My country, Indonesia is probably the country with the strictest anti-drug laws in the world.

Be caught with any drugs means you have to face several years in jail. I work in the governments hospital which provides the health services for the prisoner. Most of my prisons patients are jailed because of drugs. From this experience I thought, there should be a distinction in judging drug use and drug dealing. Many of the lower end sales are themselves victims of violence and intimidation or are drug dependent. Arresting a lot of these people, especially people involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets doesnt solve the problem, only filled prisons but doesnt reduce the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations. Replace drug policies and strategies must be based on human rights and public health principles. We should end the stigmatization and marginalization of people who use certain drugs and those involved in the lower levels of cultivation, production and distribution, and treat people dependent on drugs as patients, not criminals. They need to be offered a treatment services because, actually the drug users are the victim of their selves. Prevention is better than cure and investment in activities that can both prevent young people from taking drugs in the first place and also prevent those who do use drugs from developing are important. The most prevention efforts should be targeted to those who are in specific at-risk groups. In my city, its not easy to break the taboo or eradicate the stigmatization for the drugs user. Once he/she is known as a user, she/he will be banished from the community because people are afraid to have a problem with the police, especially drugs cases. Thats why the drugs users in my area feel hard to open their status and look for health services. This make the approach to them becoming harder, and causing the problem with the statistic (until know theres no certain number of people who are using drugs) Thats why I am so enthusiastic to join The Asian Human Rights and Drug Policy Course. I have no background education of law or any subject correlate with policy, but I work in the field that have a strong relation with policy. I believe by joining the course my knowledge will improve, my understanding of the issues in both drug and publics policy will increase, and it will help me to solve problems and act in the right way. Kind Regards Elvine Gunawan,MD