The illicit drug trade, typically associated with the country's larger cities, has now spread to every village across the archipelago, an official from the Social Affairs Ministry said.

"I would say that all villages in Indonesia have been affected by drug trafficking from Aceh in the western tip of Sumatra to the Indonesian eastern regions," said Max H. Tuapattimain, the ministry's director of rehabilitation for drug users.

His remarks came during a walk-a-thon held in conjunction with International Anti-Narcotics Day on Saturday.

Max said the number of drug addicts in the country had reached 3.6 million, or 1.5 percent of the population. About 80 percent of the country's drug addicts were aged between 15- and 39-years-old, or 50 percent aged between 15- and 29-years-old.

The number of drug addicts using intravenous injections to get high – thus exposing them to greater risk of contracting HIV/AIDS – made up almost 40 percent of narcotics abusers in the nation, Max said.

That figure is believed to be a low estimate, as the government believes there are many more addicts who remain unrecorded.

A National Narcotics Agency (BNN) survey in 2008 extrapolated that unless firmer education and rehabilitation efforts were employed, drug addicts could make up 1.99 percent of the population by 2015.