Laws. Every country has them. Every country needs them.
 
But it isn’t uncommon that laws that are enacted are not the best. More often than not, laws are amended for various reasons, including because they are lacking in deterrent sentencing, or even because they are inhumane or outdated.
 
Hell, even that supposedly shining example of law, the American Constitution, has been amended 27 times, the first 10 of which were in 1791, just two years after it came into force. So yeah, there is practically no law in the world that can be said to be the “be all and end all” of its kind. Sooner or later, there will be a time when a law needs to be changed.
 
So it is that we often see amendments to laws here, including one which will see the Drug Dependents (Treatment and Rehabilitation) Act 1983 amended. In fact, a new act altogether will be put in its place. The new Drugs and Substance Abuse Act will see addicts being placed in rehab centres under the National Anti-Drug Agency (NADA) instead of having to go to jail, and will go some way towards reducing overcrowding in prisons. 
 
This is significant as, according to UN statistics as of December last year, there were 74,000 people incarcerated in Malaysian jails. With a total capacity of 52,000 people, that means that our prison population was at 142.3%. 
 
Now take that stat and compare it this report that in 2017, 33,500 of the 59,600 – or 56.21% – of people in jail then were behind bars for drug-related offences. Assuming the December 2019 stats had the same percentage of drug offenders, that would work out to more than 41,500 convicts. 
 
We don’t know just how many of these were incarcerated for addiction-related offences as opposed to other drug sentences, but amending this law would certainly see a significant reduction in our prison population.
 
But this amendment does more than just reduce prison overcrowding. When a person is sent to prison simply because he or she has an addiction problem, these people emerge with the stigma of being a ‘jailbird’ and often see the doors of society shut to them, which often leaves them with no opportunities for upward mobility and forces them to turn to lives of crime, perpetuating their cycle of hopelessness. 

As such, this amendment is a significant development towards a more humane approach to drug addiction. There are lots of international studies and data on the different successful approaches to the problem.
 
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime advocates for treatment instead of incarceration and various organisations – such as the Foundation Recovery Network – say rehab instead of imprisonment could save a country billions. 
 
And there’s more. The US National Institute on Drug Abuse says those who undergo legally-mandated rehab tend to keep their appointments more frequently than those who do it voluntarily. And, those who have extended treatment for addiction stop abusing substances in time, stop breaking the law and start to become fully integrated and helpful members of society. 
 
So yeah, we can’t agree more with the government’s move to send drug addicts for rehab instead of prison. There are just too many benefits in doing so for it to be ignored.
 
While that’s one amendment for the future, one major amendment did get passed yesterday in the Dewan Rakyat. This particular amendment was to increase the bankruptcy threshold in the Insolvency Act from RM50,000 to RM100,000. 
 
In tabling the bill for the amendment, de facto Law Minister Takiyuddin Hassan said the update to the Act was in line with the development and advancement of international laws on insolvency, corporate governance and best practices in insolvency. It is also to prepare the country to face any outbreak in the future or any disaster, in fact, that may cause economic crisis.

All that may be true, but what’s also true is that by the old threshold, a great many people who’ve been hit financially by Covid-19 would be declared bankrupt – so this is a change whose time has certainly come.