In Thailand and Myanmar, petty drug users are being sentenced to long jail terms in prisons already bursting at the seams. Meth was the "primary drug of concern" in nine Asian countries, the UNODC said, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. In mid-July, as drug war killings escalated in the Philippines, one survey put President Duterte's approval rating at 91 percent. "The world has lost the war on drugs, not only Thailand," the country's justice minister Paiboon Koomchaya told Reuters in July. Less than 1 percent of dependent drug users in Indonesia got treatment in 2014, said the UNODC.

Source: The Star September 12, 2016 06:00 UTC