City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY School of Law 1991 Death, Drugs and Development: Malaysia's Mandatory Death Penalty for Traffickers and the International War on Drugs Sidney Harring CUNY School of Law How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cl_pubs/316 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] Death, Drugs and Development: Malaysia's Mandatory Death Penalty for Traffickers and the International War on Drugs SIDNEY L. HARRING* I. INTRODUCTION If the Bush administration is engaged in a "war on drugs" in 1991 and the "drug war" has become a common way to characterize a mas- sive package of legal measures to eradicate (or at least reduce) drug use, then it may be said that Malaysia began its drug war in 1975 when it first prescribed the death penalty for drug trafficking.1 In 1983, it made the death penalty for trafficking in drugs mandatory.2 * Professor of Law, City University of New York Law School at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. B.A., Malacaster College; M.S., J.D., Ph.D., University of Wiscon- sin (Madison). The research for this article was done in 1989-90 while the author was a Ful- bright Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration of Institut Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia. The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of faculty and students at Institut Teknologi MARA but accepts sole responsibility for the con- clusions herein.