News (Media Awareness Project) - Taiwan: PUB LTE: Ecstasy Campaign Offbase |
| Title: | Taiwan: PUB LTE: Ecstasy Campaign Offbase |
| Published On: | 2002-04-16 |
| Source: | Taipei Times, The (Taiwan) |
| Fetched On: | 2008-01-23 12:44:27 |
ECSTASY CAMPAIGN OFFBASE
I found your article featuring Wang Shih-Chien criticizing Taipei Mayor Ma
Ying-jeou's crackdown on ecstasy ("Councilor shaking his head over Ma's
ecstacy crackdown," April 9, page 1) interesting. I like to go out dance in
nightclubs (without using drugs) and I have witnessed Ma's tactics and am
also very critical of them.
On Christmas weekend, police raided a popular club and took all 300 people
there down to the police station for urine testing. These people appeared
on national television, had their faces on the front page of your paper the
next day, and had to wait up to 10 hours at the police station on a Sunday
morning for urine tests, when they probably really needed a good sleep.
Not a pleasant experience, but was it perhaps what drug-users deserve?
Well only about 20 of those 300 people tested positive for drugs. That's
about 7 percent. So 93 percent had to endure this humiliating treatment and
perhaps be branded as "drug users" by their families or employers who saw
them on the news, for no more of a crime than going out dancing during
Christmas-time.
Taiwan hasn't had a problem with ecstasy for long, so perhaps the
government doesn't have the experience of other governments where it is
realized that arresting the users does nothing to solve the problem. You
need to go after the dealers and producers and the gangs behind them.
On the other hand, perhaps Ma doesn't really care about that. It seems to
me more likely that he just wants to catch the big headlines. This smacks
of the same sort of sensationalist policing that attempts to tackle
prostitution by hauling hotel-goers out of their rooms; or tries to tackle
bad driving by the mass-fining of "red light right- turning" motorcyclists.
It's easy for the police to get their numbers and it makes the news, but
does nothing to solve the problem. What's more, it's a grave abuse of
police power and a transgression of human rights to (apparently illegally)
detain and search the innocent 93 percent to catch the guilty remainder.
Brian Rawnsley, Taipei
I found your article featuring Wang Shih-Chien criticizing Taipei Mayor Ma
Ying-jeou's crackdown on ecstasy ("Councilor shaking his head over Ma's
ecstacy crackdown," April 9, page 1) interesting. I like to go out dance in
nightclubs (without using drugs) and I have witnessed Ma's tactics and am
also very critical of them.
On Christmas weekend, police raided a popular club and took all 300 people
there down to the police station for urine testing. These people appeared
on national television, had their faces on the front page of your paper the
next day, and had to wait up to 10 hours at the police station on a Sunday
morning for urine tests, when they probably really needed a good sleep.
Not a pleasant experience, but was it perhaps what drug-users deserve?
Well only about 20 of those 300 people tested positive for drugs. That's
about 7 percent. So 93 percent had to endure this humiliating treatment and
perhaps be branded as "drug users" by their families or employers who saw
them on the news, for no more of a crime than going out dancing during
Christmas-time.
Taiwan hasn't had a problem with ecstasy for long, so perhaps the
government doesn't have the experience of other governments where it is
realized that arresting the users does nothing to solve the problem. You
need to go after the dealers and producers and the gangs behind them.
On the other hand, perhaps Ma doesn't really care about that. It seems to
me more likely that he just wants to catch the big headlines. This smacks
of the same sort of sensationalist policing that attempts to tackle
prostitution by hauling hotel-goers out of their rooms; or tries to tackle
bad driving by the mass-fining of "red light right- turning" motorcyclists.
It's easy for the police to get their numbers and it makes the news, but
does nothing to solve the problem. What's more, it's a grave abuse of
police power and a transgression of human rights to (apparently illegally)
detain and search the innocent 93 percent to catch the guilty remainder.
Brian Rawnsley, Taipei
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