Tough Ecstasy law

At last our law enforcement agencies will soon have a legislation allowing them to deal with the Ecstasy menace more effectively. The bill on psychotropic drugs, which was passed by the House of Representatives Tuesday, will empower courts to punish, not only those who trade in Ecstasy pills, but also those who abuse the drug.

No one could ask for a tougher legislation when President Soeharto signs the bill into law, which is expected soon.

The final version of the bill, as it was endorsed by the House, makes it a crime for anyone to use, distribute, possess, store, trade and produce psychotropic drugs that fall into Category I, the most dangerous and harmful group to which Ecstasy belongs. It sets a minimum sentence of four years imprisonment. This means that possessing just one Ecstasy pill makes someone automatically liable to spend four years behind bars.

The proposed law gets tougher for more serious offenses, reaching up to 15 years imprisonment. It also has an additional clause, which was apparently added at a later stage of deliberation in the House, suggesting the death penalty for members of Ecstasy syndicates. No one could accuse the House of being insensitive to the Ecstasy problem.

As with most other problems facing this country, a weak law and its weak enforcement has been at the root of the Ecstasy problem. Although the police last year virtually declared war on Ecstasy, many of their operations faltered in the absence of any effective legislation. The raids on discotheques, and more recently on partying youths at Jakarta's Ancol beach, may have helped spotlight the Ecstasy problem. But judging by the rare convictions in court in the past year, one could not help feel that these raids have simply become hyped-up media events.

A law is only as tough as the persons who apply it, and this means that a lot now depends on the judges. Unfortunately, this is where one tends to become pessimistic. There have been many instances where our judges seemed above many of the problems society is facing. We recall the massive public outcry last year of the light sentences that courts handed out for rapists, even though sexual crimes were on the rise.

Even in applying the 1976 narcotics law, Indonesian judges have been relatively timid compared to their counterparts in Malaysia and Singapore, where the death penalty is pronounced and applied more frequently. Recent political trials also showed that many judges were not in tune with the conditions in society. Is the law on psychotropic drugs going to meet the same fate -- tough in words, but weak on application? Are judges going to continue to issue rulings based on what they hear within the confines of their court chambers, irrespective of how serious the problem is in the real world?

If the proposed law, with all its tough penalties, is going to be any deterrent at all -- and this indeed was the intention -- then it has to be applied firmly.

Leaving aside the pros-and-cons of capital punishment, the message that the House of Representatives sent in passing the bill this week reflected the growing public demand to deal with the Ecstasy problem more effectively. The least that law enforcement agencies, particularly the courts should do, once the bill becomes law, is to show their equal resoluteness in applying the law.