have increased drug use, increased Hepatitis C and tuberculosis and increased crime. So basically, incarceration of drug users has been a catastrophic failure.

There were many positive statements at the CND High-Level Segment which begun yesterday in Vienna. Nora Volkow, Director General of the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the United States of America stated: ‘Criminal sanctions are not beneficial and we discourage their use.’ Michel Kazatchkine, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS for Eastern Europe lauded the benefits of opioid substitution therapies like methadone, saying that it was undisputed that they ‘reduce crime and public disorder and improve quality of life of persons who use drugs’. Youth representatives pointed out the obvious: that punishing people who use drugs is ‘costly and counterproductive.’

All of these statements are consistent with results from evidence-based treatment in Malaysia. Among the 28,000+ patients that registered with Agensi Anti-Dadah Kebangsaan’s Cure & Care Service Centres offering methadone therapy from 2010-2013, 72.1per cent of individuals obtained permanent homes and 75.9per cent of individuals were not rearrested for ANY crime or illicit drug use. The scientific evidence speaks for itself.

The head of the Malaysian delegation this year was Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who in his speech mentioned the increasing problems faced as a result of increasing methamphetamine use. He also said that government agencies are working together with NGOs like the Malaysian AIDS Council to introduce medicines like antiretroviral HIV medicines and methadone in police lockup. This is an extremely positive statement as these medicines cannot be missed at all. In the case of the former, a missed dose means the individual becomes immune. In the case of methadone, an entire regiment of treatment will disappear, and the treating doctor has to start again. The honorable Minister also mentioned Malaysia having ‘serious penalties’ for drug trafficking, i.e. the death penalty for drugs.

The death penalty for drugs has been proven not to deter drug trafficking. There is plenty of literature that says likelihood of detection is a far better deterrent than harsh sentences. Furthermore, persons who ‘traffic’ these drugs are often less educated persons who carry drugs out of an act of desperation. They don’t think about the death penalty when they decide to carry drugs for someone. They think about the fact that they could make a tidy sum without much work, and they can finally rest easy and buy their kid what he needs. I’ve been collecting data on the death penalty for 2 years now. And many persons who are sentenced to death under s39B are car mechanics, unemployed persons, housewives, fishmongers, fruit sellers, hawkers. Big kingpins are not getting caught under this section.

At the CND this year, there have been so many positive statements condemning the application of the death penalty for drug offences. The Director-General of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime Yury Fedotov yesterday said that the death penalty for drug offences are ‘not in the spirit of the conventions’. The President of the INCB Raymond Yans said that the death penalty should be ‘consigned to history’.

What is clear is that there needs to be a change.

I end this article quoting the Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Jan Eliasson in his speech yesterday here in Vienna: that we must never forget the public health imperative, and that we must say yes to a life of dignity for all.

*Fifa Rahman is Policy Manager of the European Union-funded drug policy project at the Malaysian AIDS Council. She has a Master of Health Law. She is live-tweeting from the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs 2014 in Vienna at @fifarahman.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.