Killing in the name of the war on drugs: a special section from the 1st Asian regional meeting of the ISSDP

Killing in the name of the war on drugs: a special section from the 1st Asian regional meeting of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy

Edited by Karen Laidler

Excerpt from the Editorial, by Karen Laidler:

The aim of this special section is to build on the growing body of work on drug policy in the Global South, and the violence associated with the global war on drugs (Bourgois, 2018; Ghiabi, 2018; Bhatia et al., 2021). These observers have noted that the war on drugs is real, with states, armed with punitive drug laws and employing varying levels of military and law enforcement tactics to strike hard against those involved in the drug market. As Ghiabi (2018:210) argues, the target is not the drug itself, but “the categories deemed worthy of punishment… the transversally poor, marginal, unorthodox, subaltern groups of humans around the globe. The rich and bourgeois classes are practically left untouched by the ‘War on Drugs…” The justification for killings, whether state sanctioned or extrajudicial, has been couched in the specificities of culture and its preservation. Yet it is apparent from this collection of essays, that the ability to exercise structural violence is less about the preservation of cultural values of collectivism, and more to do with the preservation of political power. The result is not a united community, but in fact, a sharply divided society. Such policies further entrench the culture of shame and stigma against persons who use drugs and affords those in power with political and economic capital.

• Why Vietnam continues to impose the death penalty for drug offences: A narrative commentary
  Hai Thanh Luong
• The war on drugs in Southeast Asia as ‘state vigilantism’
  Euan Raffle
• ‘Alternative facts’: Public opinion surveys on the death penalty for drug offences in selected Asian countries
  Giada Girelli
• Deadly serious: The United Nations, drugs, and capital punishment in the 1980s
  Ben Mostyn
• “Shabu is different”: Extrajudicial killings, death penalty, and ‘methamphetamine exceptionalism’ in the Philippines
  Gideon Lasco, Vincen Gregory Yu
• An uphill battle: A case example of government policy and activist dissent on the death penalty for drug-related offences in Indonesia
  Elisabeth Kramer, Claudia Stoicescu
• State sanctioned killing in the name of drugs: Laws, practice and conflicting trends in Asia
  Gen Sander
• “I held on to the police’s leg for mercy”: Experiences of adversity, risk and harm among people who inject drugs during an anti-drug drive in Dhaka, Bangladesh
  Sharful Islam Khan, Samira Dishti Irfan, Mohammad Niaz Morshed Khan
• Killing in the name of the war on drugs
  Karen A. Joe Laidler