Tunisia

Tunisia is in Northern Africa, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Algeria and Libya. Although reliable estimates are not available, Tunisia appears to have very low rates of illicit drug use and is not central to the world's drug-distribution system. However, consumption of cocaine, marijuana, cannabis, and ecstasy is apparently increasing among Tunisia's youth. Moreover, given its location, Tunisia is also a potential transshipment site for cannabis sent from Morocco to Europe.

Most smuggling of drugs into Tunisia is for local consumption—hashish especially. Hard drugs are scarce in Tunisia. Despite a lack of information, the presumption is that traditional cannabis cultivation and consumption also continue in rural areas. The government says it has eradicated cannabis cultivation but reports continue to the contrary (before independence from France in 1956 cultivation for local use was legal, and the practice persists in the north).

Tunisia's national drug policy is based on the Health Plan of September 1991 that covered controls, registration, procurement, and quality assurance. [Page 781]Implementation of the policy began under a 1993 plan. Registration of drugs under a 1985 law began in 1992. Tunisia has a registration division in the department of pharmacy of medicines that registers all imports, and has a single drug importing agency, the Pharmacie Centrale de Tunisie. The pharmacy and medicine department were responsible for inspection, and the national laboratory tested all drugs before marketing them. Drugs are certified under a World Health Organization standard of 1978. Tunisia imported $112.8 million in legal drugs in 1992, and total consumption was $160 million for a population of 8.5 million people.

Under Tunisia's 1992 drug law a drug enforcement officer, drug warehouse guard, or administrator faces doubled penalties for drug offenses. The responsible government agency is the Surete Nationale. The Surete Nationale seizes drugs an average of 20 times a year for an average total of less than 600 kilograms of narcotics. Traffickers can receive sentences of 10–20 years and be fined the equivalent of $16,300 to $81,300.

Tunisia's government broke up a drug importation ring of close to 300 people in 1998. Drugs found included cocaine, marijuana, and ecstasy. The government charged 148 with offenses ranging from possession to trafficking and arrested other individuals at schools and in smaller cities to try to reduce demand. Although reports indicated that airline employees and antinarcotics officers were among the arrested, Tunisia has no large-scale, drug-related official corruption. After the arrests, narcotics enforcement moved from the antinarcotics unit to the director of state security in the interior ministry. The arrests generated rumors that politically connected ring members escaped prosecution.

In 2004 Tunisia began enforcing a new anti-laundering law and established a department in the interior ministry to eliminate police and customs corruption. It began to mete out harsh sentences to dealers and users.

As late as 1996 Tunisia had no rehab policy or treatment centers, only some school-based prevention programs. A decade later Tunisia was active in youth demand-reduction programs and encouraged nongovernmental organization (NGO) activities against drugs. It still had no data collection, but unofficial sources indicated Tunisia had about 2,000 drug abusers, mostly school dropouts and jailed abusers. It has no national rehab policy but had a rehab center and halfway house as of 2005.

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