Life full of temptation for some expatriate kids

Life full of temptation for some expatriate kids

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Claire Harvey
Contributor
Jakarta
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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?"