Overview

Ever since President Joko Widodo declared a national narcotics emergency and a war on drugs back in 2016,[1] the Indonesian Government and law enforcers have adopted a more inflexible approach in their efforts to combat drug abuse. This zero-tolerance approach has gone as far as introducing a shoot-on-sight policy for any drug abuse suspects who resist arrest.[2] Moreover, drug offenders have even been threatened with being imprisoned on a special island guarded by crocodiles, tigers and piranhas.[3] However, ironically, despite the increasingly stringent anti-drug measures that the government has decided to introduce, the National Narcotics Board (Badan Narkotika Nasional – “BNN”) still recorded an estimated total of some 3.6 million Indonesian drug users in 2019, which marks an increase of 0.03% over the figure for 2017.[4]