KAJANG - Malaysians should start by reducing the number of drug addictions in the country before thinking about decriminalising medical use of cannabis, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin said.
"People think there are good forms of drugs to use as a medical treatment, but I feel that we first need to think about reducing the number of those who are addicted to drugs before we think about our responsibility on other things.
"We still can't get rid of it (drugs) for (the past) 40 years so why do we want to add more enemies (referring to the calls to decriminalise medical use of cannabis)," he said.
Hamzah said despite the government's declaration of war on drugs for the past four decades years, the number remained the same.
"It has been 40 years of drug treatment but the number is still the same. It is not the same people, but the number of people addicted to drugs are still the same (over the years)," he said.
Hamzah said it was time to eliminate the country's number one enemy. Even if we cannot hit zero drug usage, Malaysia needs to achieve its objective of reducing the number of drug abusers.
Once the number of drug usage and addiction in the country had been reduced, he said that legalisation of cannabis could be done if studies showed that it was the right thing.
"Right now, let's emphasise that priority to reduce our existing problem today.
"Our prison capacity is not enough, National Anti-Drugs Agency (Nada) does not have enough manpower and the police had also took so many initiatives to combat the problem," he said.
Hamzah added that he believed the higher responsibility to curb drug addiction within the society should be led by the police through its Narcotics Crime Investigation Department headed by Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay.
"I believe that Datuk Ayob Khan has already thought of various programmes to do, and it would be better for us to work together not only with the police and Nada, but with all the agencies under the ministry," he said.
Hamzah was speaking to reporters at a press conference after the launch of Nada's Mobile Recovery Treatment for drug treatment and rehabilitation programme.
He revealed that authorities had detected 123,139 drug addicts in the country, with estimation of 492,556 still at large based on the 2022 Drug Addiction Prevalence Study.
The study hypothesised that for every abuser and drug addict detected by the authorities, adds another four more people who are still free.
However, the estimation made by the prevalence study is lower compared to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimation that for every drug addict or abuser detected, there were eight people undetected by the authorities.
Apart from that, Hamzah said the recent pattern of drug abuse has also been found to have shifted from organic drugs to synthetic drugs (69.8 per cent).
Previously, The Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) president Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman and several other organisations had called for the government to decriminalise cannabis and recognise its use for medical purposes.