Experts for treating addicts as patients, not criminals
Mental health specialists and psychiatrists on Monday insisted on treating drug abusers as patients rather than criminals, while home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that the government was now working to cut drug supply at consumer ends.
‘All our successes will be ruined if we fail to save our youth workforce from drugs,’ the minister told a roundtable, organised by the Centre for Governance Studies, at the CIRDAP auditorium in Dhaka.
At the roundtable on the role of the private sector in curing drug addiction, the mental health specialists and psychiatrists insisted that punitive actions hardly work against drug abusers, who instead need proper rehabilitation.
They stated that it was critical to treat drug-using inmates differently than other inmates in jail because they require proper rehabilitation and mainstreaming.
The home minister admitted that over 60 per cent of some 80,000 inmates were linked to drug use, storing or abuse, but the main problem was with the criminal justice delivery system.
‘We wanted a separate tribunal to be set up. When drug lords get maximum punishment, others will be careful too,’ he said.
Not only members of law enforcement agencies but also journalists and politicians, among others, are getting involved in the drug menace, he said.
He added that they got formal approval from the prime minister over conducting mandatory dope tests during the entry of government jobs.
The minister said that they would also request the universities to conduct drug tests as the government estimates over 60 lakh people are currently drug addicts.
Azizul Islam, US-Bangla Medical College principal and also a mental diseases, drug addiction and psychiatry specialist, was critical of the shabby condition of the country’s over 350 drug rehabilitation centres.
He suggested that the drug abusers needed human touch or their forced treatment could be suicidal.
Mekhala Sarkar, a mental health specialist and psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, also called for a rehabilitation process rather than punitive measures for drug abusers or addicts.
Echoing her, former inspector general of police Enamul Haque, who also served as chief of the department of narcotic control, said that it was also important to rectify someone inside the prison.
Dhaka University professor Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir said that the youth workforce was badly affected by the drug menace, impacting the country’s growing economy directly.
He urged the government to launch research on the drug economy of the country.
The home minister, later in the discussion, assured that he would ask the department of narcotics control to do so.
Kazi Firoz Rashid, a Jatiya Party lawmaker, Mainul Islam, former chief of general staff of Bangladesh Army, and Muhammad Abdul Majid, a former chairman of the National Board of Revenue, among others, spoke at the discussion.
Manzoor Ahmed Chowdhury, the chairman at CGS, presided over the programme moderated by CGS executive director Zillur Rahman.
News Courtesy:
https://www.newagebd.net/article/182162/experts-for-treating-addicts-as-patients-not-criminals