to put this into perspective; about 7 years ago Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia all stopped with the death penalty for small time drugs use and even dealing. They decided (wisely) that if all 3 countries did the same there wouldn’t be a rise in cross border dealing and/or drugs tourism; and the remaining levels of usage could be sorted out via public healthcare procedures as well as criminal justice systems.
In the interim years, although MY and SG still do not use the death penalty for drugs (the only recent death sentence in Malaysia is likely to be that of the young man who stabbed to death two British tourists after a sketchy argument), Indonesia went from a military government to a 100% democratic one with proportional representation and one of the worlds lowest voting ages – 17 as opposed to 18. This makes them “more democratic” than NL, their former colonisers!
The Indonesians voted the death penalty for drugs back in 🙁
Unfortunately ID has a much larger country than SG or MY; a bigger population which isn’t as dependent on foreign trade or tourism (it is only less pleasant things made in ID like batteries (nasty chemicals) rather than high value items (laptop components etc)) and a far higher rate of fatal ODs than many other parts of the world (not sure why as no country would make up figures like that; even at the low end of the scale it would be making a dent in the population and in Europe they’d declare a state of emergency if it happened anywhere in the continent).
Of course harsh laws don’t prevent any form of drug use or crime; but when a country doesn’t feel it can “afford to be lenient” these laws tend to be the consequence.
