End the criminalisation of drug use

Earlier this month, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its latest regional report showing another year of record-breaking increases in drug seizures made by countries in Southeast and East Asia, particularly of methamphetamine and ketamine -- both synthetic drugs produced and trafficked regionally for the past two decades.

While increased seizures may indicate successes in efforts to reduce the size of drug markets, the fact that retail prices have dropped in Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia suggests that the availability of synthetic drugs is greater than ever before. This has been reaffirmed in the UNODC World Drug Report 2026, released earlier this week to mark World Drug Day today.

Increased drug seizures have overwhelmingly focused on ramping up law enforcement operations and scaling up levels of punishment, with the hope that this punitive approach would deter people from engaging with the illegal drug trade.

Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia impose death penalty sentences for trafficking. Although the Philippines abolished the death penalty, under the former president Rodrigo Duterte's anti-drugs campaign, 8,663 people were killed in extra-judicial executions according to official reports (the UN's human rights office believes the actual number could be well over 20,000), for which he is facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.