Drug trade: High minimum sentences necessary
Mbanje

Mbanje

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Cases of drug production, possession or consumption are quite common in Zimbabwe, and the police have on many occasions arrested some people for either growing dagga (mbanje) or selling it.

Other types of drugs have also featured in that unfortunate category of crime.

Among them is a kind of an alleged cough curing drug that is supposed to be sold only on prescription given by legally registered medical practitioners.

Some unscrupulous people sell that drug to irresponsible school children.

Recently, the police intercepted a truck carrying 31 sacks of dagga (mbanje) at the Nyamapanda border post.

That was only one of several such incidents in which large quantities of mbanje have been seized by law enforcement officers.

Those responsible have been taken to court and were sentenced to ridiculously brief jail terms.

That was most probably because the relevant law is itself very lenient, giving the presiding magistrate no alternative but to sentence the accused to the stipulated maximum but very low penal period.

Habit forming drugs are a menace to any nation. They range from alcohol and tobacco to hallucinogens such as mbanje.

Families some of whose members are addicted to one or other of those drugs live in absolute distress.

Not only families, but even households with drug addicts find life extremely exasperating. Living with a drug addict is at times, if not always, intolerable.

There have been suggestions that mbanje should be legalised, which is to say its production, distribution and consumption.

Those who advocate that obviously irresponsible suggestion refer to some American states where the consumption of marijuana is legalised.

That argument is patently foolish in that it attempts to justify an irresponsible piece of behaviour by quoting a previous similar type of irresponsible behaviour.

We should rather look at the results or effects of drug consumption on our own communities and families, and say whether or not we want the nation of Zimbabwe to be characterised by the existence of a number of gutter – snipes or hobos on every street or avenue, in every village or town.

We should look at the effects of the drugs on families particularly on mothers and children of the addicts.

It is certainly not controversial to say that it is only those with warped consciences who think that the consumption of habit forming drugs should be legalised.

We are virtually all aware that most of the bloody atrocities, including the massacres of innocent, defenceless school children, occurring occasionally in the United States are committed by people under the influence of drugs.

Here in Zimbabwe and in neighbouring South Africa, cases of incest, rape, parricide, fratricide and similar other inhuman types of crime are induced by drug consumption.

It is clearly necessary to curb the cause of such atrocities, and one of the basic measures the country should take is to increase the severity of the penal measures against those guilty of drug production, distribution and/or consumption.

That is a responsibility of the members of parliament. They should stiffen the penalties by amending the anti-drug laws.

An important principle Zimbabwean MPs have to remember is that every human community needs laws some of which should be meant to protect the community (the people) against themselves.

Anti-drug laws belong to that category of laws. It is interesting to compare taxation laws whose purpose is to promote various interests and the security of the community with anti-drug laws whose aim is to protect communities (people) against self-destruction.

The writer of this article finds it very strange that while in Zimbabwe a person found with a pangolin or its skin is sentenced invariably to nine years’ imprisonment,  but one found with a kilogramme of mbanje is sentenced to a mere nine months some of which may be conditionally suspended, and the remainder is converted to hours of community service.

It is difficult to understand the rationale of this anomaly.

Could it be that the legislators value the lives of pangolins more than the mental and physical welfare of the people of this country?

It is quite likely that that law is a relic of the colonial era when white settler legislators regarded the lives of black people to be worthless than those of some wild animals, to say nothing about those of their pets.

Our parliament has a duty to look at and amend some of those laws in order to protect human beings more than wild beasts.

Medicinal drugs should be used only under the guidance of qualified medical personnel.

Apart from that, it is actually risky to consume or utilise any habit forming drug without doctor’s supervision.

Anyone who has become a slave of either alcohol, nicotine (tobacco) or any other drug knows how difficult life becomes as one struggles to live under such a regimen.

That is why there is hardly an individual who can honestly claim to be either happy or healthy to be addicted to whatever drug.

Mbanje and similar hallucinogens are some of the most dangerous drugs known.

Legislators need to recraft the anti-drug law with the view to stipulate a high minimum jail sentence rather a low maximum one.

One of the duties of MPs is to create an environment that is conducive to the creation of human resources.

About the writer: Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]

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