Madagascar on the International Drug Trade
Committee: SPECPOL
Topic: The Situation in Libya
Country: Madagascar
Delegate: Alex Dukhan from Royal Oak High School
Madagascar believes strongly in upholding progressive values, and keeping people equal in all respects of life. That is why Madagascar believes in modern drug policy, putting citizens first, before profit. Madagascar wishes to eliminate archaic war-on-drugs-era policy which has been shown to be ineffective, and replace it with a more modern approach, as outlined by such countries as: Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
55% of federal prisoners and 21% of state-level prisoners in the United States are incarcerated due to drug-related offenses, and this paradigm stands for other nations as well. 34 countries still tout the death penalty in cases relating to drug trafficking or distribution, and these aren’t small countries, either. The countries with this out-dated policy include the USA, India, and Egypt. The Philippines in particular have been extremely tough on drug distribution. Their punishments have been known to range from life-time imprisonment to human rights abuses, like extrajudicial killing and forced disappearance.
But how can we remedy these discriminatory policies and orient countries for the better? By passing modernizing legislation. The Netherlands will be our example du jour. The Netherlands has a non-enforcement policy (gedoogbeleid) on soft-drugs. This allows users of cannabis, alcohol, nicotine, and other such drugs to use them freely under certain circumstances. Additionally, these policies include governmentally instituted chemical testing facilities, and drug-use-oversight buildings (as prescribed with the introduction of heroin-assisted treatment of 1998), where victims suffering from hard-drug addiction can go to use drugs under doctor supervision, preventing millions of overdose (O.D.) deaths per year.
And after all, that is the goal here. Not to imprison more citizens, not to proliferate drug lords and gangs, and certainly not to cause more O.D. deaths and other such incidents that we already have per year. Our goal, on an international scale, is to reduce harm, and as the Nordic countries among others have outlined, progressive and modern approaches are the only scientific way to a better, more drug-clean society.
- Alex Dukhan
