rp21 situational analysis - Pacific Health Voices

Cannabis
In 2008, police and customs officers were
reported to be working together to complete
passenger searches for illicit substances
on ferry services, which yielded nothing. 902
In a subsequent tip-off, police arrested a
number of young men. At the time of the
campaign, the Acting Police Commissioner,
Motulu Pedro, noted that the police force and
customs rely largely on the public to identify
marijuana users and that Tuvalu police do
not have the technology to monitor the entry
of drugs into the country. 903 The majority of
the police force have been trained to identify
marijuana by smelling it, and also by looking
at it through a microscope. In addition,
there are plans to propose that police in Fiji
and Tuvalu work together to search every
Tuvalu vessel for drugs before it leaves Fijian
waters. 904 Drugs issues were raised in a late-
2008 session of Parliament, suggesting this
as an issue of increasing concern. 905
Other
As mentioned in the introduction, there are
no reports of any other illicit substance use
in Tuvalu.
16.4 Licit drug trends
Alcohol
Women with ‘alcoholic’ husbands were identified
as a group facing hardship in a 2003
Asian Development Bank report on hardship
in Tuvalu. The paper reported that the
hardship is related to lack of opportunity
and limited resources, rather than poverty. 906
A survey of 250 people from a combination
of urban and rural areas across three
geographical regions indicated that social
and cultural change, particularly around increasing
drug and alcohol consumption, was
a contributor to increased hardship (especially
among youths as users and women as
partners of alcoholic husbands). 907 However,
there is a tradition of strong social support
networks, with family, extended family and
the church expected to bear the burden of
responding to the hardship. This traditional
support contrasts with decreasing levels of
obligation from clan, village, community organisations,
government and parliament, in
that order. 908
Significantly, alcohol consumption contributes
to a reported 90 per cent of seafarer
dismissals, with a direct impact on those dismissed,
but also resulting in the tarnished
185
902 Silafaga Lalua, Tuvalu Police toughening up on drug users, Tuvalu-News.TV, 27 December 2006.
Available at: (accessed December 2008).
903 Ibid.
904 Ibid.
905 Ibid.
906 Asian Development Bank (2003), Priorities of the People: hardship in Tuvalu. Manila: ADB.
Available at: .
907 Ibid.
908 Ibid.
Tuvalu