Drugs Law and Legal Practice in Southeast Asia investigates criminal law and practice relevant to drugs regulation in three Southeast Asian jurisdictions: Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. These jurisdictions represent a spectrum of approaches to drug regulation in Southeast Asia, highlighting differences in practice between civil and common law countries, and between liberal and authoritarian states. This book offers the first major English language empirical investigation and comparative analysis of regulation, jurisprudence, court procedure, and practices relating to drugs law enforcement in these three states.

Introduction : drugs law and practice in Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam -- International and regional frameworks for drugs control -- Indonesia -- Singapore -- Vietnam

Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia is a multi-author look at drugs in East and Southeast Asia, on drug policy, patterns and trends, local problems, human rights abuses, treatment prospects, and potential reforms. From the history of drugs in Asia, the book examines recent trends in illicit drugs, especially the present enormous amphetamine problems. It addresses recent policy shifts, especially harm reduction responses to the devastating drug-associated HIV epidemics. It explores further necessary reform, especially in regard to the abysmally inhuman current emphasis on detention and the death penalty for drug offences, and present the most recent evidence on effective and humane approaches to drug treatments. As the first comprehensive collection on illicit drug and harm reduction in East and Southeast Asia, it will be a vital resource for health professionals, policymakers, and others working there—and elsewhere—on drug policy reform. As the first comprehensive collection on illicit drugs and harm reduction in East and Southeast Asia, it will be a vital resource for health professionals, policymakers, and others working on East and Southeast Asia—and elsewhere—on drug policy.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Examining the impact of drug criminalisation on a previously overlooked demographic, this book argues that women are disproportionately affected by a flawed policy approach.

Taking the shifting global drug policy terrain as a starting point, this collection moves beyond debates about whether to reform drug policies to a focus on delivering ‘drug policy justice’ – repairing the damage caused by the war on drugs as a component of reform efforts and safeguarding against future harms in legal markets. This book brings together some of the leading international thinkers and advocates on harm reduction and drug policy to introduce key questions in contemporary drug policy. Across five themes, and with contributions from different regions and disciplines, it explores ethical, legal, empirical and historical perspectives on delivering ‘drug policy justice’ from supply through to use. Essays cover a wide range of issues, from the effects of COVID on drug policy to securing economic and environmental justice, and from human rights in Asian drug policy to questions of race and equity in cannabis reforms, providing diverse insights on both prominent and overlooked drug policy challenges. Towards Drug Policy Justice is a benchmark text for scholars, students, advocates and policymakers as the book explores new models of global drug policy reform.

Provides an intra-Asia comparative perspective of authoritarian legality, with a focus on formation, development, transition and post-transition stages.

Indonesia’s criminal law system faces major challenges. Despite the country’s transition to democracy, both the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code are badly out of date, the former only superficially changed since colonial times and the latter remaining as it was under Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime. Law enforcement officers and judges are widely seen as corrupt or incompetent, and new laws, including new Islamic laws passed at the regional level, often contradict the Criminal Code and national statutes, including human rights laws. This book, based on extensive original research by leading scholars in the field, provides an overall assessment of the state of criminal law, law enforcement and penal policy in Indonesia, considers in depth a wide range of specific areas of criminal law, and discusses recent efforts at reform and their prospects for success.