Indonesia, which has seen drug addiction spiral into a life-threatening problem for millions of people, on Monday joined the global observance of International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
The theme of this year’s commemoration of UN Day was “share facts on drugs, save lives”, since sharing reliable information on drugs is indispensable to substance abuse prevention efforts.
Vice President Ma’ruf Amin marked the day by drawing the collective attention of Indonesians to the grave threat posed by drug crimes to the country.
Ten days prior to the annual commemoration of the UN Day, which officially falls on June 26 every year, National Police chief, General Listyo Sigit Prabowo, had highlighted the seriousness of Indonesia’s drug problem.
During a hearing session with members of Commission III Overseeing Law and Human Rights of the House of Representatives (DPR) on June 16, 2021, Prabowo shared several facts on law enforcement against drug offenders.
During the first half of 2021, National Police unearthed 19,229 drug abuse cases and detained 24,878 suspects, he informed the commission.
Police seized 7,696 kg of crystal methamphetamine, 2,100 kg of marijuana, 7.3 kg of heroin, 34.3 kg of gorilla tobacco, and 239,277 ecstasy pills from the suspects, he said.
The pieces of evidence secured in connection with the cases were valued at Rp11.66 trillion, and the drug seizures and arrests of traffickers potentially saved 39.24 million people from drug abuse, Prabowo claimed. Meanwhile, Vice President Ma’ruf Amin cited the results of a survey conducted by the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), which has pegged the number of drug users in Indonesia at 3.4 million.
Referring to the survey, Amin noted that around 180 of every 10 thousand Indonesians, aged between 15 and 64, have fallen into drug addiction.
Drug abuse and crimes have undeniably become a global problem, as highlighted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which, last year, reported 275 million drug users across the globe.
At the global level, the number of drug users reportedly grew by about 22 percent between 2010 and 2019, and the figure is expected to rise about 11 percent until 2030, Amin noted.
He warned that the nation is not only seeing a huge number of drug users in the productive age group, but is also being challenged by massive drug trafficking operations.
“Drug trades have reached villages and are involving women and children, who are becoming drug couriers as well as users,” he stated.
The East Java police, for instance, recently uncovered the involvement of two university students of Malang city in the drug trade.
The two students were identified as IS (24), a resident of West Kalimantan province, and IM (24), a resident of East Kalimantan.
IS and IM, who are registered as students of a privately owned university in Malang, East Java, were arrested from their rented rooms with 1.4 kg of dried marijuana.
Police charged them with violating Article 114 (2) of Indonesia’s 2009 Narcotics Law, which attracts a prison term of between six and 20 years.
The alarming reality of growing drug use and trade shows that Indonesia remains under serious threat from drug dealers. Drug lords perceive Indonesia as a potential market due to its vast population, millions of drug users, and the value of the drug trade in the country is estimated to have reached about Rp66 trillion.
Over the past few decades, drug kingpins have been found smuggling narcotics into Indonesia and distributing them. In response, the Indonesian government has taken harsh punitive action against them.
Despite the government’s complete commitment to the global fight against drug abuse and drug trafficking, the country’s war on drugs has sometimes been weakened by judicial rulings.
This may, for instance, be construed from the Bandung high court judges’ decision to overturn the death penalty of six convicted drug traffickers.
The six traffickers had been awarded the death penalty by the Cibadak District Court, but they had rejected the verdict and filed an appeal with the high court against it.
Instead of upholding the verdict, the Bandung high court reportedly lightened their punishment. A senior legislator questioned the judges’ ruling which freed the drug traffickers, who had smuggled 402 kg of crystal meth into Indonesia, from capital punishment.
“I question the logic of the Bandung high court judges’ ruling that has reduced the punishment of the six convicted drug traffickers. What has really happened?” asked Andi Rio Idris Padjalangi, a member of the House of Representatives’ Commission III Overseeing Law and Human Rights.
Padjalangi contended that the six traffickers belonged to a transnational drug ring that had professionally worked and planned to destroy Indonesia’s younger generation.
He also urged the prosecutors to file an appeal against the ruling since discounting the punishment for drug offenders could potentially be seen as an example of weak law enforcement.
Weak law enforcement against drug offenders, particularly those categorized as drug lords, could become a serious hurdle for Indonesia as it makes efforts to win its prolonged war on drugs. (INE)
Source: Antara News