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Successes are now being notched up in the war on drugs with the raids on four major distribution centres over the past week and the arrest of 36 dealers with the confiscation of their drugs, but obviously we have a long way to go.
The week also saw the arrest of 432 users and here the Government and the police are treating dealers and users differently.
The users are being permitted to pay deposit fines, hopefully high enough to at least make them pause before they can buy more, and with more undergoing treatment and rehabilitation than in the past.
The dealers go to court and face magistrates, who have considerable powers to impose jail sentences and very high fines. While sentencing is the prerogative of the judiciary, presiding officers in criminal trials also need to bear in mind the prevalence and damage caused by any particular type of crime, and public opinion.
But the main deterrent will be arrest and going to court, then the trial and finally the sentence. So the initial burden falls on the police, to actually track down dealers so they have people to hand over to the National Prosecuting Authority to take to court.
But even the most skilled detectives cannot operate in a vacuum. They need the support of communities and the general public. Busting the sort of drug dens that have been busted does require good detectives, but they can work far more effectively if people come forward and tell them where drugs are being sold. They can then gather the evidence and arrange the raids.
A major source of intelligence could come from users, or people approached by sellers.
We agree that in the main misguided youths tempted into drug abuse should be treated more leniently than the person who did the tempting and the supply, but we also believe that the users need to be co-operative to get that more lenient treatment.
The first area of co-operation is a willingness to name their supplier and state where they bought the drug they were caught carrying or using.
This will obviously help the police build up the data they need to track the trade so they can intervene more effectively and more decisively.
The second area of co-operation is to earn some self-respect and start the treatment, especially if a user has become an addict.
Even with the significant increase in health resources allocated for drug treatment by the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the Government in general, it is obvious that almost all treatment will have to be with outpatients and that a lot of others will need to be involved.
Families are always in the first line, but they too need support. This is where specialist voluntary organisations, church workers and the like need to be able to step in. Just getting a user to a suitable outpatient’s clinic will be a major first step.
The Cabinet decision to deal with another major problem that has got out of hand, the free-for-all in unlicensed public transport and the delays in registering car ownership and tax evasion, along with the more serious motoring offences, with reckless driving being the one centred on rather than more minor offences, offers some pointers for the drug battle.
There is general agreement that a lot of those who routinely ignore the law on carrying passengers for profit, or driving dangerously, or the like simply regard the deposit fines they have to pay when caught as a sort of motoring expense, like buying a tyre or a tank of petrol.
Now the Cabinet want the police to create and maintain records of these fine payers, and start treating second offenders differently, perhaps wheeling them before a magistrate.
The same concept could be used on those arrested for drug abuse as a user.
It would certainly start to split those unwisely experimenting with drugs, who might well find a few hours in a police station as they are processed and have to call in family to pay the deposit fine a bit alarming, from those who are addicted or becoming addicted.
The addicts are the ones who need treatment, and if they start accumulating multiple arrests this would tend to show that they are addicted and need, if necessary, compulsory treatment.
Experimenters who want another go might need to have to face a higher cost of trying something out again. In both cases the idea of building a database of drug abusers caught by police would be useful.
Among the ICT moves by Government is digitising the National Prosecuting Authority and criminal courts, bringing them to the standards set by the civil courts. And that requires a database of past convictions among several other measures.
But that database can easily be expanded to include deposit fines, perhaps using a special code. In legal theory a deposit fine is what it says.
When you sign the form you are agreeing to several statements, first that you renounce your right to a trial in open court and being present at your trial, secondly that you are guilty of the offence, and thirdly that you have agreed to make a deposit against any fine imposed by a court.
So you do have a conviction for breaking the law, so having your name on a database is not an infringement of your rights.
Perhaps there could be some sort of system that a deposit fine offence is wiped after a period of time, perhaps a year for some, perhaps five years for others.
The database could be kept up to date at this level by having every police station equipped with at least one computer with an internet connection so a duty officer could record the details in whatever way the IT specialist wanted them, with appropriate coding for each type of offence and the level of the severity of the breach of law.
Access to the databases would be reasonably restricted, but the police need access and need to be able to search for people building up frequent and repeat offences, which usually will be for the more minor motoring and licence offences and drug abuse.
Responses to type of repeat offence would vary, from doing nothing, to compulsory treatment to making a pleas before sentence by a magistrate.
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