Drug laws outdated: Youth officer

By PETER ESILA
A YOUTH officer says Papua New Guinea’s outdated drug laws dating bck to 1952 need to be urgently upgraded.
Lawrence Tau, senior education officer with the National Youth Development Authority, said the laws needed to be updated to counter modern drugs such as cocaine, ice and heroin.
“We have to be in line with what America is doing and Australia is doing,” he said.
“Drugs are a destructive weapon that is going to wipe out our generation.
“We need to beef up our national security and national surveillance of our country.”
Tau said recent media reports on the Budibudi drug case in Milne Bay and a Papua New Guinean taken into custody in Australia were examples.
“Because PNG does not have a proper national security and surveillance, these drugs can creep into our country anytime,” he said.
“If methamphetamine (ice) goes into the hold of young people who are in the blocks, compounds and settlements, my goodness, we are going to throw our young people away.
“As a government youth officer, I am so concerned.”
Tau said drugs could be snorted, injected or taken as pills.
He said harsher penalties should be given to drug smugglers, growers of marijuana and producers of homebrew.
The Constitutional Law Reform Commission launched an issue paper last week on review of the law on use and abuse of alcohol and drugs.
Commission Secretary Dr Eric Kwa, pictured, said that at the end of a three-month consultation process on the review, a draft report would be circulated to the public.