Home Minister: Rehabilitation must be included in penalties for drug use

Minister of Home Affairs Umar Naseer has said that drug users must be penalised for their crimes, but rehabilitation must be incorporated into those penalties.

Umar Naseer made this remark while speaking at a ceremony held at Iskandar Koshi on Monday to celebrate ten years since the establishment of Maldives Police Service as a separate institution.

“Should [drug] offenders be penalised or rehabilitated? I think offenders should be penalised, regardless of the offence. So drug users should also be penalised, but rehabilitation must be incorporated into those penalties,” said Umar Naseer.

He asserted that parents and government institutions must understand that using drugs is not an illness, but a crime; and pointed out that the promotion of the idea that drug users should be rehabilitated and not given any form of punishment, encourages the use of drugs among the youth.

“Maldives is a Muslim country, one hundred percent. No type of drug will ever be permitted in the Maldives,” he said.

According to the Drugs Act, persons who are sentenced after they confess to having used drugs, are required to go through a special rehabilitation program and are released upon the successful completion of this program. Such convicts are also exempted from executing the sentence if they complete the rehabilitation program.