‘Drug Free’ ASEAN by 2015?

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‘Drug Free’ ASEAN by 2015?

12 August 2015

They called it “Drug-Free ASEAN by 2015.” It was proclaimed many times by ASEAN leaders: We would be ushered into a miraculous new era of the only region in the world where the scourge of narcotics had been banished.

By setting this 2015 deadline for the elimination of drugs, ASEAN leaders seemed to believe that the “war on drugs” in Southeast Asia could mysteriously triumph through an orthodox mix of zealous eradication, enhanced crackdowns on drug trafficking, and ruthless law enforcement

Now that we are well into 2015, we can consider the reality. Thailand’s prisons are bursting at the seams thanks to harsh sentences for minor drug offences. Meanwhile, Indonesia has carried out a string of executions, and yet the flow of methamphetamines trafficked in the region has almost quadrupled since 2008.

More than 70 percent of Thailand’s 330,000 prisoners are behind bars for drug offences, and about 82 percent of Thailand’s female inmates are mothers, many of whom are incarcerated for minor drug offences.

In Jakarta, the latest episode in the drugs war is the spate of death row executions by President Jokowi Wododo, who has refused to even consider the merits and legal requirements of considering clemency on humanitarian grounds.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that in the past seven years seizures of methamphetamine in the Asia-Pacific region have almost quadrupled: from 11 tons in 2008, to more than 40 tons in 2013. During that same period opium cultivation has doubled and heroin addiction rates have spiraled in China and Myanmar.

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Thumbnail Flickr CC IAEA Imagebank