Jakarta – Drug abuse has become a major social ill in Indonesia, especially among the young, a report said Sunday adding without urgent preventive action, "a new catastrophe" was in the making.
Drug counsellors said peer pressure, poor enforcement and lack of treatment facilities were among the key factors contributing to the rise of the drug scourge.
The Jakarta Post newspaper said drug use was no longer the domain of private parties and discotheques but could now be found in schools.
Joyce Djaelani, a counselor with a Yayasan Permata Hati Kita, a private rehabilitation center said a growing concern now was a rising trend of children using drugs and outbreaks of student brawls.
"What's more alarming is the fact that children have started to use drugs," she said, adding "the students take barbiturate pills before they fight."
Indonesia reportedly has over 1.3 million drug abusers out of its populations of 210 million people. Most drug users and addicts are young, aged between 15 and 35.
On Tuesday customs officials at Jakarta's international airport apprehended an Indonesian girl and her brother with 2.62 kilograms of heroin in their shoes.
The siblings in their early 20s, were passengers of Thai Airways from Bangkok and the estimated value of the heroin was some 250,000 dollars.
Even elementary school students have confessed to taking drugs. An 11-year-old student during a trial of a suspected drug trafficker recently said he had used barbiturate pills for six months.
While the young most often use barbiturate pills or inhale intoxicating agents like glues or gasoline, older addicts abuse ganja and heroine, the designer drug ecstasy, "shabu-shabu" (crystal methamphetamine), "putauw (low grade heroin) and cocaine, the Post said.
Joyce said the number of drug users surged when ecstasy became common in Indonesia in 1996. She called ecstasy the "gateway" to harder drugs like heroin, shabu-shabu and cocaine.
The Post said although the dangers of drugs were well-known, they had failed to stop drug experimentation, adding a lack of enforcement along with experts and facilities to treat drug addiction compounded the problem.
"The role of the police is ironic, it is an open secret that weak and discriminative law enforcement has worsened the drug problems," it said.
A 27-year-old former addict told the Post he was introduced to drugs when he was a university student by his friends.
The son of a businessman in Bali, the former addict said: "I know of some places in Bali where pushers openly sell drugs. In Kuta, for example, if you walk down certain alleys you will bump into strangers who will offer you any drug you want." Joyce also warned drug abuse may exert a much greater toll on society since there was a high risk of transmission of the HIV/AIDS virus among the addicts.
"If health administrators remin slow in dealing with the widespread drug problem, they may face a new catastrophe on their hands," said the Post.