All sensible people living in the real world would admit Barbados has in the past 30 years developed a sizeable drug problem.
In that time, many of our young people have become addicted to one or the other of the narcotic substances which we call by the collective name of illegal drugs.
Thirty years ago, we hardly had a drug problem, and only a few of our youngsters had lost their way experimenting with these substances, and were not occupying the official time of the police, the courts and the authorities at the prison.
But over that the past three decades, all that has changed, and we now have a problem of such sizeable proportions that most people can say that they know of at least one person whose life has been affected for the worse by the use of illegal narcotic drugs.
Against this kind of background, and faced with the growing menace of narcotic drugs ingested or smoked with increasing frequency, the proposal to establish a court to deal with drug offenders is a good idea.
That a major part of the court’s approach would be to try to help addicted people to “kick the habit” in the context of a court system should translate into reduced crime, since as we have heard a large number of those incarcerated at?HMP?Dodds are serving time for drug related offences.
It seems too, that some other crimes such as burglary, robbery and petty theft may also have their roots in drug addiction, and since the majority of the drug offenders are young men, it is easy to see that the loss of these young male addicts, in particular, in the prison system is as much an economic problem as is the incidence of AIDS.
It is therefore of highest importance that the effort be made to save some of these “drug offenders” whose only contact with the criminal system may have come about because of their addiction.
As the learned Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite remarked in his feature address, even if a single person is saved from committing another offence the effort would be worth it.
He was, of course, optimistic that more than a single person would be saved by the new approaches to be administered by the court.
We wish the Attorney General and the other stakeholders well in their laudable efforts.
We note too, that Victor Roach, of NCPADD, has indicated that alcohol addiction should also be embraced by the new initiatives; but one must not lose sight of the fact that the court operates when the addicted person runs afoul of the law.
To the extent that such people end up before the courts, we hope and anticipate that the legislation or policy would be broad enough to assist those addicted through alcohol, since the disability brought about by alcoholic addiction is as devastating as that wrought by narcotic drugs.
In the meantime, the establishment of what one might call the Treatment Court initiative should be accompanied by a sustained programme designed to persuade all of our people away from the temptation of using such drugs.
Prevention is still much better than the cure!