SINGAPORE ATTACKS DRUG PROBLEM WITH NEW SOCIAL WEAPON: SHAME

SINGAPORE -- His baggy pants stained by urine, his eyes shut, arms limp,
legs wide open, the young Singaporean man lies passed out on a couch in a
nightclub.

He is, literally, the poster boy for a new generation of abusers of
synthetic "club drugs" in a country known for aggressively enforcing some
of the world's toughest drug laws.

The man's image is appearing at Singapore's famously tidy bus stops and
subway stations in framed glossy posters and in popular magazines. In
another poster, an even younger ethnic Chinese man is nearly passed out in
his own vomit next to a urinal.

The shock advertisements are part of an anti-drug campaign that reflects
official unease at growing use of ketamine, a hallucinogenic anesthetic. It
comes after a major policy shift last year that introduced 24-hour partying
to conservative Singapore.

It also comes after a year in which synthetic club drugs overtook heroin as
the drug of choice and young ethnic Chinese outnumbered Malays as the
biggest group of drug abusers for the first time in 15 years.

Neighbours Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are also confronting rising
synthetic drug use, from ecstasy to more toxic methamphetamines such as
ice, or ketamine, intended originally as a horse tranquillizer and often
known just as K.

In addition to harsh laws that include mandatory death penalties for anyone
aged 18 or older caught trafficking more than 250 grams of
methamphetamines, Singapore aims to show that the drugs can be, among other
things, just plain embarrassing.

The new campaign, broadcast on radio and TV and given wide play in
magazines, aims to portray ketamine users as dysfunctional social outcasts,
their clothing blotted by vomit and urine after taking the drug, their
mental agility blunted.

"It focuses on how stupid and embarrassing a ketamine abuser can be under
the influence of the drug," said Lim Hock San, chairman of the National
Council of Drug Abuse. Young Singaporeans, he told Reuters, "need to stay
drug-free or risk losing their social credibility."

State media campaigns have moulded life in orderly Singapore since its
independence in 1965, exhorting citizens to improve their lot in nearly
every aspect of living, from staying hygienic to speaking better English
and even smiling more.

Officials stress that drug use is well under control in the country of four
million people.

Drug arrests fell 47 per cent in 2003, largely reflecting a 75-per-cent
tumble in heroin arrests, recent Central Narcotics Bureau figures show.

But, like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, concern over synthetic drugs is on
the rise. The UN-funded International Narcotics Control Board says that
about two-thirds of the world's methamphetamine seizures take place in East
and Southeast Asia.

The pills are often manufactured in China, Myanmar or the Philippines,
according to the INCB, and are integral to all-night parties at many of
Southeast Asia's hundreds of clubs catering to young crowds drawn by
furiously fast techno music.

In Singapore, ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamine abusers accounted for
54 per cent of total drug arrests in 2003, with the number of ketamine
arrests nearly doubling to 497 from 252 in 2002, a dramatic rise from just
14 in 1999.

The rise came in a year in which Singapore relaxed rules on nightspots to
allow 24-hour partying in an attempt to shatter its traditionally
conservative image. Many of Singapore's ketamine users, however, were
rounded up in raids on karaoke lounges.

The new media offensive, targeting males aged 15 to 30, includes a plan for
an on-line game at a ketamine information website (http://www.k-facts.com).

"We want you to have some fun while you find out more about K. So don't
worry, it's not all serious," it says.

The campaign has already sown controversy. Elderly Singaporeans were
offended by a TV ad that draws parallels between a young man on ketamine
and an absent-minded 80-year-old women suffering from memory loss.

"Demeaning advertisements such as this undermine the dignity of aging," Loh
Boon Seah wrote in a letter to the Straits Times.

Mr. Lim, the council's chairman, said the intention was never to demean
anyone and the thrust was to illustrate the harmful effects of ketamine:
memory loss, co-ordination deficiency and lack of bladder control.

The one-month campaign is backed by Singapore's strictly enforced anti-drug
laws that include mandatory death penalties for anyone caught with more
than 15 grams of heroin or 500 grams of marijuana.

Rights group Amnesty International said in January there was "no convincing
evidence" that drug use in Singapore had been curbed by the executions,
which it ranked among the world's highest on a per capita basis.