PETALING JAYA: The war against drugs must go beyond arrests and seizures to achieve a meaningful decline in the illicit trade.

Veteran criminologist Datuk P. Sundramoorthy said the fight has reached a point where arrests and seizures, while critical, are no longer enough.

He said with drug syndicates becoming more adaptive, transnational and financially powerful, narcotics trafficking is now deeply embedded in lawful trade operations and is making early detection far more complex for the authorities.

He said the country’s strategic location continues to be exploited not due to weak enforcement but because drug dealers are shifting their tactics.

Sundramoorthy said the death penalty, while a severe punishment, does little to deter syndicates that operate through layers of drug mules, shell companies and foreign masterminds who insulate themselves from the risk of being caught.

He said the shortcomings are not in enforcement efforts but in structural vulnerabilities such as real-time intelligence sharing, financial surveillance, and cross-border coordination.

“The real objective is to dismantle syndicates at the command-and-control and financial level and turn the country into a hostile environment, not just for drugs but also the ill-gotten gains earned from it,” Sundramoorthy said.

He said recent billion-ringgit drug busts may appear alarming, but reflects the increasing effectiveness and persistence of police enforcement despite the illegal narcotic trade becoming more complex internationally.

“The busts reflect a high level of professionalism, intelligence-led policing, and long-term surveillance carried out by the police narcotics crimes investigations department (NCID).

“These were well-planned operations that disrupted sophisticated international syndicates and prevented enormous quantities of drugs from reaching the streets,” he said.

However, Sundramoorthy said that while the scale and frequency of recent seizures show effective intelligence-led operations are in place, they also point to limitations in early-warning mechanisms at key entry points such as ports, bonded warehouses, and other legitimate trade channels.

He added that the potential involvement of insiders within enforcement agencies, ports or logistics firms must be addressed promptly to maintain public trust in these government bodies.

Criminal defence lawyer KA Ramu said that to gain headway in busting the distribution of narcotics, enforcement should focus on identifying and prosecuting the masterminds who are involved in funding and planning the illegal trade.

He said these masterminds often steer clear from carrying out the “dirtier tasks” of manufacturing and distributing drugs.

Those arrested in major busts are often mules, chemists or facilitators funded by drug lords who stay incognito, sometimes operating from “high places” and guarded from the risk of being pursued by enforcement.

“Those who are caught are usually small fish on the payroll of the real drug lords.

“These syndicates will simply continue their operations once things settle down after a bust. The scale of recent seizures points to immense accumulated wealth at the top of these networks.

“If a single seizure is worth billions, imagine the wealth these drug kingpins must have amassed over time,” said the lawyer who specialises in narcotics crime cases and has handled over 40 such cases in over two decades.

This article first appeared on The Star.