Confiscate property of drug barons – Former NACOB boss

Former Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) Kofi Bentum Quantson has strongly recommended that if properties of drug barons are not seized, arrests, prosecution and incarceration of them will yield no positive results.

“The most effective thing recommended by the United Nations is that confiscating the property of drug dealers is the most effective way of clipping their wings,” Mr Quantson said in an interview on TV3’s News@10 on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.

K.B. Quantson was speaking after NACOB on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Kotoka International Airport security chief, Solomon Adelaquaye, in an anti-narcotics operation.

The former NACOB boss commended the intelligence operation between Ghana’s NACOB and United States of America’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying: “It is encouraging that such a high-profile individual has been arrested…I think it is a plus.”

He observed that drug trafficking has no limitation and that anybody can be involved.

“That makes it tricky. Everybody has to be on the look-out.”

‘Endless war’

Mr Quantson pointed out that arresting high-profile persons involved in narcotics should not be considered an end in war.

According to him, the drug war has no limit. “It is an endless war. There is no time we should pat ourselves in the back that we have done well and therefore we are relaxing,” he stressed.

He noted that those involved in narcotics are so innovative and ingenious that they devise ways and means all the time in order to circumvent the law.

Better resources

He pointed out that operations of drug barons must be muddled up as they also continue to be innovative day-in-day-out.

He noted that “the drug dealers have better resources in terms of money and resources. You have to make things difficult [for them].”

“If you jail the person and he has billions of Cedis, he will come back and continue. So action on the property should receive top attention.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we are doing well in that direction,” he told host Henry Herbert Malm.

Mr Quantson recommended strengthening of intelligence base in order to carry out frequent anti-narcotics operations.