Publication Date : 15-05-2013
In a Jakarta club, where the local authorities admit that the drug problem is spiralling out of control, music is throbbing. Some clubbers punch their fists in the air, swaying hypnotically to the beat while others sip mineral water.
Some have bloodshot eyes or dazed looks. In the toilet, you can sometimes see clubbers openly trading drugs in the form of ecstasy pills or packets of "shabu", the local term for crystal methamphetamine.
"Everyone knows this place is famous for drugs. You need it, you come here," says an Indonesian stylist who declined to be named.
This club in central Jakarta is among several with easy access to drugs in the capital.
Last month, anti-drug officials sounded the alarm on drug abuse in Indonesia.
They estimate 600,000 in Jakarta alone are drug users, with at least 70 per cent getting their supply from clubs.
Most of these clubs are located in West Jakarta, an area which also contains many illicit manufacturing facilities.
Brigadier-General Ali Johardi, chief of the Jakarta division of the National Drugs Agency (BNN), said: "The problem has reached high proportions, such that we don't have enough anti-drug officers to crack down on this."
BNN chief, Commissioner-General Anang Iskandar, said the drug problem in the country has reached an "emergency situation".
Though Indonesia imposes the death penalty for drug use and trafficking, he says Indonesians seem to take a lackadaisical attitude towards drug consumption, thinking that small-scale use will not cause major health damage, and that such use also prevents them from getting caught.
Prisons are also running out of space for drug detainees.
About 40 per cent of the 150,000 Indonesians in prison are in for drug-related offences, according to the country's Justice and Human Rights Ministry.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says drug users in the country could hit a record 4.6 million by the end of the year if nothing is done.
That figure stood at 3.8 million in 2011.
The dire situation caused former Constitutional Court chief Mahfud MD to say last November that "drugs are far more dangerous than terrorism".
The nature of drug use is also changing.
Though cannabis users are still a majority - 2.8 million out of all drug users in Indonesia in 2011 - the use of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) like crystal meth and ecstasy is rapidly rising, estimated at 2.3 million users in the same year, according to BNN data.
There were about 110,000 heroin users last year.
A drug user is typically under 30 and a college student who consumes crystal meth or ecstasy, according to statistics in a report that was released by BNN and UNODC in late February.
Seizures of ATS spiked 79 per cent from 2010 to 2011, with police netting up to 1,161kg worth of crystal meth.
The UN report said that most of the demand for these new drugs is met by drug labs in Indonesia.
"At present, large and significant quantities of crystal meth and ecstasy are being manufactured in Indonesia, and the country has become a major supplier of ecstasy to the South-east Asian region," it said.
Smaller amounts of crystal meth, according to the report, are trafficked out of the country to markets in the region and beyond.
Police are on the hunt
for major agents here who import high-grade drugs internationally, such as a recent stash which officers say was from Japan and had a street value that crossed into the billions of rupiahs.
The authorities say that a covert network of runners are adept at establishing strong connections sealed with handsome kickbacks, which make operations hard to crack.
Some of these even penetrate the prisons, immigration authorities and police, as well as the judiciary.
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