The evidence is here, science has spoken. Punitive drug prohibition policies have not only failed to combat the drug problem around the world, they have contributed to “lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice, and the undermining of people’s right to health”. This is the conclusion of a commission of medical experts, in a report (pdf) published by the journal The Lancet last week.

The report’s documentation of the extent of harm and trauma caused by punitive measures is as damning as it is upsetting. Take this statistic for example: life expectancy has decreased in certain parts of Mexico — by five years for men in one state — following the government’s decision to allow military intervention in civilian areas to fight drug traffickers. Another statistic is that two-thirds of people who inject drugs around the world may be living with the Hepatitis C virus, which can cause liver diseases and certain types of cancer, because governments are either incapable or downright refusing to implement preventive measures.

To tackle the drug problem, the experts are unequivocal: we need global drug decriminalisation. There is no way around it from the perspective of public health or human rights. The experts recommend that minor, non-violent possession, distribution and use of drugs should be decriminalised; policies should gradually aim for legal, regulated drug markets if it is politically impossible to immediately revert punitive measures; access to sterile needles and oral drugs such as methadone and naloxone should also be ensured.

The experts’ findings and recommendations only confirm that when it comes to drugs, sticking with punitive measures is scientifically hollow and solely political. It is therefore high time that policy makers who still support punitive measures be held accountable for the harm they are causing to people who most need the state’s help. Any excuse they try to spin or any debate they try to initiate should now be exposed for what they truly are: lies, deceit.

From The Lancet report (pdf)

Anil Gayan, the health minister, falls squarely in the notorious category of policy makers who are not against punitive measures. In July last year, he suspended the distribution of methadone, a drug used to treat opioid addicts, declaring that “the state should not act as a drug supplier”. His decision went against a treatment strategy that had been helping addicts in Mauritius for the past ten years. It also is the complete opposite of what The Lancet report now recommends — that is, to provide methadone to drug users.

Gayan sustained his brainless and dangerous campaign against methadone a few months later when he unscrupulously linked its use to Alzheimer’s disease. This complete fabrication was quickly debunked by Dr D. Vincent Oxenham, a clinical neuropsychologist based in Australia, in a piece for l’express: “to claim that methadone ‘causes’ Alzheimer’s disease or Alzheimer’s dementia is a fallacy.” Dr Oxenham also made it a point to specify that there was no scientific paper to date that had “even made the remote claim that methadone causes Alzheimer’s disease”.

Juls Boo/Flickr

In spite of Gayan’s apparent vendetta against methadone, there is one much more positive idea that he subscribes to. He wants government to focus on discouraging people from ever using drugs in the first place. But in this thinking too, cracks appear.

By grouping all drugs in one homogenous group, Gayan fails to realise that they are anything but. This is a major problem because it likely infers that strategies to discourage the use of drugs will neither be drug-specific nor socially-targeted. They are thus likely doomed to failure.

Cannabis and heroin, for example, are two different entities entirely. They are consumed by different social groups, for different reasons and they have very different social repercussions and consequences. Throughout the world, cannabis is predominantly consumed by young people, for recreational purposes, and they come with existing but generally mild and rare sideeffects. On the other hand, use of hard drugs like heroin is typically localised in areas of deprivation and poverty, as is the case in Mauritius (pdf), to provide a temporally release from destitution or as a way to shackle people to certain occupations such as prostitution. And the consequences are heartwrenchingly severe.

Considering how different the social effects and pharmacodynamics of cannabis and heroin are, it is pure fantasy to suppose that one, single “anti-drug” strategy will curtail the use of all drugs.

Gayan’s resolute determination to swerve as far away from the evidence as he possibly can only intensifies the vividness of his incompetence. But more importantly, it shows that the state is currently failing to recognise drug addicts as people who need to be helped not persecuted with punitive measures … which they are. A recent analysis by StraConsult on behalf of the NGO PILS shows that only 8% of people convicted for a drug offense between 2011 and 2014 in Mauritius were traffickers. The rest were principally users. In addition, convictions targeting users of light drugs increased by 78%.

Bleak then is the notion of Mauritius moving towards controlled decriminalisation and legal, regulated drug markets, as recommended by the experts in The Lancet, in the near future. In conservative Mauritius, advocating for such drug reforms will mean being attacked by the mainstream media, opportunist political parties and a generally reactionary public.

Reform therefore can only come from a policy maker who is as competent as she is determined, who is as unflinching in her quest for social justice as she is unhinged by outrage stirred by the privileged powerful. Those are qualities the health minister should aspire to, those are qualities a future health minister needs. Otherwise, people will keep dying and the state will keep repeating “good riddance”.

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This is the first draft of an article published in Weekly Mauritius. If you’re in Mauritius, do consider buying a copy of the magazine. It’s out every Thursday.