Bangladesh

The 1990 Narcotics Control Act

Bangladesh's approach to drug problems, which have been endemic throughout south and southeast Asia, has been a modern one. In 1990 the Narcotics Control Act (NCA) established the modern body of Bangladeshi drug law. Prior to the NCA, relevant drug law had been inherited from acts that predated the creation of the independent state of Bangladesh: the Opium Act (1878), the Excise Act (1909), the Dangerous Drugs Act (1930), and the Opium Smoking Act (1932). The NCA repealed previous legislation in order to prevent conflicts, and (along with amendments to the act in 2000, 2002, and 2004) established the current body of Bangladeshi drug law, including a licensing system for legal narcotic and psychotropic pharmaceuticals, categories of different drug offenses, and the formation of the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) and the National Narcotics Control Board (NNCB).

The NNCB is a special committee that oversees the Bangladeshi government's drug policy objectives. It is headed by the minister of home affairs, and includes among its membership the heads of other ministries, the secretaries of the ministries of home affairs and law and justice, the director general of the DNC, and certain private citizens appointed by the government. The NNCB facilitates coordination among agencies and ministries whose activities are affected by, or enforce, drug policy, while acting to frame that policy, including the commissioning of research to inform that policy.

The DNC, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, implements and enforces the policies of the NCA and NNCB. Headquartered in the capital city of Dhaka, the DNC operates 155 field offices throughout the country. In addition to preventing the use, sale, manufacture, or trafficking of illegal drugs, the DNC regulates the sale and production of alcoholic products, promotes drug abuse awareness programs (though these programs are severely underfunded), and oversees seven drug rehab facilities. Most DNC rehab facilities are rudimentary detoxification centers; addiction therapy is an expensive option offered only by the private sector.

Bangladeshi drug policy under the NCA is harsh, a definitive action taken against drug use problems that had grown with few legal checks, the pre-NCA laws having been concerned primarily with taxation (which the DNC now oversees). The death penalty is a sentencing option for possession of heroin, cocaine, or cocaine derivatives in excess of 25 grams, for possession of pethidine, morphine, or THC in excess of 10 grams, or egregious violations of other sorts. Life sentences are possible for lesser offenses, and the NCA adopts many of the measures of the United Nations Conventions on narcotic drugs to which Bangladesh is signatory, calling for the freezing of bank accounts and the forfeiture of incomes and properties derived from the illegal sale of drugs, as well as the use of juvenile correctional facilities and rehabilitation instead of prison for young offenders.

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