Macau Matters | Drugs – War or Store?

Richard Whitfield

Some Hong Kong fortunes were founded on the opium trade in China. More recently, in the 1930’s there were businesses happily operating in Macau to make and sell opium to the public. At that time many now prohibited drugs were readily available in many places around the world.
However, since 1961 when the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was signed in the United Nations, there has been a relentlessly growing criminal drug trade and the war on drugs has become ever more costly from human and financial perspectives. In 1971 two American congressmen released a report stating that more than 10-15% of US servicemen in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. More recently there has been an escalating arms race of chemists developing more and more new psychotropic drugs and increasing efforts to stem their distribution and jail drug traffickers. Around the world, and especially in South America, more and more crime, and especially murders, can be traced to the illegal drug trade.
I have long felt that this war is unwinnable and new approaches to dealing with drugs need to be tried. Through discussions with friends and colleagues I know that many others feel the same way, and this seems to be an increasingly common view. On this topic I recently found a new short documentary and a series of related print articles on this topic put online by The Economist to kick off its “Global Compass” series – see economist.com/films for details.
This resource takes the view that the war on drugs is failing miserably and that the best way to improve the situation is to legalize (and tax) drug production, sale and use, treat addiction and other problems related to drug use as health (and not criminal) issues, and use taxation and other revenues from the drug industry to pay for their treatment. Interestingly, the resource cites the decriminalization of all drug use in Portugal in 2001 and how this change has actually significantly reduced many drug related problems there. It strongly argues that decriminalization is not enough as this approach still leaves drug production and sale (and the profits) in the hands of criminals. I fully agree with The Economist’s view.
I very much like this resource and believe it can be an excellent educational tool. About the only change I would make is to add materials to explain the high cost of the war on drugs – the murders and other crimes committed by drug criminals, the large and costly police forces deployed to combat them; the drug users turning to crime to support their addictions and the destruction of their families, and the high costs of jailing them after prosecution.
Here in Macau drugs have always been a problem, and it seems to be increasing. Guangdong Province is a well-known source for many different drugs to which Macau people have easy access. In recent years, the authorities in Hong Kong have been conducting an ever expanding advertising campaign to advise young people against drug use. Perhaps the time has come for a public debate on drugs in Macau and action to adopt new approaches to dealing with the issue here. And perhaps, we can take a lead from what is happening in Portugal and some other places.