Has the Pakistani Legislation in Place to Combat Drugs Failed?

Pakistan sits on one of the world’s busiest drug trafficking corridors, largely due to the cultivation of Opium, Poppy and Cannabis in Afghanistan. After being credited for about 70 per cent of the global drug production, Afghanistan remains the world’s largest opium producer till date. According to UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) 40 per cent of the drugs (heroin & charas) produced in Afghanistan are routed through Pakistan and the main trade route to and from Afghanistan passes through KPK. The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) estimates that 36 percent of all the heroin and morphine trafficked out of Afghanistan are smuggled through Pakistan. According to UNODC Survey report of 2013, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has borne the brunt of drug abuse in Pakistan, with 10.9 per cent of the population involved in drug abuse in 2012. Given the geographic predisposition of Pakistan as a viable passage for drug export, Pakistan requires stricter laws that would prevent this trade and impede drug consumption globally.

With the help of the UNODC the first National survey was conducted in 2000 which estimated there to be 500,000 regular heroin users in Pakistan. Six years later, the second survey in 2006 estimated approximately 624,000 regular opiate users and 130,000 people injecting drugs in the country. Another six years later (in 2013) these numbers had almost doubled to 1.06 million and 430,000 respectively. The majority of drug users in this study fell between the ages of 25 to 39 years and the overall estimate of drug abusers for 2013 was 6.7 million [three-quarters were men (5.2 million) and one-quarter were women (1.5 million)]. These figures evidenced there to be a steady increase in the number of drug abusers in Pakistan and further indicated the need for serious and immediate legal attention on this matter.

On July 7th, 1997 The Control of Narcotic Substances Act (CNSA) was passed by the Pakistani legislature to regulate drugs and narcotic control within the country. This was an attempt to align national legislation with international laws on drug control which included The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971 and the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988. The new Act was an attempt to curb drug abuse that had beset the country by using international standards as guiding principles.

CNSA included Coca leaf, cannabis, heroin, opium, poppy straw, and all manufactured drugs in the definition of Narcotic substances (Article 2) and defined an addict to be any individual physically or mentally dependent on Narcotics or psychotropic substances. The Act put prohibitions on the production (art.4), preparation, possession, sale, purchase, distribution and delivery (art.6) of narcotic substances. The only exception for this was a license issued by the Federal or provincial government which was limited to cultivation and gathering of narcotics for industrial, medical or scientific purposes (art.6) which expanded the government’s control over over distribution and manufacture of narcotics.

This yielded positive results when KPK (then NWFP) was declared to be free of Poppy cultivation In 2001. However it did not take long for cultivation to prop up elsewhere in the country and the first evidence of this was observed in Baluchistan in 2003. To date there is no evidence to suggest that that this cultivation has either been reduced or subjected to stricter control with the highly permeable Pak-Afghan border being credited for this development.

The Act further prohibits the Import and Export of Narcotics to and from Pakistan (art.7) and again a federal license has been kept as the only exemption for this rule. Although the idea was to prohibit drug trafficking within Pakistan, little success was achieved in this regard. Estimates of 2005 showed Pakistan to have seized 27 per cent of the total global production of heroin and morphine. Drugs being seized were also seen to reach up to 35 metric tonnes for the year 2006 (heroin and morphine). Seizures of Acetic Anhydride (an essential chemical for drug production) reached 36000 liters from 2008-2011.

While the need to act by the government was clear, and they did in part, by enacting the CNSA, a piece of legislation can only do so much. Its enforceability is dependent upon the courts and members of the executive tasked with its enforcement. The need for efficient courts dealing with problems under CNSA’s purview was recognized by the CNSA which authorised Federal and Provincial governments to establish as many courts as required to speed up trials for drug related offences (art.46). This was put to good use when special tribunals specifically dealing with such offences were set up.

An Anti Narcotic Control Force (ANF) was also established to target drug offenders. According to the official website of the ANF, this has resulted in the convictions of over 600 individuals for drug trafficking crimes from the year 2014 onwards. While this may imply that the courts in conjunction with the ANF are engendering successful instances of drug control, there are no statistics available to indicate the quality of the work being done, especially in respect of time being spent on a given case for periods of adjudication and sentencing.

The Act puts into effect a system which treats addicts as patients individuals requiring help, rather than as those requiring criminal sanction. It addresses the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts (chapter 6). Each provincial government has been directed to register addicts within its jurisdiction for treatment and rehabilitation (art.52), all expenses for which are to be covered by the Federal Government. No sanctions have been imposed on addicts and provincial governments have been further directed to issue registration cards for those registered with them to ensure that any addicts apprehended are provided with medical attention. But there is no evidence to suggest any of these provisions have been put into effect.

The law does not highlight the need to address drug abusers as patients rather than criminals, an idea which is in high contravention to the public perception of those abusing drugs in Pakistan. Majority of addicts complain about the lack of mental and psychological support and encouragement from family and friends as they are treated as criminals and social pariahs as per the dictates of local social norms. The female gender faces worse forms of sanction for addiction. According to the Female Drugs Use Report by the UNODC, Rabia, a 22 year old nurse, addicted to psychotropic medicines approached a UNODC funded project to receive help in rehabilitation. She requested the staff to treat her in secrecy as any ensuing consequences from the fact that she was an addict being made public, would have been catastrophic for her. Provided that the law throws great impetus behind the idea of drug addicts being ‘patients’, it is likely to produce a more treatment friendly environment, which in turn is likely to encourage addicts to seek help, than to hide for fear of public sanction. This can be observed by the example of Portugal which decriminalized drug use and accorded the status of ‘patient’ to addicts in 2000 which led to a significant decrease in the numbers of drug abusers in the country (late 1990s roughly 1 percent of the people were heroin users, approx. 100,000; 15 years later the number has fallen to 50,000,ost of which are under substitution treatment- according to Dr. Joao Goulao, the brains behind the country’s decriminalization policy).

Article 53 of the CNSA empowers governments to set up rehab centers which take care of the detoxification, education, after-care, and free medication for the addicts. While this reflects a totalitarian approach by the CNSA to ensure drug abusers are taken care of, the enforcement of its provisions has been thoroughly unsatisfactory by the relevant executive bodies. According to the official website of the Ministry of Interior and Narcotics Control Division, only four state owned rehabilitation centers are operational within Pakistan. The ANF manages and operates five Model Addiction Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers (MATRC) in Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and Sukkur and from 2005 till now MATRC’s setup by ANF has treated 14,388 patients in Pakistan. This number is astoundingly low as the UNODC Survey Report Final 2013 noted 93 percent addicts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 95 percent addicts in Baluchistan to have almost no access to any rehabilitation centers. In addition to this only 14 per cent addicts in Punjab reported access to such facilities. The most progress was shown by Sindh where 33 per cent of addicts were reported to have access to rehabs, which wasn’t even covering half the population in need of such access in the province. On the whole, only a meager 13 per cent of the entire addicted population reported to received treatment for addiction and a majority of this number used private facilities for their treatment. 73 per cent of the respondents of the 2013 survey showed willingness to undergo treatment if provided with an opportunity to do so but the number of state funded government facilities and the last known estimate of drug abusers in Pakistan reflects a magnanimous gap (between those needing help and help providing institutions) by which the country fails to address the needs of addicts. It reflects a lack of interest by the executive, despite the existence of a fairly comprehensive law, to address the problem of drug abuse within the country.

As suggested by Chapter 8 of the CNSA, Pakistan has been working with various countries and multi-national organizations by signing memorandum of understanding (MOUs) for mutual cooperation to tighten control on drug trafficking. According to ANF’s official website, Pakistan has signed MOUs with 32 countries including all neighboring states. Moreover, 15 new MOUs and revision for 5 existing MOUs is in progress. Additionally, specific treaties have been signed with 29 countries for extradition of convicts on certain offences including drug trafficking. In all, Pakistan is co-operating at different levels with 77 countries currently. This is a huge achievement because the more countries co-operate with one another, the less breathing space will be available for the movement and production of drugs within a region.

Pakistan in 2010 devised the Drug control plan 10-14 and The Anti-Narcotics Policy. This plan and policy had similar objectives of increasing the government’s control over the production and trafficking of narcotic substances and to monitor the change in drug demand which would aid in reducing drug abuse in the country. The plan includes setting up a Planning and Monitoring Unit (PMU) in the Narcotics Control Division (NCD) to monitor and evaluate the National Anti-Narcotics Policy, Drug Control Master Plan and other drug related projects. The National Narcotics Control Committee (NNCC) will be established to direct, implement and monitor the policy. Collectively, these committees ensure the proper functioning of laws and policies and if necessary, to make prompt amendments.

Surveys and annual reports have been planned to analyze the the policies and arrangements needed to address the shortcomings related to drug abuse. But drafting such policies is the first step, their effective implementation is a new strenuous challenge altogether. The history of inconsistent implementation has been seen to repeat itself for this new plan as no new documents have been generated since 2010 reporting on the work done so far. The only reliable evidence available are the reports by the UNODC, the last of which was published in 2013 and which showed there to be no evidence implying the success of the country’s attacks on drug abuse. Also, lack of reliable reports by national institutions creates a lacuna of information for the country itslef to rely on, in attempting to tailor its laws and policies to suit the specific problem plaguing its residents at home.

But has the Pakistani legislation to control and reduce the spread of drugs failed to deliver? No law in the world ensures total annihilation of the problems it caters to and CNSA is no exception. CNSA’s primary objective was to reduce the consumption of drugs amongst the addicts in Pakistan, which it failed to deliver. Over the years the drug use is constantly increasing without any signs of slowing down in the near future. Major reasons for this increase are the lack of active implementation of CNSA’s provisions, insufficient treatment facilities for drug abusers and the stigma associated with drug use. These results are likely to be reproduced unless the current modus operandi addressing drug abuse is seriously reconsidered. The discussion above shows the law to be fairly comprehensive in its provisions. However, since it does not operate in isolation, its results are likely to follow current trends in the future, if the adjacent actors do not carry out their duties. Therefore it would be unfair to blame the CNSA for the current failings of the system in pace to help curb drug abuse.