Drug abuse is not all the same: Health expert

JAKARTA (JP): The future law on psychotropic drugs should prescribe clear-cut guidelines on punishments for drug users, traffickers and producers, a health expert said yesterday.

Al Bachri Husin, director of the Fatmawati Hospital's drug dependence section in Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post that psychotropic substances -- main ingredients found in the notorious Ecstasy pills -- differ from those of narcotics.

"It follows that terms of punishment should also differ," he said, elaborating that narcotic addicts have a higher potential for committing crime and violence and not psychotropic drug addicts, particularly Ecstasy users.

Al Bachri added that psychotropic drugs provide a surge of energy and vitality, together with a blissful and hallucinogenic sense of euphoria. People getting "high" from narcotics, however, are often lost in their own worlds.

Ecstasy, the street name of a designer substance brewed by illegal factories, generally comprises MDMA or MDA, which can have a great physical impact on the brain's neuron cells. It generally circulates in discotheques frequented by youths and executives.

Frequent use of Ecstasy is harmful, because the body exerts too much energy, which can cause both physical and mental exhaustion.

Thus far, there is no law to prosecute traffickers and users of Ecstasy. Police have been hampered in their fight against Ecstasy because the 1976 Anti-narcotics Law, which some observers consider outdated, does not classify the drug as a narcotic. The law confines narcotics to marijuana, cocaine and morphine

The police have resorted to using a 1949 Law on Dangerous Drugs, the 1992 Health Law No. 23 and Article 204 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the supply of dangerous drugs.

People breaking these laws are subject to between seven years and life imprisonment or a fine ranging from Rp 140 million to Rp 300 million.

"As the narcotics' law stipulates, I expect different degrees of severity in the punishments of traffickers, users and producers," Al Bachri said. He said that generally, drug users should be viewed more as victims who should not be imprisoned at all. Instead, they should receive medical care, rather than be treated as perpetrators.

Psychotropic drugs actually serve medical purposes, such as treating mental disorders and acting as pain killers.

The long-awaited bill on psychotropic drugs rules that violators can be punished with up to 15 years in prison or fined up to Rp 140 million.

"I would even advocate that traffickers and producers be sentenced to death if necessary. But definitely not the users, who are actually victims," he said.

City Police spokesman Lt. Col Iman Haryatna told the Post that the police department expects the impending law to be as severe as possible to deter offenders from repeating the crimes.

"A lot goes into capturing offenders. Is it worth the cost, time and burden we bear if they were only sentenced to several months in jail?" Iman said. He added that the police would whole heartedly accept the policy crafted by legislators, as well as judges' verdicts.

A noted psychiatrist, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Post that considerations put forth in discerning degrees of severity as well as offenders' statuses depended on the spectacles policy makers choose to wear.

"Could you tell me, for example, which is more severe: a life sentence or the death penalty?" the scholar asked. (14/bsr)