Murder rate will go down when TT tackles drug trade

Trinidad and Tobago’s murders and kidnappings, together with levels of other serious crimes, will go down drastically should the country effectively tackle the drug import and distribution trade.

The lives of tens of thousands of the country’s young are being destroyed and the country’s economic future compromised while many in authority continue to act as though the principal drug importers and distributors, who have amassed wealth and gained social standing because of their involvement in the drug trade, are untouchables.

The Police have repeatedly pointed to the drug trade as being at the centre of the rising murder rate, by describing many a killing as drug related or gang related. And if you are prepared, as an earlier generation would have said to "pick sense out of nonsense," then the message is clear. The signals the Police who speak to the Media are sending to the country are that there is a distinct tie in with the relevant murders and the drug trade.

And even though the concerned Police officers are sending these not so coded messages yet virtually little has been done and is being done to cripple the drug trade and break the grip that the major drug importers and distributors appear to have on all too many areas of authority. These repositories of evil enjoy lives of affluence made possible by the broken bodies and minds of their drug user customers, even as the petty peddlers shoot and maim each other in a bid to control what they refer to as "drug turfs."

The level of turning the proverbial blind eye to what is going on and the likely reasons for this are evident.

In turn, there is the sad truth of wage and salary peewats parading a relative affluence far removed from what their weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay packets can with reason afford them.

No army consists only of generals and must have its colonels, majors, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates. In much the same manner the drug lords, the drug majors must have their middlemen and their ground crews to effect the profitable peddling of their evil merchandise. All can and must be dealt with, not simply the peewats but the generals and field marshals as well.

It appears of no concern to them that scores of once promising young men and women are today trapped in snorting cocaine, puffing marijuana cigarettes or using heroin and ectasy and continue the seeming endless slide into the bottomless pit of a troubling dark age. It does not matter to them that young girls, some barely into their teens, are prostituting their bodies and running the risk of becoming pregnant or contracting HIV/AIDS all in an effort to obtain money to pay for the drugs.

Take a walk in downtown Port-of- Spain almost any day, or into low income areas and you can see the victims of drug abuse, the flowers of our nation, slowly and sadly bud and bloom and fade.

They will never climb to the mountaintop, save in drug bemused minds. In the process they have been encouraged to deny themselves upward mobility, and to deny Trinidad and Tobago the right to what should have been their contribution.

An effort must be made to arrest the slide. It must begin with positive parenting, the instilling of proper values. The State must accelerate the construction and staffing of Early Childhood Care Centres across the country to accommodate all children of pre-school age above two and a half years. The Ministry of Education has already begun this programme. But as I stated it will need to accelerate the programme, including that of training courses for persons to equip themselves as pre-school teachers.

In addition, it should seek to induce school dropouts, including teenaged parents, to return to the classroom not only to acquire skills, but to be examples to pre-schoolers, pre-teens and the lot that the way forward is through education.

And in much the same way that a teenaged boy or girl who is determined to get ahead and is prepared to concentrate on his/her schoolwork will in the process postpone involvement in sex, is there not the possibility that the majority may opt for a structured future and seek to woo a minority away from the danger of indulging in illegal drugs?

There must be few in Trinidad and Tobago who were not heartened by the decision of business organisations to demand that something be done about the troubling incidence of murders and kidnappings, and that all 36 Members of the House of Representatives would be held responsible by them for "doing what is necessary to protect our citizens in the face of this national disaster."

It was a timely intervention which would have been made stronger by the inclusion of the drug trade in the axis of evil confronting the country. Meanwhile, the business community should be joined in the battle against the level of crimes hurting our twin-island home, by the two trade union movement groups and a representative body of NGOs, including Parent-Teacher Associations, in a declaration of war against crime, and that Government and Opposition should join to ensure that the Police Reform Bills be passed in Parliament.

And they should insist that the drug trade be crippled and a serious effort be made to apprehend and bring before the Courts major drug importers and distributors. We have tarried too long.