Stalling the meaningful implementation of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan and skimping on cash for the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit while serenading the public with promises to be “tough on drug lords” have helped the administration to win for itself another adverse annual report for under-performance in its so-called war on illegal narcotics.
Released unfailingly on March 1, every year, the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, issued by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, injected a dose of objectivity into the debate even as Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee tried to create the illusion that progress was being made in the war on drugs.
The latest US report opened with the familiar axiom: “Guyana is a transit point for cocaine destined for North America, Europe, and the Caribbean.” Nearly three years after its fake launch of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan for 2005-2009, the administration was adjudged to have accomplished “few of the principal goals laid out in its ambitious plan.” All the Minister of Home Affairs could promise was that the largely unimplemented plan will be “thoroughly reviewed” in the first quarter of this year. Rather than install the institutional components of the plan, however, he erected the impotent Inter-Agency Task Force on Narcotics and Illicit Weapons, which “meets monthly.”
