NEWS: Tourists To Face Random Drug Testing In Bali Indonesia

Tourists travelling to Indonesia and visiting Bali will have to undergo random Drug Testing at venues such as nightclubs and bars. Bali Police Drug Squad Chief Colonel Bambang Sugiarto, has said he will begin the testing to stamp out the thriving drug trade in the tourist region. The random drug testing was trialled under controversial circumstances in recent raids at Jakarta nightclubs. Mr Sugiarto has said that although police cannot visit every party to urine test tourists, he will be able to prioritize and and make random testing raids.



There has been a string of high profile arrests of Tourists in the area for drug related crime, mainly Australians with Schapelle Corby being caught with 4 kilo's of Marijuana in a boogie board case. The Bali Nine were caught leaving Indonesia to return to Australia with kilo's of Herion strapped to their bodies, then the Michelle Leslie case and a young Australian School teacher found with hundreds of extasy tablets and cash with other drugs caught the day after Michelle Leslie.

These drug raid will achieve one thing and one thing only, loss of tourism to bali, people will just go elsewhere. Not just the people visiting the areas to take or traffick in drugs either. People who are innocent will not wish to be subjected to this type of treatment so they will travel elsewhere and avoid the region.




Related News Links:
www.smh.com.au

[edit on 27-8-2005 by Mayet]

If your dumb enough to risk bringing drugs into a country then you deserve to be punished. This is especially true of Islamic countries that do not have a warm and fuzzy, lets coddle the addicts, approach to punishment.

I doubt that the tourist trade will suffer much.

Yes, I agree they are idiots but Fred my point is more about the people who do not take drugs. They will not wished to be public humiliated, taken and asked questions and forced to undergo urine tests. They just won't go there. They will go to other destinations in the region, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Maldives and more rather than be subjected to this kinds of treatment while holidaying and relaxing.

and heres another thought..Mr bloggs is on holidays relaxing and undergoes a random urine test. it returns positive for opiates and he is immediately arrested and sent to that horrid looking bali prison. He is subjected to strip searches and oriface checks and no one understands a word of his protests of innocence. It is not until his lawyer arrives and explains that Mr bloggs takes Kapanol (morphine) for an old neck injury. The police do not believe him so until paperwork arrives from Australia, he is left to rot.

I can see why mr Bloggs and anyone else hearing his plight will never want to go to the region.

How will people know the testing process is kept pure. people may return incorrect results and also end up innocently rotting in the prisons. yes i think the tourism will suffer immensly

[edit on 27-8-2005 by Mayet]

You want to see nice Asian art, eat good Indonesian food, go to Indonesia. You want to party, hell there are plenty of other places for that, Ibiza, Amsterdam, Toronto. JK.

Edit To add: If I was going to Indonesia, I wouldn't even take Tylenol.

Doesn't everyone know about their drug policies?

[edit on 27-8-2005 by intrepid]

I am currently travelling in South East Asia and spent a month in indonesia recently. I am somewhat worried about these random tests, I am sure that their testing methods are not 100 percent assured and will be getting innocent people in trouble. But if you have been to Kuta you would realise that there is no stopping the tourist industry there. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people there. The streets are so packed that walking is literally a mission. These laws might detter something like 500-1000 people a month; that is about the amount of people that enter and leave Kuta every day.

I hope that it does make a noticable dent in the tourist industry though, as I really think that the strictness of their drug laws is utterly ridiculous! The laws of a country are put in place to protect its people; go to Kuta and look at what kind of people are there. The only Indonesians (this is not being racist, it is simply how it is) are selling things. 95 percent of the people in Kuta are Western, so westerners go and take drugs; how does this affect the Indonesian people? If anything, it is simply giving them some money.
I don't understand why the authorities are enjoying ruining people's lives like this.

When i travelled though Malaysia in the 90s i remember some cops in Kota Kinabalu trying to explain to us what happens to western drug users who test positive for illegal drugs.They had the same random testing scheme,and if a tourist tested positive they were shipped out to a secure islamic re education centre,where hard labour,islamic lectures and the lash helped to re educate them["heal them from drugs" was how the cops put it].This could last for years apparently.Thing was,i was hanging out with some dudes from Perth,Australia,and they were big cannabis fans.....I had to try hard not to laugh as the cops were chatting to us,as my two aussie buddies went from tanned aussie colour,to green,to red,to ghostly white during the course of the conversation.I think they actually looked at getting an earlier flight back to safe old Aus ,So i think this law in Bali may stop quite a few even small time users of drugs,from travelling there.

Absolutely no Westerner should voluntarily travel to Indonesia as a tourist IMHO.

[edit on 8/28/2005 by djohnsto77]

So lets say I decide to smoke a joint, and two weeks from now I'm travelling to Indonesia. While there, I am selected for a random drug test. The results come back positive for marijuana, as it stays in your system for roughly 30 days. Not knowing whether I used the marijuana in Indonesia, or at home in my country, I'm still likely to be thrown in jail. Is this fair? Is it fair if I have a precription for Percocets or Oxy Contin, and my drug test results come back positive for opiates, and I'm tossed in jail? What if I just took a percocet at home the day before I flew to Indonesia?

To me, there are so many holes in this new system. Many people will be unfairly thrown in jail and prosecuted. It's funny how tourists have complained that they be fingerprinted and photographed when entering the United States now. Lets see how they enjoy travelling to Indonesia! They're gonna wish all they had was a photo taken and a finger printed!

Where are the tourists getting the drugs? Anybody know? Is there a local drug trade, or are the tourists bringing them in themselves for their own use, or are there outsiders that have built a drug trade around the presence of the tourists?

If it is anything other than the tourists bringing them in for their own use, Indonesia should focus on the drug trade, not the tourists.

Aside from the drug issue, why is a fundamentalist Islamic state plying the Western tourist trade to begin with? It seems to me that many, if not most, of the activities of these tourists is going to be counter to their culture. (It looks to me like these people are not exactly going there to experience Indonesian culture, but for sex and drugs, or milder, but still forbidden or discouraged activities such as alcohol consumption, dancing, laying around on the beach, etc.)

It looks to me as if they have made a "deal with the devil" for the tourist's cash. If this tourism goes against their culture, they should simply end this tourist trade, and forgo the cash benefit that comes from it.

So cross Bali off your travel plans. It only one place from many in the region. After the Shapelle corby fiasco its stupid to go there anyway.

I would not write Bali off your travel itinerary because of this, just avoid Kuta beach!! That is the only place where these stringent police checks are done. the rest os Bali is fine.

Originally posted by Rasputin13
So lets say I decide to smoke a joint, and two weeks from now I'm travelling to Indonesia. While there, I am selected for a random drug test. The results come back positive for marijuana, as it stays in your system for roughly 30 days. Not knowing whether I used the marijuana in Indonesia, or at home in my country, I'm still likely to be thrown in jail. Is this fair? Is it fair if I have a precription for Percocets or Oxy Contin, and my drug test results come back positive for opiates, and I'm tossed in jail? What if I just took a percocet at home the day before I flew to Indonesia?

To me, there are so many holes in this new system. Many people will be unfairly thrown in jail and prosecuted. It's funny how tourists have complained that they be fingerprinted and photographed when entering the United States now. Lets see how they enjoy travelling to Indonesia! They're gonna wish all they had was a photo taken and a finger printed!

My thoughts exactly!

Someone I know....yeah, thats it...a friend .....smokes a spliff now and then.

Not something arrestable for in the UK, at worst (unless you smoke outside a school or blow in the face of a Policeman) you will get a telling off and the cops will take your dope and keep it themselves......

But if I (woops, I mean my friend) go to another country and do not do any drugs there, sample the culture and am a model tourist but end up in one of these clubs and get tested, I will show positive and spend a stupidly long and overblown sentence in jail for a crime I did not actually commit.

Not something that I (or my friend) are willing to risk, quite frankly.