President Joko Widodo has stopped executing foreigners for drug smuggling – after two rounds in 2015 and 2016 – but that doesn’t mean that his war on drugs is over. Instead, the battlefield is shifting from the execution chambers to the streets. Widodo has empowered the National Narcotics Bureau and the Police to use force against drug traders, with little oversight.
The President seems drugs obsessed – he once called drugs the ‘Number 1 problem’ facing Indonesia, despite evidence showing that the figures he cited, such as 4.5 million addicts, were grossly overestimated.
