Traffickers Grin At Uganda’s Drug Law

Dec 10, 2002

They walked out of the courtroom smiling after obtaining a cash court bail of only sh350,000 each.

Uganda has become a transit route for drugs because penalties to the offenders are weak

By John Kamya

They walked out of the courtroom smiling after obtaining a cash court bail of only sh350,000 each. After committing such an offence, one would have thought they deserved a harsher punishment.
They are now enjoying the benefits of a lenient drug law that exists in Uganda.
Christine Ddamba and Aula Tamale on November 18 2002, were arrested at Entebbe airport carrying in their stomachs 108 and 80 pellets of heroin worth sh54m and sh40m respectively. Ddamba was recorded as the first person to swallow the largest amount of heroin that was detected at Entebbe Airport.
Barely two weeks later, one Metalor Alex Tela was November 30, arrested carrying 100 pellets of heroin worth sh50m. On December 1, Shaibu Saliu, a Ghanaian was arrested carrying 69 pellets of the same drug, worth sh30m.
It is evident that Uganda is increasingly becoming a transit route for narcotic drugs and one of the major factors for this trend is the existence of a weak drug law that cannot decisively deal with offenders.
The current drug law in use, The National Drug Policy and Authority Statute of 1993 was not designed to address the narcotic drug problems per se. rather, it is a law tailored to address all other aspects of drugs, mostly those used in hospitals and sold in pharmacies.
As a result, the law has only a few sections that concern narcotic drugs. Section 48(1) states that no person shall have in his/her possession any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance under international control, without lawful excuse. Section 61 sets the punishment to such an offence as a fine not exceeding sh2m or imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or both.
The punishment is only a maximum fixture, meaning that the court can give a lower punishment; like a cash fine of sh10,000, or one month imprisonment term, so long as it does not exceed the maximum.
However, even where the maximum punishments are awarded, the drug dealers find it very easy to settle, since their business is lucrative.
“The law is so weak and this has encouraged many traffickers to use Uganda because they know they can pay the fine if caught, yet they even know that there is a probability to succeed in channelling the drugs through,” says Michael Were, the Officer-in-Charge of the Police Anti-Narcotic Unit.
Although the punishment to the offence of possession of narcotic drugs is a maximum of five years in prison in Uganda (the highest that has so far been given is 10 months), it is eight years in Kenya, life imprisonment in USA and death penalty in Iran.
To explain the lenience of our drug laws, in 1997, Martins Albert Olabiyi, a Nigerian national, was arrested and convicted in Uganda for possessing narcotic drugs. He was fined sh2m which he quickly paid. Soon after he was arrested in the US and convicted of a similar crime, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Similarly, Daniel Mugwanya, a Ugandan boxer was on December 6, 2001, convicted in Kenya of possessing cocaine. He was handed the maximum sentence and is now serving an eight-year term in a Kenyan prison.
“The law in Uganda does not address the issue of drug cartels (those lords who deal in drugs from the background). So, even when we close in on them, the only available section of the law is being in possession of the drugs.
Because we can never find them carrying it, we cannot charge them of possession. We end up looking around in some other laws such as the Penal Code which provides for principle offenders and accomplices,” states Were while pointing out other weaknesses. Okoth Ochola, the deputy director of Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), has no kind words either for the Uganda drug law.
“The law is not punitive enough and it’s inadequate. It does not cover the mairungi (Khat) drug for example, which is a cause of most city crimes.” The mairungi drug is already outlawed in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ochola however, reveals that efforts are underway to enact a new law that will be comprehensive enough to deal with the drug problem in a more decisive manner.
The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, 1999 has been forwarded to cabinet for discussion. Section 4 of the bill creates a minimum punishment of 5 years in prison or a minimum fine of sh10m or a fine of three times the value of the drugs in question whichever is greater, for the offence of possession of narcotics.
Its section 5 creates a punishment of mandatory life imprisonment plus a minimum fine of sh10m or three times the value of the drugs in question whatever is greater, for the offence of trafficking in narcotic drugs. The bill provides other punitive remedies.
What is required now is for government to expedite the enactment of the new law. As at present, the current law is an incentive for drug dealers to use our country. Ends

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