Any person violating this Act shall be punishable by upto 20 years of imprisonment and a fine.[break]
Recently, an acquaintance of a friend of mine was caught in the possession of 50 grams of marijuana. He now faces upto 20 years in prison.
According to statistics, a first-time drug offender generally spends more time in a prison cell than violent first-time offenders.
You are, in short, less likely to go to prison for kicking an old lady down the stairs in a busy supermarket in front of multiple witnesses than you are for being caught in possession of 50 grams of marijuana. Call me soft-hearted, but that seems a little unusual.
Never mind that you are, say, 22 years old and of a previously good character, but the incident will probably ruin your life, and that it will probably cost the city a few hundred thousand to keep you imprisoned.
Never mind that perhaps you did not even know you had some leftover from last year’s Holi party at this hippie joint in Thamel, or that maybe someone asked you to hold on to it for him.
Never mind any explanatory circumstances whatsoever. This is Nepal and there are no exceptions where drugs are concerned.
Of course, you may still be able to shoot a high-profile religious leader in broad daylight and stroll leisurely away from the scene with a video released thereafter showing the policemen in the area running away from the scene of the shooting instead of confronting the shooters like we usually expect them to.
In all this, please understand that I have no remote intention to speak in favor of drugs of any sort. I understand that drugs can mess you up in a big way.
There is Puru, a fellow in my neighborhood who has made one trip too many to the local drugstore in his days, and since that time he is on the road next to my house with a transfixed smile on his face staring at the sun.
So I know what drugs can do. Only, I have not reached the point where it seems appropriate to sentence a promising 22-year-old for a first-time offence, in short, for being foolish enough to ruin his life and deprive him of any chance of redeeming himself.
The saddest part of this enthusiastic meanness is that it simply does not seem to ever work. Just look at the amount of drugs that are available, say, on a stroll down the streets of Thamel. Never mind that there are a couple of police stations within a couple of hundred meters and undercover policemen all over the place.
We have been spending millions, if not billions, and some of them generous donor funds, on acquiring SUVs and fancy uniforms, complete with two sets of caps, one each for the summer and winter, I am told, and yet drug use goes unabated with each passing generation.
Frustrated, the police set up late-night checkpoints during weekends until we find ourselves at the point where you can be sent to a prison for upto 20 years for possessing the botanical equivalent of two bottles of vodka, which, let us face it, despite the ban, is readily available in every neighborhood. And no one seems to question it.
My solution to the problem would be twofold. First, I would make it mandatory for the policemen manning the late-night checkpoints in the Valley to be sober, at least while they are on duty.
This would not do anything to reduce the drug problem, but it would make me feel much better when I am driving home in the evening after dinner with my wife. Then I would take most of the millions allocated for the fight against drugs and spend it on rehabilitation and prevention.
Some of the money could be put to good use by bringing busloads of youngsters to my neighborhood to meet Puru, the guy who sits with a transfixed smile on his face, staring at the sun the entire day.
I am sure he would be able to persuade most of them not to try drugs in the first place.
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