BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
The Solomon Islands Law Reform Commission (LRC) believes it is a time the country moves from reaction to proactive laws.
Augustine Basia, Law Reform Senior Legal Officer told Bills and Legislation Committee (BLC) during the inquiry into the dangerous amendment Bill 2025.
He said that current approach in the dangerous drugs legislation is largely reactive, responding to incidents after they happen rather than anticipating and preventing them.
“Looking back at previous amendments to the Act’s schedule, there have been a few occasions where new rules were introduced to include substances that were not previously listed. For example, the methamphetamine was added to the Act’s schedule through legal notice in 1988. This inclusion was purely about updating the list of controlled substances rather than addressing an actual drug problem, because none existed at that time,” Mr Basia said.
He said they believe the time has come for our laws to move forward, move beyond reaction, and be proactive at how we legislate, or what we termed as future-proofing our drugs legislation.
“Right now, our legal framework only criminalises substances if they are on a list,” he said.
“How it works is that list may be hundreds of pages long, but if one new emerging harmful substance happens to be left of it, we then find ourselves back here again, debating, amending clauses, and gazetting new rules. This cycle continues. For our current issues, if we address the meth problem with severe penalties today, but then a new drug or harmful substance emerges in the year 2028, we will have to repeat this entire process again,” Basia added.
He said that the drug trade is highly lucrative, and the people involved are constantly innovating and are getting smarter.
“Through chemical changes, or what they termed as chemical tweaking, they create new substances that mimic the effects of existing drugs, but fall outside the legal list. This is exactly what happened recently when methamphetamine was seized.
“The authorities confiscated everything and made arrests, but yet the law was silent and unclear, resulting in confusion and release of the alleged offenders. These gaps are the inevitable result of a list-based system,” Basia said.
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