THE INTERVIEW
WHAT CAN YOU DO....?
Get educated about drugs and start in the
home and talk with your children and family
members. Download our truth about drugs
booklets and watch our truth about drugs
documentary on www.Duniabebasnarkoba.
Org and share them online with your
friends and associates. Get your local community groups
and schools to implement
effective drug education. Share
the truth about drugs materials
with your elected officials in
your local area and also law
enforcement.
Do not give in to pessimistic thoughts
of failure. It is not true. Drug education
does work. Start a local drug education group
for your town. Your actions will
save lives.
“We are also looking for responsible companies and
individuals to help fund the expansion of our highly effective
and productive Truth About Drugs program throughout
Indonesia so as to safeguard the future generation from
the dangers of drugs. I can be contacted by email at
[email protected].”
Please visit www.duniabebasnarkoba.org and view our program.
emotional health. They need to know how to spot
toxic anti-social people and be proofed up against
them, so their judgement isn’t swayed by someone
who does not have their best interests at heart.
Young people are increasingly trusting with
the internet age, they are willing to share all
sorts of details online that their parents would be
horrified to have revealed. The bad thing about
the Internet is no one polices its content and the
accuracy of information. It takes judgement and
an ability to tell the false from the true.
Indonesia is taking positive steps with the
censoring of the internet content coming in from
the US and other countries that promote pornog-
raphy and gambling and such things, which are
major problems causing great misery in the West.
Young people are also curious and learning
about the world. A friend says – “I tried this, it
won’t hurt you”. This can sound interesting and
quite safe. And it might not hurt them the first
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THE LINK JANUARY 2018
or second time or even 10th time. But then even
marijuana can trigger psychosis, or the metabo-
lism of a young person is different to their friends,
and they have a toxic reaction. Young people need
to learn with confidence that you do not have to
personally experience everything to be able to
know and make a reasonable judgement call. You
do not have to be in a car crash to understand it
and know about the damage it can do.
THE LINK: Has your organization been effective
in reducing drug abuse, and what challenges do
you face?
The challenges we face are the apathy from peo-
ple who feel that the war on drugs has “failed”
and promote this pessimistic message and that
the solution is we should just legalise drugs to
take away the crime aspect. The media promote
this and officials. This is a false idea. Le-
galisation has not lessened any drug problems
anywhere. And it has not lessened crime. The
biggest drug problems are actually with legal
drugs – alcohol and prescription drugs.
The other challenge is there are not enough
rehabilitation programs available for people to
enter to get off drugs once addicted. It is a major
problem and one we are asked about constantly.
It is not a 2-3 week cycle to get someone off
drugs. There needs to be live in residential
program made widely available which deal with
all of the social and emotional issues.
We need drug free rehab programs, not
drug replacement programs such a methadone,
which merely replaces one drug with another.
It is possible to rehab a drug addict without the
use of drugs.
We have man y successes around the world that
we have documented. In Australia, we have worked
for many years to educate young people with
over 3 million drug education booklets and fliers
distributed and the positive effects can be seen in
the most recent national drug survey which shows
young people and drugs are on the decline.
In Japan the Foundation for a Drug Free
World was instrumental in this campaign to have
synthetic drugs banned in the nation. Before
they were freely available in vending machines
and high-profile deaths and bizarre acts were
making headlines.
In Venezuela, a 40% average drop in drug
usage in schools which used the Truth About
Drugs program was formally acknowledged by
Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office.
We have many successes detailed on the
international website news page at: http://www.
drugfreeworld.org/news/
THE LINK: Can you share why this work is im-
portant to you?
My wife and daughter are Indonesian and I am a
part of this country and people. I have a deep love
for the people and culture. I am very dismayed by
what I have seen in Indonesia and the candy laced
with drugs being given to children, the drug com-
pany reps handing out psychotropic medication at
seminars to unsuspecting students.
My first trip to Indonesia was on the 28th
of December 2004. I arrived in Jakarta leading
a team of volunteers to help the victims of the
Southeast Asian Tsunami. We went to Medan and
started working in hospitals and refugee centres
and then in early January 2005, we arrived in
Banda Aceh. We rolled up our sleeves and got to
work helping the victims. I returned to Indonesia
many times and then Yogyakarta was struck by a
devastating earthquake on the 27th of May 2006.
I took another team of volunteers to Yogyakarta,
arriving on the 30th of May. I was there for next
4.5 months and we worked in
Hospitals, villages and with schools at the
request of the Yogyakarta City Education Depart-
ment. It was during this time that I first became
aware of primary school students being given
candy and pens laced with drugs to get them
hooked, right outside their schools. I’m a parent,
and I couldn’t stand the idea of this happening to
innocent children so I decided to do something
about this. I then found the Foundation for a
Drug-Free World’s Truth About Drugs program
and returned in 2007 and delivered a program
with the Yogyakarta City Education Department.
I have seen the effectiveness of the Truth About
Drugs program and to date, have delivered 21
Truth About Drugs programs in various places in
Indonesia, training over 5,000 Indonesians on the
program. We have printed almost 600,000 Truth
About Drugs booklets in Bahasa Indonesia and
approximately 10,000 of our subtitled Truth About
Drugs documentary, Real People, Real Stories.
As the Southeast Asian Coordinator for
Foundation for a Drug-Free World, I have also
seen the need for our very effective program and
have trained such groups as the Brunei Narcotics
Control Bureau in 2008, 2011 and 2014 and the
Philippines National Police trainers, the Philip-
pines Dangerous Drugs Board.
JANUARY 2018 THE LINK
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