COMMENT | Ready or not, Rehab Act changes have been greenlit

COMMENT | Last October, we asked, “Is Malaysia ready to treat drug addiction effectively?”

Events of this past month show that we are not. We continue to bludgeon through legislative amendments and policies with limited consultation, inadvertently setting ourselves up for failure.

The elephant in the room

The Drug Dependents (Treatment and Rehabilitation) Act 1983 (Rehab Act) has been around for decades and yet we rarely hear about it when it comes to tackling drug use in Malaysia.

The Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 (DDA) dominates all aspects of drug policies in Malaysia from trafficking to use, and casts an immense shadow on the Rehab Act.

With all the fanfare promising a move towards harm reduction and treatment as a means to tackle drug use, public expectations were high that we would be moving away from DDA to a more effective Rehab Act under the recently passed amendments.