COVER STORY
That said, many have taken the initiative to reduce the number of drug users in Indonesia. We interviewed a young woman whose anti-drug campaigns have made significant contribution to the community, and to reflect on some of the important lessons that have learned in her noble journey.
CHLOE PURNAMA
Chloe Purnama’ s main focus has been on advocating for drug awareness and prevention through her anti-drug campaign, Speak Up Indonesia. She was motivated to start this campaign after witnessing first-hand on how drugs ruined the lives of many children in Jakarta. Recently, she was appointed by the Chairman of BAKORNAS GMDM- an organization under the Indonesian National Narcotics Agency- as their Ambassador, tasked with promoting awareness of drugs among schools in Indonesia to prevent drug abuse amongst students. As an additional part of her campaign, she has also created an online public speaking competition aimed at emphasizing drug awareness and prevention, which had over 350 applicants. She has held more than 250 anti-drug & youth leadership seminars across schools, orphanages and slum areas in Indonesia.
Talking to us, Chloe gave staggering statistics of narcotic use in Indonesia, especially in children and youths. According to the data from the news as released by BNN( the anti-narcotics division of the Indonesian Police Department), there are reported at least 5 million drug users in the country and 1.2 million of which are residing in Jakarta. In our city, 10 % of the populations are using drugs. She emphasizes the need to say that the future of our country depends of the next generation. Fascinated by her passion as being a global citizen of this nation, I looked into her organization,“ Speak Up Indonesia”, and asked how her program reduces drug use in ways that other programs cannot:“ Speak-Up Indonesia under the PIONIR organization is started by youth and targeting on youth empowerment. From years of experiences in giving anti-drug seminars at schools throughout Indonesia, one fact stands out. When the youths are the ones speaking, the students are listening. They are engaging in the conversations with the speakers. From interviews conducted after the seminars, students admit that when youths are doing the talk, they do not feel patronized. They can totally relate to the speakers and feel unrestricted to discuss. They feel that the speakers understand them better. And at the end, they feel that they have role models to aim for the better future.”
Chloe faces numerous challenges in her fight against nationwide drug usage, primarily in that people they are comfortable with, such as friends at school or strangers that innocently offer something to them lure many of the drug users into usage. For instance, drugs nowadays come in the form of candy, mushroom chips, brownies, cookies, cakes, flavored drinks, and many more creations that look incredibly tempting to these unsuspecting victims. In many cases in Jakarta, there have been found that these brownies have led those who started as innocent teenagers to end up in prostitution and human trafficking in a very short time in order to get more drugs from the ensnared addictions.
These cunning wars are hard to avoid even for the intelligent youths who are already deliberately staying away from drugs. Most students do not suspect their own classmates. And this method has found victims from all kinds of upbringings and levels of economy, from the poorest to the richest. It is extremely challenging to stay away from it because it does not discriminate any races, religions, ages, educational backgrounds, and standards of living.
A major adversity faced in combatting the drug war is government policy. The law and death penalty in this country do not scare away these addicts, primarily because Indonesian law is considerably lenient towards drugs. Most victims aren’ t aware of the drugs inside certain common food products, especially children. They need to be aware of the danger of drugs; reminded constantly until they begin
10 THE LINK JANUARY 2018