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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3 get death penalty for 'war on drugs' murder

Three police officers were sentenced to death yesterday for the 2004 murder of a 17-year-old during the Thaksin Shinawatra government's war on drugs.

Kiattisak Thitboonkrong, of Kalasin province, was arrested in July 2004 for alleged motorcycle theft, but he was found hanged from the ceiling of a hut in Roi Et's Chang Han district days after being released from Muang Kalasin police station.

His relatives suspected the teenager was a victim of extra-judicial killing, which was widespread during the war on drugs campaign between 2003 and 2005.

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PHUKET: Following the reported drowning of a runaway student, the owner of the Por Noh Klong Gom School during a video-conference with Royal Thai Police Deputy Commissioner-General Adul Saengsingkaew admitted that "improvements" to the school's management were urgently needed.

The video conference, at Krabi Provincial Hall on Saturday, was in reaction to the drowning and subsequent mass-walkout by hundreds of other students from the youth drug rehabilitation facility two days earlier.

Joined by Krabi Governor Prasit Osathanon and Krabi Provincial Police Commander Jamroon Ruenrom, school owner Anurak Ginglek explained to Lt Gen Adul what had occurred and what steps he was taking to improve the rehabilitation center.

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The United Nations Development Programme has just issued a report on the problem of Aids. A distinguished, 14-member panel spent two years compiling a 145-page report.

It concludes that the major block in addressing the HIV and Aids epidemic is "punitive laws". It recommends wiping off the books all current and important laws on prostitution, and many that seek to control illegal trafficking and abuse of drugs.

In short, it is a muddle-headed and poorly constructed recommendation which actually fails to address a hugely serious, deadly problem. Instead of treating HIV and Aids as a grave problem for families and communities, the two-year UNDP Global Commission on HIV and the Law considers the disease and its victims as problems in isolation. Its recommended help to actual and potential HIV/Aids victims is minimal, but many of its claimed solutions would cause serious harm to society at large.

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KRABI : More than 200 drug addicts undergoing rehabilitation at a pondok school in Krabi's Muang district yesterday fled after learning their teachers and caregivers had allegedly beaten three rehab patients to death.

The addicts escaped from the Klong Kam pondok school about 1.30pm.

They converged on a mosque in the Ban Koh Klang community, located about 2km away from the school, to protest against the harsh conditions and the alleged murders of three men in rehab.

Wasan Rodnual, 24, one of the escapees, said three addicts aged between 20 and 27 were beaten to death by the school's teachers and counsellors on July 23 after they tried to escape. The three were Muslims from the deep South, he said.

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Police Think Attack Was to Avenge Key Arrests

YALA : Five policemen were killed by a car bomb in Raman district Wednesday, in an attack which authorities believe was in retaliation for recent drug suspect arrests.

The bomb exploded Wednesday afternoon as a pickup truck, carrying six drug suppression officers led by Pol Lt Sutham Onthong, was approaching a canal by the Wang Phaya-U Po road in Ban Buke Yaera, police said.

The blast killed Pol Lt Sutham and four of his subordinates _ Pol Snr Sgt Maj Waeuseng Waedeng, Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chakkrit Chaisali, Pol Sgt Natthaphong Bunkomon and Pol Sgt Wichanon Namphakdi.

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More than 37,000 students across the nation face an invasion of drugs, with many pupils and education officials trafficking addictive substances, it was revealed in talks at a high school yesterday.

The information was unveiled during a visit from Deputy Education Minister Sakda Khongpetch and officials from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board and police at Satriwittaya School.

The officials searched for drugs and randomly tested students and education authorities for substance use.

It was part of the ministry's "White (clean) School" anti-drug campaign.

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I Was Sitting in a Movie Theatre in San Francisco, California in 1974 Howling With Laughter As I Watched the Insane Movie "Reefer Madness", Which Was About the "Horrors" of Smoking Marijuana.

I never laughed so hard in my life.

Today, over 35 years later, the "war on drugs" is still a joke. But it's no longer funny.

It's not funny when over 2,500 people - many who were not even connected to drugs - were murdered in extrajudicial killings during Thaksin's demented "drug war".

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At first the tablets made life easier for Santhisuk: they helped him endure the long hours lugging heavy fabric bales in a Bangkok textiles factory.

Gradually he noticed he was angrier and more aggressive on the days he skipped them. But it was only when arrested for a third time - and sent to rehabilitation at a Buddhist temple - that he admitted his addiction to methamphetamine. Now clean, the 19-year-old labourer is worrying about what will happen when he leaves the sanctuary of Wat Saphan and returns home.

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Residents Resigned To Way Hit Movie Captures Sleaze That Makes Vegas Seem Tame

BANGKOK-Thailand's tourism chief hasn't seen the Warner Bros. box office smash "The Hangover: Part II," which is based in Bangkok. Maybe that's just as well.

"What's it like?" asked Supol Sripan, general-director of the country's tourism department, on a recent Thursday afternoon.

Well, it shows his nation's capital as chock-full of drug-dealing mobsters, drunken bar fights and hazily remembered sex in the back rooms of brothels. In the movie there are also car chases through teeming streets, and a chain-smoking monkey.

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Re: "Jail the drug dealers, free the users" by Jon Ungphakorn (BP, May 4). Perhaps the best example of drug war failure is the United States' experience with marijuana. Despite zero tolerance, the US has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available.

If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal. The drug war is a cultural inquisition, not a public health campaign.

Children of drug war inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Not only do the children lose out, but society as a whole does, too. Incarcerating non-violent drug offenders alongside hardened criminals is the equivalent of providing them with a taxpayer-funded education in anti-social behaviour.

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The war on drugs hasn't worked in Thailand and it hasn't worked at the global level.

After 50 years of harsh drug prohibition enforcement policies throughout the world following the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the only people smiling are the drug dealers and the officials in their pay.

The UK drug policy coalition "Count the Costs" (countthecosts.org) states that: "The war on drugs creates massive costs, resulting from the enforcement-led approach that puts organised crime in control of the trade." These costs are listed by the coalition as:

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When the government recently announced its intention to embark on a new "war on drugs", it was answered by a loud chorus from many corners of society that there must not be a repeat of the 2003 campaign launched by Thaksin Shinawatra. That war on drugs has become notorious internationally for the more than 2,500 extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and a total disregard for the rule of law.

The present government has taken pains to assure the public that there will be no replay of that dark chapter in Thailand's history. Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban pledged: "This government will follow the law strictly in drug suppression operations."

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