In response to your editorial entitled "Drug war is flagging", on Jan 19, the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Bangkok wishes to state the following:

1. Indonesia is now confronted by drugs and precursor abuse, an emergency that requires extraordinary measures. The Indonesian government in exercising its constitutional duty to impose stern actions within the framework of Indonesian laws against drugs-related offences which are regarded as one of the most serious crimes.

2. The execution has been imposed on anybody regardless of nationality based on strong legal evidence and through a judicial process. It is carried out as a last resort and only after all legal options have been exhausted, including appeals and requests for presidential pardons. The law stipulates that the death penalty is exercised in accordance with the level of the offence, such as that distributors, producers, and drug lords.

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Reading the article "Punishments for drug offences to be reviewed" was like grabbing a cup of water after a long slog through a desert. How many young people's lives have been unfairly ruined by the draconian drug laws in Thailand and other Southeast Asian bureaucracies tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands? Thailand's drug laws follow those of the US note for note. America is slowly getting reasonable on that topic, but I'm surprised Thailand is following just by months instead of years.

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The world's elder statesmen have a problem when it comes to drug policy. They are increasingly coming out in favour of broad legalisation, but their message is having a hard time getting through thanks to decades of anti-drug propaganda from the governments in which they participated.

Three years ago, a group called the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report denouncing the "war on drugs" for increasing violence and failing to curb consumption. It got a lot of attention because its members included such luminaries as former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former United Nations secretary- general Kofi Annan, former US secretary of state George Schultz, former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chief Javier Solana and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. These are serious, powerful men, not potheads or irresponsible anarchists.

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Three Bang Chan policemen who shot at a female university student's car during a drug bust have been transferred pending an investigation, said deputy national police chief Pongsapat Pongcharoen.

Speaking to the media about the incident, Pol Gen Pongsapat said the officers have been re-assigned to administrative positions.

Pol Sub-Lt Supot Toket, Pol Snr Sgt Maj Rassami Theptha and Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chamnian Khandaeng have been assigned to work at police stations under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Police Division 4.

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LCT backs attempted murder charge

Three Bang Chan policemen who mistook a female law student from Chulalongkorn University for a drug dealer and opened fire at her car should be charged with attempted murder, said the Lawyers Council of Thailand (LCT).

Sunthorn Payak, deputy chairman of the LCT, said the three policemen shot at the car even though they knew someone was driving it.

The people responsible for that had intent to harm or to kill, said the lawyer, who is in charge of providing legal aid for the council.

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We Need a New Approach to Stem the Damage Being Done by the Narcotics Trade

At roughly the same time the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime released its annual report on the narcotics trade, the London School of Economics (LSE), backed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists, issued another, calling for a change in mindset on the way the trade is handled.

A global "war on drugs" was announced more than two decades ago, but to little apparent effect, with the trade even more lucrative and widespread now than it was back then. We are no closer to eradicating the problem, and that's mainly because the global community is fighting the wrong enemy. Governments policies have left the market in illicit drugs unregulated and users unprotected.

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Two drug couriers were killed and 100,000 methamphetamine pills seized in two clashes between soldiers of the Pha Muang Force and a band of drug traffickers near the Thai-Myanmar border in Chiang Mai's Mae Ai district on Sunday morning, according to force commander Maj Banjerd Changpoonthong.

Maj Gen Banjerd said the clashes followed the deployment of combined teams of regular soldiers and rangers to border areas on suspicion that drugs would be smuggled across the border during the Songkran festival.

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TWO American states have taken the plunge: Colorado and Washington recently voted to decriminalise possession, if you are over 21, of small amounts of marijuana (although you still can't smoke it in public there). But the White House is warning that these state moves are in violation of federal law the Controlled Substances Act which the government gives notice it intends to continue to enforce.

Indeed, President Obama is thinking about more than a warning: he might actually sue the states, and any others that follow Colorado and Washington's leads. Pot legalisation proponents, however, point to the fact that the states' change in the law has been hailed by local law enforcement, because being able to leave small-scale pot users alone means freedup resources for police to go after violent crime.

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