International schools tackle drug woes

Claire Harvey, Contributor, Jakarta

At 11 p.m. on a Friday, some of the throbbing bars and nightclubs across Jakarta resemble junior high school playgrounds.

Hundreds of 14 and 15-year-olds dance and flirt in the strobe- flickered dark, sipping cocktails and smoking cigarettes with all the ease of twentysomethings.

Boys whose soft faces have never felt a razor nonchalantly hand credit cards to the bartenders in exchange for pitchers of beer. Girls gyrate on the dance floors in stretch tops and tight pants.

Nearly all are smoking cigarettes. Most are drunk. A few puff on joints. Some are soaring through the chemical euphoria of ecstasy.

And this is just the start of the night.

To be a young, wealthy expatriate teenager in Jakarta is to taste freedom and temptation which most Western youths don't discover until university.

The metropolis is their plaything: plenty of pocket money to spend, dozens of fantastic bars where age restrictions don't exist and easy-to-find drugs which are cheaper than movie tickets.

Not surprisingly, the expat teens are having the time of their lives.

"I'm so glad I'm not living back in the U.S.," says "Amy", 15, a student at one of Jakarta's international schools. "I wouldn't be able to drink until I was 21."

Amy goes out partying with her friends most weekends, with Rp 200,000 (US$20) from her parents to spend on nightclub entry and drinks. Her parents know she drinks alcohol and smokes, and they allow her to go clubbing as long as she sticks with a big group of friends.

What they don't know is that Amy is also experimenting with ecstasy.

"I've popped maybe five times in the past year and a half," Amy says. "It makes everything so much more fun, you just feel like dancing all night."

"James", 16, from Australia, says classmates boast about having tried shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine) and he has even heard of teens at another school trying heroin.

"There's a group of guys in my grade who smoke dope at school when they've got a lesson free," he says.

School authorities say it's only natural that students will experiment -- but parents and teachers are becoming increasingly concerned that drug use by very young teenagers is getting out of control in Jakarta.

"It's the senior students who sell the drugs," says one mother with two children at a Jakarta international school. "They give the younger kids the first pill for free and then after that it's about Rp 70,000 or Rp 35,000 for a half pill.

"But the big problem is, who knows what is in these pills? They call them ecstasy but they've probably been cooked up in some backyard laboratory, laced with God knows what.

"It's not like marijuana, where you can see what you're rolling into the cigarette."

Jakarta International School, which has been conducting random urine tests for drugs since 1979, is preparing to introduce sophisticated hair strand tests, which are more accurate.

Between 10 and 12 students are tested each week, and the samples are sent to a laboratory in New York state for analysis, JIS High School principal Bruce Leiper says.

"Students and parents sign a form at the beginning of each academic year agreeing to the random tests," Leiper says, adding that JIS also runs compulsory drug and alcohol awareness classes as part of the curriculum.

Next year JIS students will be visited by former drug users from the U.S.-based education group Freedom From Chemical Dependency, who first visited in 2001 to evaluate the school's drug problem and advise kids on how to avoid addiction.

"We don't automatically expel students if they are found with traces of drugs in their system or if they have drugs on school premises," Leiper said.

"We usually give them a second chance but not without a clear set of agreements that involve counseling and monthly urine or hair tests," he said, adding that any student caught trafficking drugs on school grounds is expelled immediately.

North Jakarta International School takes a hard line.

"Zero tolerance, urinalysis and if any students are caught they are immediately reported to the police and expelled," said principal Gary Lafow. "It's not a problem at this school."

At the Australian International School, "we don't believe in testing", said supervisory head of school Russell Keogh. "We believe through sympathetic and targeted education processes we can help students minimize their risk."

All students are given general education about the risks of substance abuse and teachers are trained to recognize the symptoms. When the school suspects a student has a problem, it contacts the parents and arranges counseling for adult and child.

"We're not stupid; schools can't stop experimentation but we can try to minimize the risk," Keogh said.

Elementary school students at the Singapore International School learn about drugs, alcohol and sex through regular health education classes.

"Our students are very well protected by their parents -- in fact some of them are overprotected," said principal Anula Samuel. "We recently conducted classes about puberty and many of the 11 and 12-year-old students did not even know the basic facts of life -- and that naivete is a problem. From now on we will go all out and tell them everything they need to know."

For many teenagers, Friday night is the time to party.

They meet at a popular Mexican restaurant in Kemang, South Jakarta, at 9 p.m. and crawl to a variety of bars, often ending up at a recently reopened disco in a Central Jakarta hotel or other popular nightclubs.

Young expatriates in Jakarta are presented with great temptation, and the increasing popularity of cellular phones makes arranging drug deals easier than ever, Leiper said.

"We know that the students are regularly offered drugs by dealers on the streets and in malls so our counseling is designed to help them deal with that," he said.

"A lot of experts tell us that in Jakarta the atmosphere is a little more risky for students than other parts of Southeast Asia because drugs are so cheap and so widely available here."

Leiper believes while drugs are a big problem, alcohol abuse is more of a concern.

"Students can walk into 95 percent of stores and buy wine and liquor -- even younger high school students are able to purchase alcohol and cigarettes freely."

Last year a group of boys at one international junior high school were caught stealing cellular phones from their classmates and selling them to buy drugs. Urine tests showed traces of drugs in their systems and several boys were expelled.

One father is so concerned by the drug problem that he has decided to send his children to boarding schools in Australia rather than risk them getting into trouble here.

"The drug scene has only got big in the past year," says "Dan", 15, a student at JIS. "I guess it's like every other kind of trend -- one kid starts doing it and then before you know it, everyone's doing it."

Ultimately, says Leiper, the whole expatriate community needs to face the problem -- and that includes parents who he says are sometimes "naive".

"There is a great deal of genuine concern on the part of teachers. We're doing the best we can without interfering too much with the decisions of families. The cliche is true -- it takes a village to deal with problems like these."

But some parents just don't acknowledge that there is a problem.

"I'm sure some kids are taking drugs, but definitely not my daughter," said another parent whose 17-year-old daughter attends North Jakarta International School.

"She doesn't even drink and I don't give her much pocket money -- and she has so many sports and activities to keep her busy. Why would she get mixed up with drugs?"