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Southeast Asia’s War on Drugs Is a Grotesque Failure, but Why Stop?
By Samuel Oakford
July 8, 2014
With successful legalization or decriminalization efforts in several US states and Uruguay dominating the news, it’s easy to forget that the war on drugs is alive and well in most of the world — and nowhere is it more deeply ingrained than in Southeast Asia.
In 1998, the year that the UN held a special session of the General Assembly where it’s drug czar claimed that a “drug-free world” was attainable, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced an even more implausible policy goal: to make the region “drug free” by 2015.
With less than a year to go, the results are already in: after an initial dip in the early 2000s, opium production in the Golden Triangle — the infamous and often lawless region where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand meet — has doubled in the last ten years and now represents 30 percent of global cultivation.
'It’s an illusion that you can make the drug market disappear when in fact the size of the market has not been reduced at all.'
Myanmar, the world’s second largest grower of opium, has seen its crop nearly triple since 2006. Towns in growing regions are now filled with addicts injecting heroin openly, sometimes accompanied by local police officers shooting up next to them. Ten years ago, opium cultivation in some of these towns had been nearly eradicated, but with few alternatives to sustain themselves, residents have little choice but to plant again.
Meanwhile, meth and other “amphetamine-type substances” are spreading rapidly. Once a transit point, Southeast Asia is now home to labs and a huge domestic market. Since 2008, meth seizures in East and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific have nearly tripled.
Meth produced in labs in the Golden Triangle and Myanmar’s tumultuous Shan State is pushed across the region in the form of colorful caffeine-infused “yaba” pills. Everyone from children to prostitutes to middle-class workers and bus drivers have become addicted to the cheap drug. According to the UN, 88 percent of Thais treated at drug addiction centers in 2012 reported using methamphetamine.
Local traffickers enmeshed in the meth trade have established ties with dealers as far away as Nigeria. Between 2009 and 2013, more than half of the foreigners arrested at Lagos’s international airport for trafficking in amphetamine-type substances were citizens of Southeast Asian countries.
“It doesn’t make sense any more to think in terms of drug-free deadlines,” Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Transnational Institute’s drugs and democracy program and co-author of a recent report titled “Relapse in the Golden Triangle,” told VICE News. “It’s an illusion that you can make the drug market disappear when in fact the size of the market has not been reduced at all.”
Last week, leaders from all 10 ASEAN countries met in Manila for the group’s 35th Senior Officials Meeting on Drug Matters. Hardly a dissenting voice on the issue was heard.
Southeast Asian countries have taken interdiction further than most, consistently executing its citizens and foreigners for non-violent drug crimes.
“The idea of drug law or policy reform is still taboo in the region, and drug policy-making processes, including at ASEAN, are highly resistant to civil society engagement and alternative viewpoints about drugs,” Gloria Lai, Asia regional expert at the International Drug Policy Consortium, told VICE News from Manila, where she attended the summit. “Many seem to accept drug control policies and campaigns and have little sympathy for people who engage in any type of drug-related activity, including use of or dependence on drugs.”
Much of Southeast Asia’s drug policy dates to the colonial period. Myanmar’s Excise Code of 1905 prohibits anyone from using or even carrying a hypodermic needle without a license. Violators are instructed to pay in rupees — a currency Myanmar stopped using over 60 years ago. Failing to register as a drug user, another outdated practice, is also illegal.
West African commission on drugs advocates decriminalization. Read more here.
The colonial period was followed by a US-led global drug convention regime that favored prohibition and criminalization, leaving the door open for governments around the world to control their population by means of the war on drugs. Southeast Asian countries have taken interdiction further than most, consistently executing citizens and foreigners for non-violent drug crimes. Three ASEAN countries executed drug offenders last year. Earlier this year, Vietnam sentenced 30 people tied to heroin smuggling to death.
Four years ago, Indonesia introduced harsh minimum sentences just as countries like the US were moving toward reforming their own sentencing guidelines. Now, getting caught in Bali with more than a miniscule 0.05 grams of pot can land you in jail for years. Possession of more than five grams of heroin can get you life in prison.
Laws like these don’t stop the drug trade, clearly, but instead either ruin lives for casual drug use or push addicts further into the shadows and away from proper medical care and harm reduction. More than one in five users who inject drugs in Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia are infected with HIV. In Indonesia, the figure is 36 percent.
Continued here https://news.vice.com/article/southeast-asias-war-on-drugs-is-a-grotesque-failure-but-why-stop
By Samuel Oakford
July 8, 2014
With successful legalization or decriminalization efforts in several US states and Uruguay dominating the news, it’s easy to forget that the war on drugs is alive and well in most of the world — and nowhere is it more deeply ingrained than in Southeast Asia.
In 1998, the year that the UN held a special session of the General Assembly where it’s drug czar claimed that a “drug-free world” was attainable, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced an even more implausible policy goal: to make the region “drug free” by 2015.
With less than a year to go, the results are already in: after an initial dip in the early 2000s, opium production in the Golden Triangle — the infamous and often lawless region where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand meet — has doubled in the last ten years and now represents 30 percent of global cultivation.
'It’s an illusion that you can make the drug market disappear when in fact the size of the market has not been reduced at all.'
Myanmar, the world’s second largest grower of opium, has seen its crop nearly triple since 2006. Towns in growing regions are now filled with addicts injecting heroin openly, sometimes accompanied by local police officers shooting up next to them. Ten years ago, opium cultivation in some of these towns had been nearly eradicated, but with few alternatives to sustain themselves, residents have little choice but to plant again.
Meanwhile, meth and other “amphetamine-type substances” are spreading rapidly. Once a transit point, Southeast Asia is now home to labs and a huge domestic market. Since 2008, meth seizures in East and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific have nearly tripled.
Meth produced in labs in the Golden Triangle and Myanmar’s tumultuous Shan State is pushed across the region in the form of colorful caffeine-infused “yaba” pills. Everyone from children to prostitutes to middle-class workers and bus drivers have become addicted to the cheap drug. According to the UN, 88 percent of Thais treated at drug addiction centers in 2012 reported using methamphetamine.
Local traffickers enmeshed in the meth trade have established ties with dealers as far away as Nigeria. Between 2009 and 2013, more than half of the foreigners arrested at Lagos’s international airport for trafficking in amphetamine-type substances were citizens of Southeast Asian countries.
“It doesn’t make sense any more to think in terms of drug-free deadlines,” Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Transnational Institute’s drugs and democracy program and co-author of a recent report titled “Relapse in the Golden Triangle,” told VICE News. “It’s an illusion that you can make the drug market disappear when in fact the size of the market has not been reduced at all.”
Last week, leaders from all 10 ASEAN countries met in Manila for the group’s 35th Senior Officials Meeting on Drug Matters. Hardly a dissenting voice on the issue was heard.
Southeast Asian countries have taken interdiction further than most, consistently executing its citizens and foreigners for non-violent drug crimes.
“The idea of drug law or policy reform is still taboo in the region, and drug policy-making processes, including at ASEAN, are highly resistant to civil society engagement and alternative viewpoints about drugs,” Gloria Lai, Asia regional expert at the International Drug Policy Consortium, told VICE News from Manila, where she attended the summit. “Many seem to accept drug control policies and campaigns and have little sympathy for people who engage in any type of drug-related activity, including use of or dependence on drugs.”
Much of Southeast Asia’s drug policy dates to the colonial period. Myanmar’s Excise Code of 1905 prohibits anyone from using or even carrying a hypodermic needle without a license. Violators are instructed to pay in rupees — a currency Myanmar stopped using over 60 years ago. Failing to register as a drug user, another outdated practice, is also illegal.
West African commission on drugs advocates decriminalization. Read more here.
The colonial period was followed by a US-led global drug convention regime that favored prohibition and criminalization, leaving the door open for governments around the world to control their population by means of the war on drugs. Southeast Asian countries have taken interdiction further than most, consistently executing citizens and foreigners for non-violent drug crimes. Three ASEAN countries executed drug offenders last year. Earlier this year, Vietnam sentenced 30 people tied to heroin smuggling to death.
Four years ago, Indonesia introduced harsh minimum sentences just as countries like the US were moving toward reforming their own sentencing guidelines. Now, getting caught in Bali with more than a miniscule 0.05 grams of pot can land you in jail for years. Possession of more than five grams of heroin can get you life in prison.
Laws like these don’t stop the drug trade, clearly, but instead either ruin lives for casual drug use or push addicts further into the shadows and away from proper medical care and harm reduction. More than one in five users who inject drugs in Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia are infected with HIV. In Indonesia, the figure is 36 percent.
Continued here https://news.vice.com/article/southeast-asias-war-on-drugs-is-a-grotesque-failure-but-why-stop
