Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia

FifaRahman is policy manager at the Malaysian AIDS Council. Nick Crofts is director of the Centre for Law Enforcement and Public Health.

• ForewordIntroductionChapter 3: Historical Perspectives of Drug Use in AsiaChapter 4: Harm Reduction is Good Public HealthChapter 5: Human Rights and Drug PolicyChapter 6: Drug Users and ImprisonmentChapter 7: Law Enforcement and Drug Policy in Southeast AsiaChapter 8: Effective Development and Effective Drug Control are Interdependent: the example of Southeast Asia Chapter 9: Illicit drug policy in Southeast Asia – The Users’ PerspectiveChapter 10: Harm Reduction: The Islamic PerspectiveChapter 11: HIV and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection among People who Inject Drugs in East and Southeast AsiaChapter 12: Unpacking Compulsory ‘Rehabilitation’ in Asia: Problems and Possible SolutionsChapter 13: Responding to ATS use in East and Southeast AsiaChapter 14: Case Study No. 1: Harm Reduction and Drug Policy in Thailand – One Step Forward, Two Steps BackChapter 15: Case Study No. 2: Drug Policy in TaiwanChapter 16: Case Study No. 3: Emerging from a Black Box: Drug Policymaking in VietnamChapter 17: Case Study No. 4: Drug Policy in ChinaChapter 18: Case Study No. 5: Compulsory Drug Rehabilitation in ChinaChapter 19: Alternatives to Criminal Justice: Drug Courts, Drug Diversion, and DecriminalisationChapter 20: Capital Punishment for Drug OffencesChapter 21: Drug Treatment Across AsiaChapter 22: The Way Forward

Punitive drug policies have done enormous harm to drug users and their neighbors all over the world. These policies have been particularly vicious in some parts of East and Southeast Asia. This has resulted in massive HIV and hepatitis epidemics in many countries. Fifa Rahman and Nick Croft’s Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia is a wonderfully insightful overview of these policies and their effects—as well as presenting alternative policies and evidence that these alternative policies do much less damage than punitive approaches. They do this by presenting a range of articles by leading professionals, a chapter on drug user activists’ perspectives on drug policy, and a chapter on Islamic approaches. All in all, this is a useful and lovely book.