“One of the few rising pillars of the economy has sadly been that of the illicit economy with annual hard drug consumption likely now well above Rs20 billion,” Samir Sharma, one of our respected economists, stated in l’express. Twenty billion (forget about the ‘well above’) in a country of less than 1.3 million people. Let the implications of that sink in!

We are in a drug-infested island and the Gros Dereks of today are walking free. We learn in parliament this week that that there are 60,000 users of synthetic drugs of all ages and that several 14-year olds are already in rehab and, according to the prime minister himself, nearly 3,500 minors are remanded in Correctional Youth Centres for drug related offences!

The Lam Shang Leen report on Drug Trafficking sadly confirmed our worst suspicions on the prevalence of drugs in this country. It also pinpointed that some people close to the MSM government, including a former minister, were involved in the drug business through their clients. The Supreme Court, after judicial reviews, confirmed the findings of the report, give or take a couple of paragraphs. It is important to highlight that out of fairness for former Judge Lam Shang Leen and his assessors. It is equally important to mention that up until now, the police did not see it fit to open an inquiry into these findings or call any of those mentioned in the report for questioning.

Instead, we are being drowned in a wave of crude propaganda claiming that we are making headway with the drug problem, while drug lords have arguably never had it so good. How exactly are we making headway?

By setting up a new unit – the Special Striking Team – that has struck twice so far, coincidentally at the houses of two well-known political opponents of the regime! So Akil Bissessur and his companion, Bruneau Laurette and his son were hauled to the police station, detained, humiliated and their most intimate messages and videos pried into and even made public! After weeks of abusive detention, it turned out that the drugs seized at Bissessur’s place with much pride, pomp and circumstance, didn’t have his finger prints or his DNA! How on earth was this big ‘drug trafficker’ – who the prime minister claims had been in his radar for months – dealing drugs without ever touching them?

As for Bruneau Laurette’s case, the situation would have been hilarious had it not been so serious and embarrassing: the synthetic drugs allegedly seized at his place were not actually synthetic at all. They were Shia seeds! Seriously?! In both cases, the promised full, unedited footage of the police trailing the suspects and filming them dealing drugs haven’t been produced in court yet in spite of the lawyers’ insistence!

If the police can’t even make the difference between Shia seeds and synthetic drugs; if they can haul someone into police custody even before making sure that the person is guilty of what they are accused of; if they can’t make the difference between a decorative collectors’ gun and one used in gang fights, how are they going to convince public opinion that they are interested in protecting children and families from the drug scourge?  

More importantly, if the police are going to systematically target political opponents, concentrate all their efforts on giving them a hard time before releasing them for lack of evidence, where exactly are they going to find time and resources to tackle real drug lords? Our new economic pillar of illicit drugs has every opportunity to grow and prosper. And the economic operators in charge of this can look forward to bright days ahead.