Last July Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo echoed the Philippines’ murderous chief executive Rodrigo Duterte, saying police should shoot drug traffickers on sight to deal with what Jokowi, as the president is known, termed a narcotics emergency facing the country.

That is an anti-drug tactic that has been condemned universally by the United Nations and the rest of the international community and earned Duterte an investigation by the International Criminal Court, which he has defied. It has also proven to be ineffective.

Nonetheless, increased narcotics use is worrying, not just in Indonesia but across the nations that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia and Australia as well. Amphetamine Type Stimulant (ATS) drug circulation has continued to increase in the region throughout 2017. Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) say crystal meth is now the greatest illicit threat facing the country.

Known in Indonesia as “shabu shabu,” crystal methamphetamine usage has expanded exponentially. Authorities in February seized a record 1.6 tonnes off a ship near the island of Batam, a few kilometers across the Malacca Strait from Singapore, the second major bust in a month. Officials confiscated another tonne earlier in February.

The increased drug trafficking and high demand mean money. Narcotics and ecstasy, another popular drug, are not inexpensive in Indonesia. Only Japan, New Zealand, and Australia are more expensive. Despite the high price, demand has pushed up the amount of drugs being circulated in Indonesia constantly higher. A recent raid in Anyer, Banten, a coastal town on the Sunda Strait, confiscated a full tonne in 2017.

Source:

https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/indonesia-growing-narcotics-problem/