Going Dutch

Across the Atlantic, Arizona now licenses peddlers of soft drugs such as marijuana and cannabis. The state of California allows their usage by medical prescription. Possession is no longer treated as a crime in several other US states. A growing body of opinion including at least one surgeon general, has demanded legal differentiation of hard physically addictive drugs, such as opiates, and cocaine, from soft physically non-addictive drugs, such as marijuana.

By the early years of the twenty-first century, we can reasonably expect drug laws in many nations to have undergone a sea change. They may even revert to the early twentieth century when everything from heroin and cocaine down was legally available.

 

Now, review the Indian experience. Till the sixties, drugs such as opium, ganja and charas were sold at licensed government shops. In 1969, hashish was banned. Ganja and opium continued to be sold till 1986 when the new Narcotics and Psychotropic Drugs Act (NPDA) came into force. Ganja was then banned (except in a couple of states). Opium, which is by far the most addictive of this triad, and easily converted into heroin and morphine, is still freely available at government outlets.

The NPDA does not distinguish between drugs by quantity or quality. A sadhu carrying five grams of marijuana (street value Rs 15) is as liable as a peddler with a kilo of heroin (street value Rs 2.5 lakh). In practice, courts do make a distinction. But, this equality in the eyes of the law induces peddlers to encourage usage of high-value hard drugs.

Hence the phenomenon of first-time users getting addicted. Also, of course, turf wars abound and so does corruption. Law enforcement agencies mop up perhaps 20 per cent of drugs in circulation at prohibitive costs. No one knows how many addicts there are estimates vary by factors of 10 or more.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, alcohol-related crimes outnumber all other drug-related ones by a factor of 40:1. As India has seen with alcohol prohibition, bans lead to smuggling and rackets availability is unaffected. Finally, loss of revenue is as true for any other banned drug as it is for alcohol. All the knee-jerk reactions about drugs encouraging crime need to be seen in that context. It would make sense for India to revert to the pre-1969 situation, set up legal outlets and impose sin taxes a la alcohol and cigarettes. It would be the ideal means of widening the tax-net while also cutting down ancillary crimes.