Bula
Two stories make the front page of The Fiji Times for Thursday, November 21.
A MAN is in police custody after he was found tampering with CCTV cameras surveilling containers holding more than $2billion worth of methamphetamine.
The lead is on a member of the Grace Road Church who escaped last week. She says workers are physically beaten, sometimes by up to 10 people, as a form of punishment.
Synopsis
Pushing for rehab centres!
IT is encouraging to see the concerted effort to push for rehabilitation centres for drug addicts here in Fiji.
That’s the way to go!
We should have been talking about this decades ago when the hard drug wave first struck us.
It was whispered in circles and talked about. People knew there was a problem, they knew there was a challenge.
So surely the police would have known there was a great challenge!
Back in February 2021, we reported that five men were in police custody after they were arrested in Suva for allegedly being in possession of white substances believed to be methamphetamine.
The five, aged between 29 and 44 years, were found with zip lock plastic bags containing the substance.
Acting Commissioner of Police at the time, Rusiate Tudravu reiterated that the war on drugs would require our support as police would not be able to fight it alone.
He said their efforts would be strengthened by the sharing of information.
Back in 2018 we received a reality check when it was suggested that methamphetamine could become our biggest security issue if it wasn’t controlled? That was the warning from the police.
Our Acting Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu was the police chief of operations at the time.
At the time, he said the cheap, easy to make, and highly addictive drug, was being produced in the country through a lot of “dirty transactions”.
Meth production labs, he revealed then, could be set up anywhere because the ingredients and recipes were easy to find on the internet. In fact, when we consider our neighbouring countries and the impact of the drug, by April 2018, methamphetamine had become the top choice for most Australian users of hard drugs.
An Australian Associated Press report in April that year revealed three tonnes of cocaine, 1.2 tonnes of MDMA, a stimulant drug, and more than 700kg of heroin were consumed in Australia between August 2016 and August 2017.
So the reality is that we were informed by the police that there was a problem back in 2018.
Why didn’t we push for rehab centres then? Why didn’t we make so much noise? Why weren’t we talking about the meth issue? Why didn’t we raise it as a major issue, and get the country committed to fighting it? Who was supposed to drive this campaign and fight against hard drugs? Now it seems we are running out of time, and meth is everywhere.
The question now is how bad is it? The thought is scary.
The drug raids and the massive haul police nabbed earlier this year in Nadi are telling. It is obvious processes have taken root. Systems are in place, and people involved.
This isn’t going to be a walk in the park. It gets difficult to fight because of the number of people now probably involved and protecting the lucrative trade.
So while we will look up to the police to be creative and innovative, we focus on rehab centres.
Addicts will be looking for a way to get out of the habit.
They will be trying to stay clean. And they will be needing help to do that.
So in that sense, what Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua offers is encouraging. There are incentives to consider.
He says providing incentives for civil society organisations to set up rehab centres is an avenue he is willing to explore.
As more organisations step up to battle the impact of Fiji’s drug problem, Mr Tikoduadua said providing incentives such as tax concessions was possible.
Civil society organisations, he said, were part of the government’s Counter Narcotic Strategy 2023-2028.
We say any effort to push for rehab centres, to be facilitated by health experts, and well-resourced, should be encouraged and supported. That’s the way to go!
