PUTRAJAYA: The Home Ministry is slated to table a bill to pave the way for a new legislation called the Drug and Substance Abuse (Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation) Act in Parliament early next year.
National Anti-Drugs Agency director-general Sutekno Ahmad Belon said the bill, if passed in Parliament, will replace the Drug Dependants (Treatment and Rehabilitation) Act 1983.
"The preparation for the bill is in progress and it is being done by the Home Ministry. Our timeline is to bring the bill to Parliament early next year," he said after the Cabinet Committee on the Eradication of Drugs at the Perdana Putra building here, today.
Sutekno said this after the meeting had collectively agreed that laws and their enforcement must be strengthened to eradicate the drug menace amid the rising number of addicts.
The meeting was chaired by deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who expressed concern over the estimate of more a million drug addicts in the country this year and its upward trend.
Zahid said the figure stood at 1,097,408 so far, of which 1,051,712 are male and 45,696 are female.
He added that 328,640 of them are aged from 15 to 29.
In May, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the new bill related to drugs and substance abuse will be presented to the cabinet this month.
Once enforced, it will see offenders found with small amounts of drugs being sent to rehabilitation centres instead of prisons.
For offences where the amount of drugs found on the body is small, whether the offender is owning the substance or using it, the idea is not to deem it as a regular drug-related offence but to decriminalise it, he said.
He added that offenders will be sent to rehabilitation institutions under the National Anti-Drugs Agency and not to prisons to avoid congesting the facilities.