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ondemnation came swift and fast when news broke this weekend that a law professor at one of the nation'€™s top universities had been caught red-handed doing drugs. The news was so big that neither the police nor the media extended the usual courtesy of concealing the identity of suspected drug users by giving their initials only.

Police said on Sunday that Musakkir, the deputy rector of Hasanuddin University in Makassar, tested positive for drug use, as did five others caught with him in a raid on a hotel room in Makassar on Friday night.

Close friends and some students may think that Musakkir is the coolest law professor. There is a certain something about a law professor doing drugs. He must have had a bright career and won the respect of his peers and students to get where he is in the university.

The public, in contrast, is far less forgiving, as proven by the harsh comments on social media. People want swift punishment, as if the public shaming that the professor and his family went through over the weekend was not enough.

There is now widespread belief that the practice of doing drugs may be not all that uncommon in the nation'€™s campuses and among the country'€™s top thinkers. Universities will now be added to the long list of places that police will be watching and occasionally raiding.

Once the emotional reactions subside, however, the story reveals a new reality that the nation has refused to acknowledge: that more and more people are doing drugs, all types of drugs, and that for many, this has become part of their lifestyle.

We have heard stories of respectable members of society caught doing drugs. This law professor is just another on that long list.

The fact that some of these people have risen to respectability means their habits or addictions have not affected their careers or their lives. Doing drugs in Indonesia is illegal, but like the professor and his drug-taking friends, they were doing it in private, perhaps in the hope of never being caught.

Fortunately, the law enforcement agencies and our courts are one step ahead of public opinion in recognizing this trend of modern Indonesia where drug taking has become, for some, a habit, or a lifestyle, if not an addiction.

The courts have started to distinguish between drug users and traffickers, going easy on the former and treating the latter harshly.

Drug users, irrespective of their social and economic status, are now treated as victims. Instead of sending them to jail, the first choice for the court is to send them to rehabilitation centers.

Even police have caught up with the trend and begun recommending rehab rather than processing cases through the court.

The story of the professor certainly makes for interesting conversations, but we should not lose sight of the goal of catching the real perpetrators: the drug smugglers and traffickers.