Asean joins hands to fight drug trade in region

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Asean joins hands to fight drug trade in region
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- A regional drug-busting agency will be established to tackle narcotics trafficking in the Asean+3 region by sharing information, preventing crimes and suppressing drug-related activities.

The proposed Asean Narcotics Cooperation Centre (Asean-Narco) will be based at the Office of the Narcotics Control Board in Bangkok's Phya Thai district, said Permpong Chaovalit, secretary-general of the ONCB.

Presiding over the opening ceremony of the Asean+3 (China, Japan and South Korea) workshop yesterday, Permpong said the participating countries would discuss the cooperation, which includes the establishment of this centre. The workshop will wrap up tomorrow.

The processes of this project are divided into three phases, he said.

The first phase will focus on building a network among countries to secure information, create an "Asean Drug Report" and set an agenda for resolutions. The second phase will further develop the cooperation, so countries could set guidelines for information linkage as well as related procedure and coordination to ensure sustainability and consistency.

The last phase will develop a database to help monitor and continuously develop cooperation among countries, which would lead to the establishment of a "Centre of Excellence", he added.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Asean-joins-hands-to-fight-drug-trade-in-region-30262865.html


-- The Nation 2015-06-23

[soalbundy]

Get the army and police on this big time, in a week you will find that there is absolutely no drug trafficking whatsoever

[Guitar God]

This quite a radical and logical idea but how about adopting a pragmatic drugs policy whose implementation and administration results in the desired outcome?

First step is to agree on the objective. Now the objective seems to be to fill prisons with primarily poor and desperate women, line the pockets of corrupt government officials and occasionally publish PR photos of cops pointing at users and small time dealers caught with milligrams of drugs to show how well the current policy is working. It isn't working.

Surely the objective shouldn't be increased health risks, more crime,tearing apart families and filling the prisons.

Different approaches in other countries have been much more successful in achieving their goals of decreasing crime, lowering societal costs, fewer health problems, less corruption, removing organized crime and violence from the equation and actually helping people who are addicted to drugs get the help they need.