Showing posts with label Liberia. Show all posts

LiU.N., Liberian Drug Enforcement Agency officials destroy 30 kilograms of marijuana in Paynseville, near Monrovia, Nov. 15, 2013.

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DAKAR, SENEGAL — Liberia’s Drug Enforcement Agency destroyed nearly 300 kilograms of marijuana Friday evening in a suburb of the country’s capital, Monrovia.

Part of a new nationwide crackdown on drug traffickers, officials say the drugs were smuggled

into the West African country from neighboring Sierra Leone by a member of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s motorcade staff.

The presidential aide, Perry Dolo, used an official vehicle to transport the marijuana. He and at least three other men with whom he was traveling were arrested shortly after crossing the border.

Liberia’s Information Minister, Lewis Brown, said the burning was to show that there will be no tolerance for drug-related crimes.

“You can be in the center of a convoy, but if you break the law, there will be no hiding place for you,” he said. “That convoy will not hide you. We will arrest you, we will properly investigate you, and, as has been done, we will prosecute you in keeping with our laws. This crackdown will continue. It’s a nationwide crackdown.”

Liberia has a long history of drug problems. While it is illegal to grow, buy or sell marijuana in Liberia, penalties for drug offenders are minimal and have rarely been enforced.

Farmers throughout the country continue to produce and distribute marijuana, and the smuggling of drugs from Sierra Leone remains a problem.

Nick More, a 35-year-old resident of Monrovia’s West Point community, said he applauds the government for this latest crackdown on drug traffickers, but that more needs to be done.

“You cannot say you want to fight drugs war when farmers in Liberia are planting, are growing marijuana,” he said. “So I think what the government should be thinking of doing now is to move on those that are planting marijuana in our country. If the government does that, I think they will be moving in the right direction.”

The government has not said what they will do about the marijuana farming inside Liberia.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has congratulated the country’s joint security forces for the arrests of a number suspected drug traffickers, including the commander of the president’s own motorcade escort division.

Perry Dolo, a superintendent in the Liberian National Police, was arrested Saturday along with three others as they crossed the Liberian border from Sierra Leone with about 315 kilograms
of marijuana worth about $4 million.
An Executive Mansion statement issued Tuesday said Sirleaf was satisfied with the swift action of the joint security.
Information Minister Lewis Brown said Sirleaf is determined to rid Liberia of illegal drugs because they are bad for the country’s youth.
“I can confirm that, as a result of a join security operation, a senior police officer by the name of Perry Dolo, along with a Guinean national believed to be a member of the military and a Sierra Leonean national, were all arrested at a border point called Tienne, along the Liberia-Sierra Leonean border. The Drug Enforcement Agency has confirmed that they were nabbed with marijuana referred to as ‘compressed sensee’ to the tone of $4 million,” he said.
Brown said Liberian security, at the directive of Sirleaf, has been keeping a watchful eye on trans-national crimes, including drug trafficking.
“What I can confirm is that, a week or two ago, as a result of a cabinet brief in which the President was informed by a special task force that there were reports of trans-national crimes being committed across our border, the president instructed the joint security to step up their vigilance, and the joint security force launched what they referred to as a nationwide crackdown on trans-national crime, including drug trafficking and human trafficking,” Brown said.
Dolo is said to have used a vehicle used by the police to control traffic ahead of a presidential motorcade to transport the illegal drugs. Brown said the escort vehicle had been decommissioned and returned to the police for over two years.
“In fact, the particular vehicle, which is still parked on the grounds of the Drug Enforcement Agency, is labeled as ‘Police Escort Car.’ This car is now proven to be the car used and decommissioned over two years out of the presidential motorcade. But, most people simply refer to it as part of the presidential motorcade because it has written on it ‘police escort,’” Brown said.
He said the President is excited that the police were able to arrest one of their own instead of being involved in drug trafficking and covering it up.
“Whether you are at the head of the presidential convoy or at the tail of the presidential convoy, if you violate the law, you will be made to answer to the law,” Brown said.
Brown said the Mano River Union, which comprises Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, has been experiencing an increase in drug trafficking through Liberia.
“We do not like this. We want to do what we can to rid our country of this scourge. It’s not good for our young people; it’s not good for the future of this country,” Brown said.

Source: VOANews

DAKAR — Liberia is cracking down on the sellers of fake or expired pharmaceutical drugs, but has met some resistance from people, especially in rural communities, who say these black market medicines are all they can get or afford. The traffic and sale of old and counterfeit medicine – a multimillion dollar industry – is widespread in West Africa.

It is not hard to find one of Liberia’s roving drug salesmen known locally as “black bag doctors.” John Harris walking down a county highway just a few kilometers outside the capital, Monrovia, where a VOA reporter met him.

He wore a backpack and carried a bucket. Both were full of unmarked plastic bags of pills that he said were painkillers and malaria drugs. Harris said this is not what he had in mind for his life when he graduated from medical school.

“How does the government expect us to survive when there is no job? So I do this, moving from villages and towns and sell these drugs to the people,” Harris explained. “At least we are helping government. Some of the places we go, there are no health facilities. So I think we are a help.”

But it is a crime to sell medicines in the street without a license. Inspectors from Liberia’s Pharmaceutical Board have been combing the countryside looking for drug peddlers like Harris this year.

Chief Pharmacist Reverend Tijli Tarty Tyee said the pills and treatments these peddlers sell are expired, damaged by sun or humidity, or just fake.

“Medicines sold in this manner will not have the basic ingredients that will bring about cures and as a result of that,” Tyee explained, “people taking the medicines, there is a potential of having microbial resistance to the medicines. When we have resistance to our imported medication, then we are in a very serious, serious situation.”

He said he understands that people need medicines and they need them cheap.

“They want to have a shortcut in getting medicines but that shortcut is dangerous to them,” Tyee said.

The crackdown has met some resistance from local communities and from the peddlers themselves. Tyee says inspectors have been injured during “raids.”

It is harder to go after the source.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime says fraudulent medicines in West Africa are both imported and manufactured locally.

It’s a diffuse supply chain with limited government oversight. Flour has been discovered packaged as the antibiotic amoxicillin. Manufacturers try to raise profit margins by reducing the amount of an active ingredient. Or real medicines can make their way into a street peddler’s backpack once they are past their expiration date.

Experts say the true scope of the problem is near impossible to measure.

The UNODC says even legitimate providers in West Africa, like pharmacists and doctors, can not be 100 percent sure that what they are administering is real.

By Anne Look

Source: VOAnews

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