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Sri Lanka Drug Abuse and Drug Legislation
Because of the traditionally accepted roles of both opium and
hashish in indigenous ayurvedic medicine, the population
of Sri Lanka has historically been tolerant of the use of a
variety of psychoactive drugs
(see Sri Lanka - Health
, ch. 2). As a result,
the government has been slow to identify drug abuse as an issue
meriting national attention, and until the late 1970s, no efforts
were made to quantify the problem. In 1978 the Narcotics Advisory
Board of Sri Lanka coordinated the first systematic field
investigation of drug abuse. The survey revealed that opium,
cannabis, and barbiturates were the drugs most commonly used for
nonmedical purposes, and that the majority of drug abusers were
under forty years old (for cannabis, 48 percent were between the
ages of fifteen and twenty-five). Between 1975 and 1979, an
average of 4,000 persons per year were arrested for drug-related
offenses, while an additional 3,000 people sought help for drug
problems. A 1980 government survey estimated between 3,500 and
5,800 opium dependents and between 16,000 and 18,000 chronic
cannabis users. Based on the World Health Organization conversion
factor of ten actual drug abusers for every one identified, the
government estimated a total usage level as high as 1.5 percent
of the population.
The delayed appearance of drug abuse among the issues of
national concern is reflected in the state of antidrug
legislation. As of 1981, one of the major statutes on the books
was the Poisons, Opium, and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. Although
it has been amended several times since its enactment in 1929,
the ordinance was seriously outdated for a society in the 1980s.
It divides drugs into five categories (poisons; poppy, coca, and
hemp; opium; dangerous drugs; and other drugs) and regulates
their import, export, and domestic trade. Rather than attempting
to define dangerous drugs, the ordinance simply appends a list of
forbidden substances, and this has permitted greater flexibility
in amending the law to suit changes in society. More recent
efforts to regulate drug abuse include the Cosmetics, Devices,
and Drugs Act of 1980, which requires companies trading legal
drugs to obtain a license from the director of health services.
This provision has given an important avenue for the authorities
to monitor the import and export of pharmaceuticals. In spite of
the government's efforts to eliminate illegal drugs, the strong
Buddhist constituency has insisted on the legitimacy of
traditional medical practices, and the Ayurvedic Act of 1961
assures ayurvedic physicians of continued legal access to
opium. Because drug addiction in Sri Lanka has been far less
prevalent than in the West, and because terrorism and insurgency
have strained to the utmost the nation's security assets, a
concerted campaign on illegal substance abuse is likely to await
a return to normal conditions in the country.
* * *
As this chapter goes to press, the security crisis in Sri
Lanka is more appropriately the subject of current events than of
history; the analyses of scholarly journals are quickly outpaced
by happenings in the field. Recent changes in the structure of
the nation's legal and military institutions have yet to be
reflected in any major monographs, and, as a result, this study
has relied to an unusual degree on the piecemeal reportage of
daily newspapers and weekly magazines.
The most comprehensive survey of the nation's armed forces
appears in a special report by G. Jacobs in the July 1985 issue
of Asian Defence Journal. Entitled "Armed Forces of Sri
Lanka," the report deals with the strength, organization,
training, and equipment of the three armed services and the
police, and provides valuable information on the difficulties
that the security forces have faced in dealing with the
insurgency. For treatment of the Tamil separatist movement,
Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam's "The Tamil `Tigers' In Northern Sri
Lanka: Origins, Factions, Programmes" (Internationales
Asienforum) and Robert Kearney's "Ethnic Conflict and the
Tamil Separatist Movement In Sri Lanka" (Asian Survey)
provide excellent background material on the origins and
organization of the insurgency. Hellmann-Rajanayagam focuses more
on the composition and leadership of the individual groups, while
Kearney delves into the political environment that gave rise to
the movement. S.J. Tambiah's Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and
the Dismantling of Democracy focuses on the anti-Tamil riots
of July 1983 and offers insights into the role of the government
and the armed forces in intensifying the ethnic conflict. Similar
background material on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna appears in
A.C. Alles' Insurgency--1971. The author was himself a
member of the Criminal Justice Commissions that investigated the
uprising, and his blow-by-blow account, although sometimes
excessively detailed, provides a fascinating picture of the rebel
group--its ideology, leadership, and the haphazard nature of its
attempt to seize power.
The State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices offers an annual update on the treatment of
prisoners and the effect of the emergency regulations and
antiterrorist provisions on the administration of criminal
justice. Information on the nation's prison system appears in the
annual proceedings of the Asian and Pacific Conference of
Correctional Administrators published by the Australian Institute
of Criminology. In his report to the first, third and sixth
conferences, the Sri Lankan Commissioner of Prisons, J.P.
Delgoda, summarizes the major changes of the previous year and
offers information on the structure of the prison administration,
the treatment of women and minors, and the vocational training
program. (For further information and complete citations,
see Sri Lanka -
Bibliography.)
Data as of October 1988
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