Pubdate: Sat, 27 Mar 2004
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Page: A16
Copyright: 2004, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jason Szep, Reuters News Agency
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?158 (Club Drugs)

SINGAPORE ATTACKS DRUG PROBLEM WITH NEW SOCIAL WEAPON: SHAME

SINGAPORE -- His baggy pants stained by urine, his eyes shut, arms limp, 
legs wide open, the young Singaporean man lies passed out on a couch in a 
nightclub.

He is, literally, the poster boy for a new generation of abusers of 
synthetic "club drugs" in a country known for aggressively enforcing some 
of the world's toughest drug laws.

The man's image is appearing at Singapore's famously tidy bus stops and 
subway stations in framed glossy posters and in popular magazines. In 
another poster, an even younger ethnic Chinese man is nearly passed out in 
his own vomit next to a urinal.

The shock advertisements are part of an anti-drug campaign that reflects 
official unease at growing use of ketamine, a hallucinogenic anesthetic. It 
comes after a major policy shift last year that introduced 24-hour partying 
to conservative Singapore.

It also comes after a year in which synthetic club drugs overtook heroin as 
the drug of choice and young ethnic Chinese outnumbered Malays as the 
biggest group of drug abusers for the first time in 15 years.

Neighbours Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are also confronting rising 
synthetic drug use, from ecstasy to more toxic methamphetamines such as 
ice, or ketamine, intended originally as a horse tranquillizer and often 
known just as K.

In addition to harsh laws that include mandatory death penalties for anyone 
aged 18 or older caught trafficking more than 250 grams of 
methamphetamines, Singapore aims to show that the drugs can be, among other 
things, just plain embarrassing.

The new campaign, broadcast on radio and TV and given wide play in 
magazines, aims to portray ketamine users as dysfunctional social outcasts, 
their clothing blotted by vomit and urine after taking the drug, their 
mental agility blunted.

"It focuses on how stupid and embarrassing a ketamine abuser can be under 
the influence of the drug," said Lim Hock San, chairman of the National 
Council of Drug Abuse. Young Singaporeans, he told Reuters, "need to stay 
drug-free or risk losing their social credibility."

State media campaigns have moulded life in orderly Singapore since its 
independence in 1965, exhorting citizens to improve their lot in nearly 
every aspect of living, from staying hygienic to speaking better English 
and even smiling more.

Officials stress that drug use is well under control in the country of four 
million people.

Drug arrests fell 47 per cent in 2003, largely reflecting a 75-per-cent 
tumble in heroin arrests, recent Central Narcotics Bureau figures show.

But, like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, concern over synthetic drugs is on 
the rise. The UN-funded International Narcotics Control Board says that 
about two-thirds of the world's methamphetamine seizures take place in East 
and Southeast Asia.

The pills are often manufactured in China, Myanmar or the Philippines, 
according to the INCB, and are integral to all-night parties at many of 
Southeast Asia's hundreds of clubs catering to young crowds drawn by 
furiously fast techno music.

In Singapore, ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamine abusers accounted for 
54 per cent of total drug arrests in 2003, with the number of ketamine 
arrests nearly doubling to 497 from 252 in 2002, a dramatic rise from just 
14 in 1999.

The rise came in a year in which Singapore relaxed rules on nightspots to 
allow 24-hour partying in an attempt to shatter its traditionally 
conservative image. Many of Singapore's ketamine users, however, were 
rounded up in raids on karaoke lounges.

The new media offensive, targeting males aged 15 to 30, includes a plan for 
an on-line game at a ketamine information website (http://www.k-facts.com).

"We want you to have some fun while you find out more about K. So don't 
worry, it's not all serious," it says.

The campaign has already sown controversy. Elderly Singaporeans were 
offended by a TV ad that draws parallels between a young man on ketamine 
and an absent-minded 80-year-old women suffering from memory loss.

"Demeaning advertisements such as this undermine the dignity of aging," Loh 
Boon Seah wrote in a letter to the Straits Times.

Mr. Lim, the council's chairman, said the intention was never to demean 
anyone and the thrust was to illustrate the harmful effects of ketamine: 
memory loss, co-ordination deficiency and lack of bladder control.

The one-month campaign is backed by Singapore's strictly enforced anti-drug 
laws that include mandatory death penalties for anyone caught with more 
than 15 grams of heroin or 500 grams of marijuana.

Rights group Amnesty International said in January there was "no convincing 
evidence" that drug use in Singapore had been curbed by the executions, 
which it ranked among the world's highest on a per capita basis.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom