Drug trafficking not the way to greatness

drugs.
Most of them are facing the death sentence or alternatively life in prison.
What is sad is that there is very little the Government can do to help. Whilst indeed the government should fight for the rights of its citizens in foreign lands, it must also respect the laws of those countries.

Drugs have the potential to destroy societies as they promote lawlessness and general decline in the mental and physical aptitude of the people. Those countries that have allowed peddling of drugs to thrive today wish they had taken a hard line approach. We see this in several South American countries where governments have completely lost control.
Asian and Middle East countries tend to have zero tolerance for drug traffickers and when they catch them the penalties are always on the maximum side, including death.

Yet we still get some of our citizens agreeing to be used as drug mules, and more often than not they get caught. They almost always plead their innocence claiming that they didn’t know the contents of their parcels.
But the truth is that very few of them are unwitting couriers who would have agreed to carry a bag for a friend on the basis of trust. Most of the mules are either tempted by the financial rewards or are simply deceived because they are ignorant of the high risks they will be taking.

According to research, women tend to form the majority of drug mules and they are also taking more risks in terms of the weight and value of the drugs they carry. They are also reportedly carrying most of the Class A drugs whilst the men go for the Class B ones and take less risks.
More often than not, the women are carrying the drugs on behalf of men who run the syndicates. The women are made to think that they can make easy money.
The age group and profile of the Zimbabwean women in Asian jails seems to suggest that they are desperate single mothers aged between 27 and 37 years. But the fact that they are desperate for money does not justify their drug trafficking activities.

It would also appear that some of them committed the offence at the height of the economic difficulties that Zimbabwe was going through. This is when a high number of Zimbabweans left for western cities like London, where they fell into the trap of these drug syndicates.
Most of the countries like China, which have strict drug laws, are friends of Zimbabwe and tend to be more willing to issue visas to Zimbabweans than the western countries. And because Zimbabweans can easily get into these Eastern countries they become the targets of the drug syndicates, especially the notorious ones from West Africa.

Whilst the financial rewards are quite tempting, we believe more would-be-offenders would resist the temptation if they knew of the consequences of being caught and the tricks often used by the drug syndicates.
The Government and the media have a role to play in educating Zimbabweans on the risks involved. The Philippines used to have a similar problem which saw more than 600 of their nationals caught in foreign countries in 2010. Their government then carried out a national campaign to educate Filipinos of the dangers of drug trafficking and the campaign is producing good results.

Countries like New Zealand have faced similar problems but have been able to get on top of them.
Airlines can also help by educating and warning their passengers of the dangers of drug trafficking. Air Zimbabwe does a good job in this regard. But often the drug mules use other airlines since they are usually not picking the drugs from Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe does not have a hard-drugs problem of its own but is often used as a transit route and now its citizens are being used as drug mules. Because generally Zimbabweans disapprove of drugs, they should quickly report to the police anyone who approaches them to be couriers. That way the syndicates will stop targeting Zimbabweans.

And for the unwitting mules, they just need to trust their instincts and know that they should not carry any bag or parcel for anyone, no matter how trustworthy one may seem.
In any case most of the people pushing these drugs are foreigners and Zimbabweans’ sixth sense should tell them to stay away from them.