The director of Casa Abierta, a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, has told Hoy a fact that few can deny: “In this country, in the barrios, in the communities, everyone knows where drugs are sold. Everyone knows where the drug points are and everyone sees the middle ranks, corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, colonels visiting those points to get their cut,”
The statement touches upon a difficult aspect of the fight against trafficking and drug consumption.
“For Dominican politicians, the drugs issue is purely one of representation. The strategy to reduce the demand is symbolic, for the media. Those are basically activities for speeches and public statements. But there are no strategies to reduce demand that focus on the two main elements of the drugs phenomenon in the country: reducing supply and demand.
Juan Radhames de la Rosa said that the National Drug Council is inoperative and that Law 50-88 against drugs has only been strengthened to increase repression, but never for prevention.
He said that more prevention, training and research was needed. “This is a farce that has been staged. The state needs to attack the problem in its true dimensions,” he told Hoy.
He said that prevention programs needed to be put in place in schools, communities and stop consumption, rescue the users and reinsert them in society.
He said that the fight against drugs is an iceberg of which only the tip is visible. He said that the big fish never are caught and that the owners of the drugs never are found because the investigations always stop at one point. He said they just catch the operators of the system – the people who move the drug from one place to another, the individuals who serve as fronts.
He said that the drug trade is a powerful business that involves many people with lots of political and economic influence.
He said there was an anomalous situation in the communities. “People are more scared of the Police and the National Drug Control Agency than of the drug traffickers in the barrios. Drug dealers help families with food and they buy them medicines. The DNCD does raids and picks up anyone, so people are more scared of the authorities, the same people who should be protecting them, than the traffickers that are doing such harm. It is absurd, but that is what is happening,” he said.
He advocated for a change in this situation, with more efficient control bodies, and by eradicating corruption. We have to find a way to stop police and military personnel trafficking in drugs. We have to resolve that, and now,” he said. And we have to end drug trafficking in jails. We complain and denounce, but no one is listening,” he lamented.
www.hoy.com.do/el-pais/2013/9/14/498438/La-lucha-contra-las-drogas-es-pura-pantalla