Indonesia is facing an epidemic of drug-taking and HIV infection among its young people, writes Tom Hyland.

The relentless techno beat is so loud your insides vibrate. Strobe and laser lights flash across the crowd of maybe 5000 that surges in waves across the vast dance floor. It's 2am on a Saturday and amid the noise and crush, the mood in the Millennium nightclub in north Jakarta is a strangely mellow mix of joy and energy.

The bar is doing a slow trade; the preferred intoxicant for the young middle-class Indonesians who make up the crowd is ecstasy, the party drug.

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But It Has Helped Dozens of Addicts in Indonesia, Particularly Those From Poor Families Who Can't Afford Pricey Clinics

JAKARTA - Drug addicts in a crowded Jakarta kampung are being submitted to one of the toughest drying-out regimes around.

They are being chained to a post in a mosque for weeks on end.

But the unconventional cure has helped dozens over the past few years as the number of drug abusers in the country has exploded.

Nineteen-year-old Arif does not know how long he has been staying at the Nurul Alam Mosque.

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MEDAN, Indonesia -- Greater Medan Police officers confiscated nearly 1 ton of heroin on Tuesday in one of the country's largest drug hauls ever.

The heroin was recovered from the houses of three men in Dusun XII Bandar Khalifah, Deli Serdang regency.

Police detectives' chief Adj. Comr. Maruli Siahaan said the raid on the houses in the early hours of Tuesday followed the carrying out of surveillance in the housing complex over three days.

The three houses are located side by side.

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Some 200 drug-free young people from at least 23 countries in the Asia Pacific region are gathering for the first-ever Asian youth congress on drug abuse prevention in Sanur, Bali, to seek solutions to rampant drug abuse among their peers.

Veronica Colondam, chief executive officer of Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa (YCAB), Indonesia's leading non-governmental organization working in drug abuse prevention, said on Monday that young people should initiate effective prevention programs for drug abusers.

"There are three reasons why an effective prevention program should be initiated by the young: they know why their peers are attracted to drugs; they are in touch with the latest trends in the youth world; they know how to transmit the message effectively to their peers," Colondam said.

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CIBEUREUM, Indonesia -- Shivering in the early morning mist, recovering heroin addict Slamet prepares to start another day of Islamic prayer and meditation. The 28-year-old man used to spend most of his time stealing and shooting up. Now, after eight months in an Islamic drug rehabilitation center high in the hills of west Java, he is becoming a rare success story in Indonesia's often feeble war on drugs.

"Before, people used to look at me like I was trash. All I could think about was heroin. Now, I can eat, sleep and pray like a normal person. I feel good," he says.

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CIBEUREUM, Indonesia -- Shivering in the early morning mist, recovering heroin addict Slamet prepares to start another day of Islamic prayer and meditation.

The 28-year-old man used to spend most of his time stealing and shooting up. Now, after eight months in an Islamic drug-rehabilitation center high in the hills of west Java, he is becoming a rare success story in Indonesia's often feeble war on drugs.

"Before, people used to look at me like I was trash. All I could think about was heroin. Now, I can eat, sleep and pray like a normal person. I feel good," he says.

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JAKARTA - An executive-committee meeting of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) began with party leaders taking a urine test.

''This is part of the PDI-P's commitment to combating the use of drugs,'' deputy secretary-general Pramono Anung said after the party's weekly meeting on Tuesday.

The order for the tests came from Ms Megawati, who is the party chairman.

She was exempted because, according to protocol, examination of the President of Indonesia can be undertaken only by presidential doctors.

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Jakarta: Indonesian police are searching for the ringleaders of an international drug gang after the largest ecstasy bust in the country's history. Police raided a house in Jakarta on Sunday and recovered 150,000 pills and enough chemicals to produce another 8,000. Police estimated the entire cache was worth $US520,000 ($995,000).

Police Brigadier General Edward Aritonang said it was the largest ecstasy bust in Indonesia, and that police had been trying to break up the gang for almost three years.

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It Will Investigate And Prosecute Offenders To Combat A Rise In The Trafficking And Use Of Narcotics

JAKARTA - Confronted with an alarming increase in the number of drug users, the government has set up a more powerful agency to combat drug abuse.

State Minister of Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin said on Tuesday that the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) would have the authority to probe and take legal action against drug users and pushers.

'Drug abuse is an issue that needs immediate attention... We need an institution with more teeth to tackle this situation because the number of drug abusers is increasing.'

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JAKARTA: The Singapore office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is holding an international narcotics law enforcement training course here for Indonesian narcotics police officers.

The course, held in cooperation with the American Embassy in Jakarta, was launched by U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph L. Boyce on Monday.

National Police Inspectorate General head Comr. Gen. Alwi Lutan also addressed the opening session of the course, which has been given in various countries around the world.

Lutan expressed a commitment to work closely with the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to combat the trafficking of narcotics.

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Amid mounting concerns due to the increasing numbers of drug abusers in the capital, the government seems to be powerless to contain the problem and curb the distribution of illegal drugs.

Alarmingly high figures on drug abuse and trafficking were released by a consortium of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in October 2000 which stated that 3.4 million people, or more than one-third of Jakarta's total population of 8.9 million, are known to be drug abusers. If all the data is accurate, it means that in only one year, the figure rose by a whopping 70 percent from 1999 statistics.

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The South Sumatra High Court has imposed the death penalty on Kiagus Zainal Abidinagainst, who had previously been sentenced to 18 years in prison by a lower court for possessing 58.7 kilograms of marijuana.

Hairul Sutrisno, a clerk of the high court, told The Jakarta Post here on Wednesday that the decision was made by a panel of four judges in a hearing presided over by Judge Harifin Tumpa, in the city on Dec. 3, 2001, which would soon be delivered to the district court.

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The latest, most up-to-date report on the spread of HIV in Asia released by the Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP) Network shows how Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Nepal and Vietnam have registered a marked increases in HIV infection.

Two years ago, these countries reported a fairly slow spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

The report, which was released on the eve of the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Melbourne last month, highlights specific examples of the rapid HIV spread among specific sub-populations, such as among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Indonesia, where HIV levels have increased from around 15 percent in 1999 to 40 percent in 2000.

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Antidrug activists have hailed President Megawati Soekarnoputri's tough stance against drug dealers, saying it was a significant step on the long road to effectively combating drug trafficking.

However, they warned that the effort would be futile unless the government formulated a clear national strategy for dealing with the issue.

A lawyer and antidrug activist, Henry Yosodiningrat, took the view that assigning the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to take charge of coordinating the antidrug campaign without being backed up by clear strategies would not be of much use.

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Criticized for its futile attempts to curb drug trafficking, the government has now decided to change tack.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri has ordered National Intelligence Agency chief A.M. Hendropriyono to take charge of coordinating the antidrug activities undertaken by all state institutions.

So far, this job has been the responsibility of the National Narcotics Coordination Agency (BKNN), which was inaugurated in July 2000 by Megawati, the then vice president.

The BKNN, which is directed by Comr. Gen. Da'i Bachtiar, was founded after the government learned that between 1997 and 1999 the number of drug abuse cases had risen by 100 percent. The BKNN is answerable directly to the President.

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Nowhere in the world is the practice of harm reduction, as explained in the accompanying article, uncontroversial. For a start, even those among us who understand the basics of drug use and abuse often find it difficult to appreciate the logic of providing substitute drugs or clean needles to drug addicts.

Surely we are trying to cure them of their addiction, not sustain them in their habit?

But the fact is, even the best-run drug treatment centers have a very low success rate. Some may claim that they "cure" a large percentage of those they accept, although such figures are often questionable. But even if correct, that leaves at least half with their habit, continuing to use drugs. Should we ignore them?

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Indonesia now faces a serious threat from HIV among its rapidly increasing number of injecting drug users (IDUs). A recent report from Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP) Network notes a stark increase of HIV levels among Indonesian IDUs from 15 percent in 1999 to 40 percent in 2000, followed by an equivalent increase of HIV levels among sex workers.

It will soon be followed by an increase of HIV among the general population, including pregnant women, just like in Thailand.

In 1987, HIV in Thailand grew from less than 1 percent to more than 40 percent of IDUs in just 10 months. Within five to six years in the northeast of Thailand, one in six male military recruits and one in eight pregnant women had become infected. Now, almost 2 percent of the Thai population is infected.

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LONDON (JP): The dam burst last weekend. There had been cracks in the consensus and growing trickles of dissent, but suddenly the issue of legalizing the use of marijuana (cannabis) is in a major country -- and an English-speaking one, at that.

In Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland it is practically impossible to get arrested for buying or using "soft drugs". In the Netherlands, users may buy up to five grams of cannabis or hashish for private use at 1,500 licensed "coffee shops," and they are opening two drive-through outlets in the border town of Venlo to cater to German purchasers. Even in Canada, Conservative leader and former prime minister Joe Clark is openly calling for the decriminalization of cannabis. But that is still far short of what Sir David Ramsbotham, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons, suggested last Sunday in Britain.

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JAKARTA (JP): Few people in Indonesia can now be unaware that we face a major threat from drugs. Hardly a day goes by without a report of a drug seizure, arrest of a trafficker, or a death by overdose. We are seeing wider evidence of our young people turning to injecting themselves with heroin or other illicit drugs. And slowly the size of the problem of transmission of HIV and AIDS that this brings is becoming more apparent.

Last month, the Ministry of Health reported another 59 cases of HIV and AIDS resulting from injecting drug use. Now, this is the cause of one in four of the reported cases of infection, up from less than one in a hundred less than two years back.

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JAKARTA (JP): Noted psychiatrist Dadang Hawari proposed on Saturday an integrated system -- a combination of medical, psychological and religious therapies -- to effectively cure drug addicts and reduce the percentage of relapse.

Dadang said the existing system has failed to provide satisfactory results.

"Many programs offered only focus on the medical aspect. Sometimes, the addicts are caged and made unconscious," he told a seminar here.

The number of drug addicts in the country is reported to be around 1.3 million, with a mortality rate of 17.16 percent.

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