A refined Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Control Act is to be laid in the National Assembly at its next sitting.

The current Act has been criticized and persons have been calling for it to be amended. The Government of Guyana has similar sentiments and has taken steps to do the same, as the current laws provide for a mandatory three-year jail sentence. Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI), made the disclosure. In 2015, government Parliamentarian, Michael Carrington brought the Bill to be debated before the National Assembly. However, Minister Ramjattan said the Bill needed to be refined.

He said that the aim is not to decriminalise the possession of marijuana but rather the idea “is to end custodial penalties for small amounts.” The current Bill has seen many young people being imprisoned for using small amounts of the substance, thereby contributing to the overcrowding of the prisons. Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman is working on the fine-tuning of the Bill.

“I support that kind of arrangement because when young people go into the lock-ups and jail, they seem to graduate to bigger things and then jail was not easy,” Minister Ramjattan underscored.

He also highlighted that it is very costly to maintain inmates and that prison is not the best thing for our young people. “We want to cut custodial penalties into non-custodial penalties and one attribute we are going to add to that is to have the drug treatment court. So, we are going to tell them that if they want the treatment, counselling, community service, we are not going to prosecute them… if they do not want to do the community service then we will prosecute them, and of course, they will have to pay their fines because we want them to pay fines instead of going to jail.”

The establishment of drug treatment courts across the country is in full swing to aid in the process. The courts are meant to reduce the rates of incarceration of non-violent drug offenders. The minister believes that the new approach is one that will be progressive and help avoid overpopulation in the prisons and preventing the expenditure of taking care of inmates. (DPI)