HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 179835,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/179835/?format=api",
"text_counter": 308,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Ms. A. Abdalla",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 382,
"legal_name": "Amina Ali Abdalla",
"slug": "amina-abdalla"
},
"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the following 3408 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 12, 2008 Motion:- THAT, aware of the damage caused to the youth through the use of drugs and other chemical substances; aware further that the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drugs Abuse (NACADA) was not established through an Act of Parliament; this House grants leave for the introduction of a Bill for an Act of Parliament entitled \"The Drug and Substance Abuse Control Authority Bill\" in order to establish an authority that will be responsible for policy formulation, implementation, monitoring, enforcement and the development of regulations related to drug and chemical substance abuse. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the drug problem in Kenya was described as early as 1987 as a time bomb about to explode. I wish to submit that in some areas of this country such as Malindi, Coast region and Eastlands in Nairobi, that has already happened. The drug problem has exploded. In June, 2006, I buried a childhood hero of mine. He had spent 25 years suffering from drug abuse. He went in and out of Mathari Mental Hospital. By the time he was dying, he was on diapers. As a mother of a small child, I know how happy a parent feels when their child stops using diapers. When you have your 40 year old child who is addicted to drug and is using diapers, it means that we, as a society, have failed our children. It is us adults who are traffickers of drugs. It is us adults who allow drug traffickers to pass our porous borders. We give minimal sentences to drug traffickers and thus increase the proliferation of drugs into our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, statistics show that children between 11 and 24 year olds, 61 per cent of them have already experimented with alcohol, 58 per cent with cigarettes and 35 per cent with bhang. My childhood hero was addicted to bhang. Before he was addicted to bhang, he was what we used to call in Eastlands an academic giant because he is the kind of person that used to get Division One. In his death, he was a nobody. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the problem of drugs is so widespread. In my childhood, the only drug being abused was only bhang. If you were addicted to bhang, you would end up in Mathari Mental Hospital. There was also a police character called Mr. Shaw who would have shot you dead if you became a thief because you wanted to support your addiction. The drugs that people take nowadays do not smell like bhang so that you can be caught by the police. They are very sophisticated and have no smell. You cannot be arrested unless you are given a thorough search. The proliferation of these drugs means that our systems are not able to arrest the problem. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the effect of drugs in our country is far reaching. It even contributes to the statelessness in some areas where there is insecurity. About 70 per cent of the criminals arrested for serious crimes such as armed robbery, murder, defilement and rape are all said to be abusers of one form of drug or another. The security cost of drug addiction is pretty heavy on our system. The other national calamity we have in this country is the HIV/AIDS scourge. The drug problem escalates this catastrophy in that drug users sharing needles transmit HIV/AIDS to each other. Drug users trying to support their habits are spreading HIV through prostitution or uncontrolled sexual activity. The drug problem in this country is as serious as the HIV scourge. This Motion was passed by this House last year. Due to the limitation of our Standing Orders, we could not proceed to the Bill Stage because that Motion lapsed in the previous year. Once that Motion was passed, some of us were a bit excited that the President took a mere Motion in this House seriously enough to have gazetted NACADA into a parastal. I, however, wish to say that my happiness was shortlived because that action was merely cosmetic in that the NACADA or the fight against drugs is not anchored in law. The only thing that, that gazette notice changed was to increase rehabilitation as part of the work that NACADA November 12, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3409 needs to do. When you deal with a person who is already threatened by the thought of becoming an addict, that is already curative. That is the job that NACADA is doing. Its mandate is to:- \"Co-ordinate public education campaigns against drug abuse in the country and to add rehabilitation.\" Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, so, the mandate of the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA) is narrow. I am not saying that they are not doing a good job. It was the work of NACADA to bring this Bill to this House. It met Members of Parliament and showed us some of the impacts of drugs and substances that we do not take seriously. NACADA showed us a man who had lost his limbs because of smoking cigarettes, something that many of us do not take very seriously. We do not take cigarette addicts as serious we take bhang or cocaine addicts. NACADA can do its job as a campaign agency against drug abuse but the problem is curative. What we need is preventative. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what is happening in this country is that the laws are there. We are very fast at ratifying international instruments and haphazardly domesticating them. to. One of the laws that we have adopted, as a country, because of having ratified an international instrument, is the law on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act of 1994 that was passed by this House. That law, is in its wording, very confusing. It might have very strong penalties. For example, Article 4 of that Act says that if somebody is found trafficking narcotics, he should be arrested and fined Kshs1 million or three times the value of that drug or life imprisonment. To date, 14 years after this law has been passed, no single person has ever been arrested and convicted to life imprisonment by our courts. That is the type of work that this body I am suggesting to be formed by a legislation should be doing. They should be able to create awareness on the penalties stipulated in this 1994 law. For example, when you travel to the Far East countries, the first thing you meet at the airport is a warning that the penalty for drug trafficking in this country is life imprisonment. In other countries, they even go as far as death penalty. For Kenya, our hands are tied because the Attorney-General has signed an international instrument barring us from sentencing people to death. That is one area that I would disagree with civil rights crusaders that when we are faced with a serious problem we need serious legislation such that we could sentence people to death so that we are able to reduce the amount of drug traffickers. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this 1994 law on narcotics also gives details on how to seize money that has been earned by people who are trafficking drugs. Have you ever heard of anybody who has been arrested and made to forfeit the money that they have made from trafficking drugs? None! In 2004, there was a consignment of drugs that was intercepted in our country. It was a whole 1.9 tonne of cocaine with a street value of Kshs6.4 billion. The information about that drug coming to Kenya was received by one agency in the Government that is responsible for international trafficking of drugs. That information did not reach the Customs Department early enough for them to take any action. Three months later when that information reached the right authority to have intercepted it at the point of entry, the drugs were already in a container depot within the country. To make matters worse, that legislation called for subsidiary legislation on how to destroy drugs when they are intercepted in our country. We could not destroy that 1.9 tonne of drug until a subsidiary legislation was put in place in 2006; 12 years after the legislation had asked for that subsidiary legislation to be in place. So, the time it took to destroy that consignment was enough for persons to tamper with the contents of those drugs. In fact, it is rumoured that those drugs were sold within the country and even transported out and exchanged with white powder. We must stop having legislation that everybody is responsible for so that in the end, it ends up that nobody is 3410 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 12, 2008 being responsible for the co-ordination of that job. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the agencies involved in ensuring that there is reduction in the proliferation of hard drugs into this country are 13. There are 13 different agencies. These are: Customs, Immigration, Narcotic Drug Unit including the Minister for Medical Services who is going to speak after me. They are all responsible for the prevention of drug proliferation. None of them is in charge of co-ordinating the actions. So, the actions are at best curative and at worst cosmetic. So, this body that I am calling for would deal with the principal problem of co- ordinating the enforcement agencies responsible for reducing proliferation of drugs into our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this agency would also work on preventative education and public awareness which is the mandate currently being held by NACADA. A lot of the opposition that NACADA has on this is a turf war. So, what we are saying is that we are asking for a bigger, better organised and better resource agency that will deal comprehensively with this problem. Mr. Temporary Deputy Sir, as I earlier mentioned, the information about this big drug haul that was coming to Kenya was sent to one agency. So, the agency that it was sent to could not co- ordinate the work. Our partners in the international community are asking: Could we have a one- stop shop where if we have information about drugs heading to Kenya, we do not get confused on whether to discuss with Interpol Kenya, Narcotic Drugs Unit, the Commissioner of Police or the Minister of State for Provincial Administration and Internal Security? The Authority would then be able to deal with the issue of international liaison so that our co-operation with the international partners is pro-active rather than the way it is now which is reactive, haphazard and disorganised. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other aspect about this drug problem is on the addicts - the persons affected by drug abuse. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act gives powers to the Minister of Health in Clauses 54, 55 and 56 to establish what they call a Rehabilitation Fund. The rehabilitation of drug addicts is big business in this country. Only the rich can afford to take a child on a six weeks rehabilitation programme that costs upwards of Kshs500,000. The problem is that drug addiction is not confined to the rich. It spreads from that child who is taking glue on the streets, my childhood friends in Eastlands who are addicted to"
}