UAE admits to drugs problem -official

Jun 22, 2009 at 07:54

Rising and increasingly diverse population the cause of UAE's drugs problem, says senior customs official.

The United Arab Emirates is facing a growing drugs problem as its population grows, and instability elsewhere sees the emirate increasingly used as a narcotics hub.

"I would not shut my mouth and say we don’t have drug problems here," Mohammed al-Marri, the executive director of cargo operations, told UAE daily the National. "Yes, we do have them."

Regional instability and lack of an effective rule of law in some neighbouring countries has been a leading cause of an increase in the traffic of illegal substances, according to al-Marri.

"We know areas in the neighbouring countries are not quite governed by the local governments, and the land has been used for producing major volumes."

However, the ever increasing hauls of illegal narcotics are also the result of a larger volume of people in the country.

The drugs trade is just the darker side of the country's economic success according to al-Marri. As the number of expatriates living in the oil-rich Gulf state has doubled over the last 10 years, so too has the demand for illegal goods.

"The numbers of people who are living here are not like the number who were living here 10 years ago, so that has had an impact, that's for sure," al-Marri said.

"We have more than 140 nationalities living in this country, each one of them coming with their own backgrounds and their own traditions and heritage.

"That is one of the major reasons for seeing an increase in quantities (of illegal drugs) coming."