One damp night in January last year, a Taiwanese man we will call Jonas, then a 28-year-old sound engineer, was stopped at a roadside police check while riding on the back of a friend's scooter. It was fairly late and the officers suspected them of being drunk, so they asked to search the vehicle. When they did, they found a pipe used for smoking marijuana with traces of the drug inside, and Jonah took responsibility. It was enough reason to take him back to the police station and demand a urine sample. Half a day later, Jonas found himself on a bus headed from the police station to the Tucheng Corrections Center (土城觀察勒戒所), a special jail for the rehabilitation of drug users.
"I smoke pot and I'd done some other stuff, but not like the guys inside. They were all there for heroin, except two guys who were in for acid -- and they were bragging about it. There were only a few for marijuana," he said.
Cases like Jonas' have become more common over the past two years since the government has engaged in a full scale war against the drug MDMA, better known as ecstasy, along with other drugs of the nightlife scene, like marijuana and ketamine. The most publicized detention so far has been that of Hong Kong crooner William So (蘇永康), who entered Tucheng nine days ago after testing positive for MDMA in a June police raid of a Taipei nightclub.
The detentions of both Jonas and So are a result of a national drug policy that focuses mainly on drug users over dealers, manufacturers or smugglers. Last year enforcement agencies sent more than 22,000 users, including Jonas, for 15 to 30-day stays at correction centers all over Taiwan. Over the last two years, the policy has specially targeted ecstasy, and sweeps looking for the drug's users have led to increased use of certain enforcement tactics, including mass screenings of suspected drug users for both drug use and HIV, that some feel are in violation of civil rights.
To pick out users, police have resorted to screening suspected drug users through urine tests and, at least in parts of Taipei, blood tests that look for both drugs and HIV. While the legality of urine tests is debatable, the police's authority to screen for HIV could only be described by John Chang (張進豐), chief prosecutor of Taoyuan County, as an "administrative decision that is something separate from the law."
"Do you want to protect human rights or protect health? This is the problem under consideration," said Ou Nai-ming (歐乃銘), head of an AIDS section at the national Center for Disease Control (CDC). In April and May of this year, his section worked with the National Police Administration and Taipei City's Bureau of Health to come up with a plan that has resulted in HIV screening of suspected drug users throughout the summer. Generally, the suspects are picked up in raids on nightclubs where drugs are discovered, and the CDC uses the data to formulate recommendations on AIDS prevention policy.
However according to Li Jih-heng (李志恆), director-general of the National Bureau of Controlled Drugs (NBCD), the blood tests are not strictly legal. He says that Taiwan's Statute on AIDS Prevention and Treatment (愛茲病防治條例) says that "it must be completely determined that the person is a drug user" before he or she can be made to test for HIV. But what the police are doing now is testing suspects. "Legally, this doesn't really stand up. It would be better to first determine whether a person uses drugs, then do it [test for HIV]. ... If the [urine] test is positive [for drugs], then you can do a blood test," he said.
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