The effect of drugs on Guyana

When President Desmond Hoyte caused draconian laws to be introduced for drug possession and for drug sale, the society at the time thought that he had done the right thing. He had seen the effect of drugs on the society.
With the passage of time the society, at least some sections of the society (mainly the academics) thought that the law was too draconian and discriminatory against the small man, the man in the street. There were columnists who accused Magistrates of being uncaring and senseless. Some saw nothing wrong with a person having a small amount of marijuana.
Today, and since last year there was talk about the increase in crime. The then political opposition made crime a campaign issue. It made sense. Many households could not sleep for fear of visits by criminal elements. That crime situation is not as bad as it was toward the middle of last year but it is still at a level that makes the society feel uncomfortable.
The police do not conduct drug tests on criminals but should they do so they would find that every single one would test positive. The first robbery murders committed this year were committed by drug-crazed young men, one of them still a teenager. One of the witnesses spoke of these men smoking marijuana while casually beating their victims.
These same young men went to another home two days later and while smoking marijuana brutally chopped their victims. Yet there is a call for the legalization of marijuana because that call emanated from the United States.
Scientific evidence proves that drugs change a person’s mentality. Of course there is the argument that different people react differently. That reaction depends on the level of that person’s mental development. The more academically inclined the individual, the less likely is that person’s propensity for violence.
An academic is likely to be employed while the other must turn to crime to sustain the drug habit and that is the case today. The regular criminal would first buy drugs with his ill-gotten gains. Last year when the police closed in on the people who attacked a Land Court Judge in her home, the men had been stoned out of their heads.
It is apposite to note that the entrance of drugs into the society coincided with the escalation in crime and the advent of guns. This is the case in every society in which there is a drug problem. Jamaica which grows large quantities of ganja has more guns and murders than any other Caribbean country. Trinidad is no different. In fact, most of the murders are drug related.
In Guyana the drug trade has brought its fair share of killings. During the crime wave of the early part of this century, men died like flies. Cocaine was there in huge quantities and men killed to protect the industry. Reports are that some two hundred young men died.
There has been a clamp on the cocaine trade and immediately the killings declined. But there is marijuana, the drug of choice for the criminals. This is because people can function after smoking marijuana, unlike cocaine which debilitates the user.
And, if proof is needed to show that the criminals are habitual marijuana users, one only has to look at what happens inside the prisons where there is a flourishing market. During the Commission of Inquiry into the recent riot at the Camp Street prison, some of the witnesses actually said that the authorities should have left them with their marijuana.
These very people get released on bail and immediately commit a similar crime, sometimes killing their victims.
It is impossible to rid the society of marijuana but society could help keep children away from the drug. That would be the start of the decline in crime.