Vijaya Teelock – May 2026
Co-Investigator, PDMH & Ihtisham Miraj, Le Chantier, Mauritius
Despite the obvious connections dating to our common colonial past, I cannot say that my background in studying the history and impact of slavery, indenture and other forms of unfree labour of Mauritius prepared me for this multidisciplinary study of Prisons, Drugs and Mental Health. Today Mauritius is considered as one of the transit points in the international drug trade. This and the unexplained deaths of incarcerated persons in prisons have become the hottest topics in the media in Mauritius today.
Although the drug trade became noticeable in Mauritius in the 1980s, around the same time as in the Seychelles, it has since evolved to a scale that earlier analysts could not have predicted. Yet, the warnings were there: Commissions of Enquiry succeeded each other every few years, and accusations against alleged drug lords surfaced periodically, with some hiding behind parliamentary immunity to assert the most objectionable of claims. What all past and recent Commissions have in common is their outlining of dangers to young people, as the variety of drugs available grew and the creative techniques used to smuggle them into and within Mauritius became increasingly apparent. Despite public outrage, stricter laws, and heavy punishments, the most significant drug traffickers and their accomplices have yet to be successfully named and prosecuted.
One major shift since the 1980s and 1990s has been the impact of social media. Today in Mauritius, there is at least one social media post per day about a presumed trafficker or addict from online news outlets. Suspected users are filmed without consent and publicly humiliated, with clips openly shared online. There is considerable public pressure to reduce the drug trade and prevent young people from succumbing to peer pressure. Yet how the trade began, and who was behind it, remains unknown to most. What is certain is that today, drugs affect every corner of Mauritian society and the economy, importantly.
Alcohol and tobacco are also consumed by a large section of the population, creating other forms of addiction which are understudied in connection to studies on drug addiction. Other addictive and dangerous drugs are prescribed by the medical profession. Consumption and sale are all perfectly legal and involve big business. Commissions of Enquiry on these have yet to be set up. It cannot be understated how the pro-business decisions of successive governments and the inability of the civil service and law enforcement to deal effectively with the proliferation of the drug trade has led to the situation today.
The Challenge of Research
Studying the history of the drug trade and prisons in Mauritius is a difficult undertaking. They reside and share active roles within a sphere that includes money laundering, financial fraud, trafficking, arms dealing and violent crime. Despite the profusion of Commissions, Committees, reports, and parliamentary debates over the past 40 years, successive generations of researchers still struggle to obtain, for example, detailed biodata and case files to be able to draw up accurate profiles and make comparisons. Officials and politicians cite the protection of informants as justification for withholding information. There appears to be a deep distrust of NGOs and researchers, and an inability to distinguish scientific research from other forms of inquiry. While lawyers have unlimited access to detainees, researchers have none. There is therefore, an incentive to create our own research databases.
The failure to produce relevant scientific data has been devastating. The drug trade has expanded beyond what was imaginable 40 years ago, the number of addicts has skyrocketed, and hundreds — if not thousands — of families have been broken apart and today live in fear and desperation. This blog is therefore based on publicly available reports of various Committees established between 1985 and 2025, parliamentary debates, and media sources.
A Short History of Drug Use and Importation
The 1980s – How It Began
Before the 1980s, gandia and opium had traditionally been used by Indian and Chinese immigrants and their descendants, until opium imports were banned — somewhat ironically — by the same British Government that had encouraged opium cultivation in India and profited enormously from exporting it to China. Heroin was first introduced in Mauritius in the 1970s, and today the country has the highest prevalence of opioid use in Africa (Chelin, 2020). Opium was difficult to transport in bulk, so traffickers turned to importing heroin in a form that became known as ‘brown sugar’. The international heroin market had flooded traditional routes — the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent — towards Western consumers, but wars such as the Iran-Iraq conflict and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan disrupted these routes. Mauritius and a few other countries were chosen as transit points, largely because Mauritius was considered ‘relatively clean’ that is, it had a clean reputation and therefore would not attract international attention. External forces were thus largely responsible for the initial spread of ‘brown sugar’, though many at the time blamed local individuals. We could say this was the time Mauritius’ as a transit point for drugs began to grow. Beyond hard drugs, consumption of synthetic psychotropics also began globally, and Mauritius was no exception. Some were legally available, camouflaged as medicines — analgesics, tranquilisers, barbiturates, amphetamines — dispensed freely on prescription.
Drug Trafficking in the 1980s
The remote geography of Mauritius, local communities living in close proximity, the faded distinction between town and country, led observers to describe Mauritius as ‘one single town’. Young persons of whatever ethno-religious background were exposed to the same fashion or craze and took after it. The 1986 Rault Report noted that while trafficking was occurring, some public accusations were unreliable. One case in particular stood out. Within the Report, it drew up a first list of fourteen suspected drug tycoons, including a lawyer, the Head of the Anti-Drug Smuggling Unit (ADSU), an Assistant Superintendent of Police, and a well-known building contractor. When two were put on trial, their lawyers advised them to stay silent, resulting in minimal penalties. The Commission considered this an obstruction of justice. The fallout was dramatic. Parliament was recalled, and the fine on those obstructing the Commission was raised from Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000,000. Members of the Legislative Assembly were accused of acting as couriers. Traffickers at this time were paying couriers to transport heroin along the Bombay-Amsterdam-Mauritius route. The Prime Minister ordered an investigation but did not anticipate that the head of the ADSU would be paid to ensure those couriers were not intercepted.
The 1990s: Resurgence and New Challenges
After the crackdown of the late 1980s, trafficking initially declined. However, it resurged in the 1990s. Several reasons were advanced: reduced vigilance, the return of freed traffickers, new networks, and changing global trends. As early as this decade, it was clear that traffickers were adapting — using body cavity concealment, decentralised distribution through multiple small-scale pedlars, and switching to chemical substances when heroin supply was disrupted. Authorities and institutions were unprepared and failed to anticipate any of this. The quick adaptability and unhindered growth of the criminal enterprise is a key reason for its prevalence today.
Issues with Prevention Strategies:
The profiling problem
The official profile of a trafficker in the 1990s was drawn solely from those arrested: a ‘suburban, semi-skilled worker, over the age of 25’. This approach contained among many, one fundamental flaw — it ignored those who were never arrested. The Commissions relied entirely on police statistics and never asked the critical question: do arrests reflect the true composition of the trafficking community? Those who used power and influence to avoid arrest were effectively exonerated by omission. This remains the largest gap in all documentation produced to date.
Profiling based exclusively on police data proved disastrous for the communities from which some traffickers came, imposing undue stigma and stereotyping. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that drug laws were used to target people living in marginalised areas. Although the situations differ significantly, analogies with the racially discriminatory origins of the “war on drugs” in the United States are hard to dismiss. One Commission even acknowledged that its report had effectively exonerated a whole section of the trafficking community — those who used their power and influence to silence the truth. However, their Report did not want to profile and name names or identify locations of trade, such as the suburban housing estates, out of fear of ‘stigmatisation’ of particular communities. But the statistics collected have done exactly that.
However, arrests and prosecutions do show collusion of different socio-ethno-religious groups in the drug trafficking operations: taxi drivers, lawyers, peddlers, boat owners, politicians, their families, intermediaries etc.
Decriminalisation
The Boulle Report (1995) felt that decriminalising users would amount to admitting defeat, though it acknowledged this might reduce hard drug trafficking. With hindsight, one must ask: had decriminalisation been adopted then, would Mauritius be in its current predicament? In 1995, the Committee felt that there was no evidence of Mauritius being used as a transit point in the international drug trade. The possibility of this occurring was real due to Mauritius’ strategic geographical location, transshipment possibilities to Europe, Africa and elsewhere which could be exploited in the future.
Harsher laws
In 1992, the death penalty had not yet been abolished in Mauritius but it was envisaged and, in the meantime, the application of the death penalty was suspended. The use of the death penalty as a new deterrent, meant that ten persons — all foreign couriers — were sentenced to death for drug trafficking between 1988 and 1993. The Supreme Court reiterated that the mandatory death penalty for trafficking did not offend the Constitution. Two sentences were commuted; others remained under appeal. The death penalty was ultimately abolished.
Rehabilitation
Although the Prisons focused on Rehabilitation, there were several issues for example, the Commissions revealed that brown sugar and gandia were regularly available inside prisons, and the Commissioner of Prisons admitted that some officers were complicit with traffickers.
