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7/7 Southeast Asia & drugs - Conclusion

  • Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy
  • Jun 28, 2016
  • 8 min read

Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar, although representing very different contexts, histories and environments in terms of drug control policies, have clearly shown that the proclaimed unified prohibitionist policy view on the matter imposed by the ASEAN is slowly shattering.

Despite the heterogenous nature of the different countries we have observed, several central trends are shared: a cultural context hostile to drug use which construct “both intoxication and dependence as socially undesirable and a sign of moral weakness” (1) (Baldwin, 2013); the influence of the “drug-free” fantasy coupled with drug-plant based eradication; the shift from criminal to “victim” views which has allowed the creation and perpetuation of compulsory drug users centers; the shift to more harmful forms of illicit drug consumptions, notably methamphetamines and injection drug use which itself has helped foster a common HIV epidemic among drug users; finally a potential noticeable shift to harm reduction services and community based treatment.

To a different extent, all these countries are following the same path, which can lead us to believe that the Lao PDR could maybe one day evaluate in the same way, while these countries’ multilaterally reconsider a potential common regional approach to drug control.

We did not present here the case of Singapore, but it remains important to mention the city-nation as it arguably represents quite well the drug policy schizophrenic tendencies of the region. Leading enforcer of the “drug-free” goal in the ASEAN community (ASEAN, 2015), the country is paradoxically one of the region’s pioneers in terms of harm reductions policy implementation.

Since 1999, the country has established across its territory, 15 clinics “that use detoxification, recovery, education and counseling to help drug users kick their habits.” (Asia Times, 2011) This position is nevertheless not looking so positive when observed from a closer point of view. As in the rest of the region, initiatives of the kind often exclusively come from locally based civil society organizations sustained by foreign donor fundings. They are often developed amid governmental opposition. In the city state alone, “at least 326 people have been executed for drugs since 1991.” (Malinowska-Sempruch, 2015)

As such, we would also argue that existing national and local alternative initiatives to prohibitionist drug policies presented in this set of articles cannot be sustainable, nor can they match the scale of the demand if changes do not happen at the regional level. However it does show that national situations are not homogeneous and therefore evolve in time in different directions.

To the probable despair of the CND and advocates of the 1998 slogan of “A drug-free world, we can do it!” (Blickman, 2015), Southeast Asian countries are still far off from meeting the similar ASEAN target by 2015. Nor probably 2020 for that matter as they initially intended. To date, the ASEAN is far from being prepared to respond to the actual challenges posed by the current drug trends. Neither can we suspect that the regional organization could be ready for what may come next as the region will probably face an increase of supply, use and related health consequences in the following years.

In the aftermath of UNGASS 2016, ASEAN members have to somehow defend their approach against a growing number of countries wishing to critically asses the current system. This would be further complicated by the fact, that these countries are currently far from being as “tough on drugs” as they have been in the past. However, there is currently no tangible indications that ASEAN leaders will decide to shift away from the current prohibition rhetoric as officials begin to develop a “renewed” post-2015 regional strategy.

As pointed by IDPC analyst Gloria Lai (2015a), “both the use and supply of controlled drugs are (still) regarded in Southeast Asia as a threat to state security that must be eradicated, justifying the implementation of severely punitive drug policies.” (2) Public support in favor of drug policy reforms remain scarce as space for debate is often reduced to the minimum. Partly because of the framing of the subject as a state security threat, advocates of reforms are in dire need to claim their own space and to expand current existing networks. As such, “the challenges to achieving this goal in Asia are significant, ranging from lack of capacity and engagement amongst civil society actors to lack of transparency, accountability and opportunity for civil society input in drug policymaking processes.” (Ibid.) Governments of the region, need to be held accountable and to facilitate “effective communications on drug policy developments and advocacy opportunities.” (Sur, 2015)

We would further argue that well designed evaluations of the alternative drug policy programs that are slowly being implemented in the region, will have much more effect in order to convince other countries to follow up the emerging trend that the sempiternal and often ignored, recommendations from countries from the Global North, notably through U.N. agencies. Countries of the region no longer look outside for exemplary models, and although this can be celebrated, new, context-based alternative drug policies need to be developed and sustained as a way to provide efficient counter examples to the out-dated, colonially-influenced and disastrous “drug-free-“ goal concept.

The core argument of this thesis remains that using the tools available within the current drug policy framework has only very limited impact on the status quo. Changes are slow in the face of rapidly emerging health related catastrophes and ideological enforcement from the U.N. IDCR institutions as-well as domestic policy makers of a fantasized philosophy has had tremendously negative impacts on the well-being and health of the people of the region.

Because of the overall philosophical and implementive prohibitionist arch, reforms from within the countries of the region remain structurally and culturally limited. As harm reduction practices are slowly starting to be implemented in the region, they remain strongly unsupported, if not explicitly opposed by national governments. As noted by researcher Simon Baldwin (2013), “despite this lack of government support for harm reduction, internationally funded pilot projects started being set up, and were almost exclusively implemented through health ministries or civil society partners”. Similarly, little change is apparent in the overall governmental discourses and policies, both domestically and at the ASEAN level. Instead, countries continue to provide massive resources to prohibitive traditional initiatives (3) and as demonstrated during UNGASS 2016 keep doing so at the international level.

Referring to the 2014 ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly meeting, the Vientiane Times, - the English propaganda newspaper channel of the Communist Party in the Lao PDR -, carefully stated that “no delegation showed their hands that their country was ready to be part of a drug-free ASEAN by 2015. Only some countries offered suggestions as to what percentage of their country’s population will be declared as drug-free.” (Vientiane Times, 2015) Chairman of the Lao National Committee for Drug Control and Supervision (LCDC), Mr Kou Chansena told the newspaper, that “the possibility of a drug-free ASEAN community in 2015 is quite unlikely but that Laos would try its best” (Ibid.) to achieve it. This statement, although concerned by the Lao PDR context, can still tell us quite a bit in regard to the progress made toward that goal since 1998 for most of the countries in the region.

But what is probably the most truly astonishing part of this “drug-free” phenomenon is the reverse colonial trend which has been completely integrated by the ASEAN members. Deeply influenced by U.S. and Global North lead war and take on illicit drugs, the Southeast Asian regional organizations and its members, have made theirs this inept crusade, completely occulting the fact that they have been reproducing a colonial way of understanding their local realities. It could be argued that they have become the most fierce defenders on the global scene of an orthodox approach to the current IDCR, sustaining some of the most conservative ways of handling drugs which are being slowly disintegrated all over the rest of the world.

Quite the irony, for a region that has been so keen in the last decades to gain economic and political independence from past allegiance and Global North colonial umbrellas. One of the explication could be given by the comment of scholar Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy (2013) and which remains completely sidelined by most countries of the region: “corruption is also a key issue to be addressed by the ASEAN countries and by UNODC, a topic that their (…) common mid-term report conveniently avoids”, especially in regard to the “drug fight”". As accepted as it may seem, it remains crucial to underline that pblic official corruption remains at the very heart of the drug play.

Although it is hard to speak collectively of such a diverse region, home to so many different languages, ethnicities, religious and political traditions, as noted by journalist Thomas Fuller, one thing is to be found common among many of the political leadership in Southeast Asia: “Unusual wealth, the euphemism for suspected graft, is everywhere.” (Fuller, 2016) Can societies which have made such noticeable economic 'progress' in the past decades be so deeply defined by corruption and looked upon as sustainable? Can prosperity be carried on without social justice? The question of the venality of the so-called elites of the region is of course not unique to this geographical area, but rarely as it engulfed the life of so many people in the face of the current drug control policy frameworks. As noted by Fuller, we “came to see Southeast Asia as a land of great people and bad governments, of remarkable graciousness but distressing levels of impunity.” (Ibid.)

But it could also be argued that, slowly, the region is internally witnessing driven change. Reacting upon the dramatic health consequences of the current regime, that cannot be circumvented to drug consumers - to the despair of some probably -, countries of the region are slowing adapting their policies to new challenges. The fact that no noticeable changes can be perceived at the regional level is arguably quite normal in regard to the way the leaders of the region debate and come eventually to new conclusions.

1) “These puritanical views are either framed from the perspective that drugs diminish a person’s social responsibility (especially in the case of countries with socialist histories), detract from religiosity, or more recently as a law and order issue; with drug use equating to involvement in criminal activity.” (Baldwin, 2013)

2) See also: Centre for International Law, 2012

3) Including,“interdiction, incarceration, coercive abstinence-based treatment and forced crop eradication programmes.” (Baldwin, 2013)

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