A

new government regulation, which will come into effect next week, will allow drug users in the country to be sent to rehabilitation centers rather than being charged with drug offenses.

National Narcotics Agency (BNN) head Anang Iskandar said the regulation, which will be implemented on Aug. 16, would provide a legal framework for the agency, the National Police, the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO), the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Social Affairs Ministry and the Health Ministry to join forces in promoting rehabilitation for drug users.

According to the regulation, which is being jointly issued by the six institutions, every drug user detained by the police will be assessed to determine his or her eligibility to enter a rehab program.

Drug users who are found to also be trafficking drugs, however, will be excluded from the program.

'€œIf it turns out that someone is just a drug user, the assessment team will recommend that he or she be rehabilitated during the police investigation,'€ Anang told reporters.

Under the new regulation, the government is expected to launch a pilot project in 16 cities and regencies in August.

Initiated by the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the new approach was first announced in March following a series of meetings between several state institutions that were held in the wake of last year'€™s deadly riot in Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary in Medan, North Sumatra, which housed 1,700 drug convicts '€” 60 percent of the prison'€™s total population.

Contacted separately, National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Ronny F. Sompie, said the program would only be applied to drug users who surrendered themselves to authorities or the BNN.

'€œDetained drug users will be brought to justice. In such cases, prosecutors have a choice '€” as stipulated in the regulation '€” to request they enter rehabilitation as opposed to prison. We can'€™t let police officers unilaterally decide to send them to rehabilitation as it would pave the way to corruption,'€ he said.

Ronny added that the program would first be implemented in 16 locations that possessed adequate rehab facilities, such as South Jakarta, East Jakarta, Bogor, South Tangerang, Semarang, Surabaya, Makassar, Samarinda, Padang, Mataram and Riau Islands.

'€œThe cities have infrastructure, such as rehabilitation centers. Later on, drug rehab centers will be established in other regions,'€ Anang said, adding that all cities were expected to have rehabilitation centers by 2016.

Under the program, the BNN aims to rehabilitate 400,000 drug users every year, and eventually treat a total of 4 million drug addicts within 10 years.

Currently, the country can only rehabilitate 18,000 drug users per year, 16,000 of whom are handled by privately owned rehabilitation centers. The remaining 2,000 drug users are rehabilitated in government-run rehab programs.

Rev. Daniel Alamsjah, who runs the Betesda Drug and Mental Rehabilitation Center in Magelang in Central Java, said he supported the regulation, noting that drug users tended to relapse in jail.

'€œBeing in prison has a negative influence on them. They get in with the wrong people and then their condition deteriorates. Some of my patients died in prison due to several causes, such as drug overdoses and HIV/AIDS,'€ he said.

The existing 2009 Narcotics Law '€” which already allows judges to hand down rehabilitation orders rather than jail sentences to drug users '€” is deemed comprehensive enough regarding its provisions recommending rehabilitation.