The Daily Star
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Charity calls for better policy to fight drugs
'Incarceration is not treatment; it only perpetuates the problem' - Skoun
By Patrick Galey
Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Better awareness and a shift in prosecution practices are needed to counter a worrying rise in drug availability, the head of a leading addiction charity said on the eve of the United Nations' World Drug Day.
Nadya Mikdashi, executive director of the Lebanese Addictions Center (Skoun), told The Daily Star that while progress was being made on the way users and addicts were treated by authorities, a far greater effort was required from government to curb mounting drug abuse.
"The 'war on drugs' we have seen in recent years has been shown to be ineffective," she said in reference to failed counter-narcotic operations. "This whole policy of abstinence only or of thinking that no one will take drugs if we tell them not to doesn't work.
"We take a more pragmatic policy toward drug use and addiction: bring people into the public health system and not think that sending people to rehab or prison will work. Incarceration is not treatment; it only perpetuates the problem. There are drugs in prison," Mikdashi added.
Lebanon revised its drug laws in 1998 to reclassify addiction as a non-criminal offense. Nine years later a 2007 project saw collaboration with NGOs, judicial and security officials to adopt a new approach to tackling drugs.
According to the Association of Justice and Mercy (AJEM), an NGO which deals with imprisoned drug addicts, 30 percent of incarcerated Lebanese are there on of drug charges. Mikdashi called for a radical shift in thinking to stop treating drug addicts as criminals.
"We want to see the government make strategic decisions ... to increase the capacities of treatment providers who are already functioning and concentrate efforts on providing detox centers in government hospitals,"
she said. "The government is slowly starting to understand the intricacies of what drug addiction needs. It is still a basic understanding, but [politicians] are coming around."
Lebanon, with its Mediterranean location, Arab identity and proximity to main smuggling routes, was unfortunately positioned as a prime spot for drug users, Mikdashi added.
"Because we are open in Beirut, we have a lot of drugs but one good thing is we don't deny that there is a problem. Other Arab countries don't talk about it," she said.
"What worries me is availability and the idea that drugs are a recreational activity. Young people here are disenchanted, disempowered and don't believe they have bright futures. Poor kids are using [drugs] and rich kids are using, the only difference is price."
Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar recently called for the reactivation of a drug addiction committee, "a big step forward," according to Mikdashi.
In addition, the government has legalized a series of substitute compounds used to treat drug addiction, such as prescribing methadone for heroin addicts.
"More than 60 percent of people seeking treatment in Lebanon are addicted to heroin. [Methadone substitution] treatment has been shown to work," Mikdashi said.
She said that the levels of drug production in Lebanon and Asia were still cause for concern, with more crops lowering street level prices in Beirut and other main cities.
"I'm sure there is still opium growing going on but we are very close to Afghanistan so that makes [heroin] here very cheap," she said. "A gram can be as little as LL20,000 ($12.5)."
Skoun will have an information booth in Gemmayzeh on Saturday night to mark the United Nations' World Drug Day, where partygoers can get better educated on drugs, their risks and where to get help for addiction as part of its "Know More, Risk Less" campaign.
Read more:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=116409#ixzz0s9Jy3ZQR
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
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