She recalls the bitterness … and then vomiting copiously. Her friend reassured her that if she had putauw every day for at least three days the nausea would vanish.

Gradually she began taking larger and larger amounts. "When I became addicted bit by bit my social life was gone," Vivi says. She dropped out of college in her second year, left her mother's home and joined the junkie community around Kampung Bali, a slum area of Jakarta, where alley street vendors would hide the "PT" under dishes used to grind peanuts for Gado Gado.

It was to be a 15-year addiction. Withdrawal from putauw was so horrendous; the itching, the body aches, the diarrhoea, Vivi would do almost anything to feed her habit. She once smuggled 15 grams of heroin from Thailand in a cavity in the sole of her shoe.

Vivi's mother Martha, a respected journalist at an Indonesian newspaper, discovered not only her daughter, but also her younger son were drug addicts.

"When my children were still on drugs they didn't realise the troubles they brought to me. I had to quit my job because I couldn't concentrate. It made my life like a beggar's life. I felt I was dead. I run out of words to describe how drugs ruin someone or a family."

Martha is now in her 60s. She has no hesitation in supporting the Indonesian government's policy of executing drug felons, which resulted in six prisoners facing the firing squad last weekend.

Another 58 are on death row, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the Bali Nine masterminds who were sentenced in 2006 for their role in attempting to smuggle more than 8 kilograms of heroin out of Indonesia.

Both the Australians have lost their appeals for clemency from Indonesia's new president Joko Widodo. An attempt to secure a second judicial review of their cases is to be lodged but their prospects are very grim.

An appointment with a firing squad, where they would be executed together, looks likely.

For Indonesia's president,  the scourge of drug abuse in Indonesia will "ruin" the nation. There is nothing short of a drug emergency. There can be no clemency.

While the scale of Indonesia's drug problem is debated, few begrudge a serious government effort to address the issue.

The puzzle is that Jokowi, as the president is widely  known, is hanging his anti-narcotics campaign so heavily on the death penalty, bucking the trend of declining executions in Indonesia and the region.

He has a fervent desire to rid Indonesia of drug abuse, to be sure. But there is also a strong strand of politically motivated populism, and ignorance, behind the strategy.

Certainly, the views of Martha and her president are shared by many in Indonesia.

Polls show support for the death penalty in Indonesia generally sits at around 75 per cent. There is widespread concern by families they will lose children to drugs, a fear fed by endless media stories about drug crime, death and accidents.

Despite public opinion, executions in Indonesia have been increasingly rare. Just a handful at the beginning and end of the final term in office of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

To understand the turnaround from Jokowi, who presented as a compassionate and progressive presidential candidate, another recent poll provides a clue.

It shows three-quarters of Indonesians are unhappy with his performance, a stunning fall from grace for a president who took the job only months ago after being elected with Obama-like fervour.

With his patron, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, exerting huge influence, his cabinet has been stacked with questionable political appointees. The legislature is controlled by his political enemies.

A laudable and necessary move to eradicate fuel subsidies has caused consternation in the villages.

The furore over the appointment of a suspect in an active graft investigation (and Megawati acolyte) to the crucial job of national police chief prompted a Jakarta Globe headline "How Jokowi wasted his mandate of 88 days".

As his reputation as a heroic, can-do politician from outside the corrupt ruling elites is taking a battering, Jokowi is turning to nationalist issues. A crackdown on illegal fishing by foreigners has been cranked up, along with the executions.

"Jokowi believes in the death penalty. He's fully committed to it [but] there's clearly a sizeable element of domestic politics in what's unfolding," says Greg Fealy, an Indonesian analyst from the Australian National University.

Jokowi insists he is just implementing Indonesian law. He has always stated his support for the death penalty, which Indonesia regards as an important deterrent.

According to the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), 40 to 50 Indonesians die every day from drugs. It predicts the number of drug addicts will increase to 5.8 million people this year, out of a population of 250 million.

The agency says these statistics, which are widely quoted by Indonesian government members, are based on 2011 data from the University of Indonesia which surveyed hospitals, schools and rehabilitation centres.

Reliable statistics on drugs and drug-related deaths are notoriously hard to come by in the region.

The UN's World Drug Report lists only 447 drug-related deaths in Indonesia in its latest report, almost certainly an underestimation,

Even on the BNN's numbers, Indonesia's figures are, per head, on par with Australia, where there were 1427 overdoses in 2012.

Attorney-General, H.M. Prasetyo, says executions were needed to "save the nation".

"We need to wage war and of course we can't compromise. There is no forgiveness for narcotics criminals. [Implementation of the death penalty] provides a deterrent effect."

Indonesia, certainly, has the right to tackle the issue of drug abuse, but does the death penalty work as the attorney-general suggests and deter drug trafficking? Many argue there is little evidence of a link.

Some countries where drug trafficking carries the death penalty – such as China and Iran – still have big drug problems, says John Ryan, the CEO of drug research and advocacy organisation Pennington Institute.

"The scale of people who get caught drug trafficking and the scale of the drug market proves most people think they will get away with it and are prepared to play Russian roulette."

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was also sceptical. "I don't believe that executing people is the answer to solving the drug problem and certainly the trafficking of drugs in and out of Indonesia," she told Sky News this week.

Jeffrey Fagan, who provided expert testimony during a constitutional challenge against the death penalty in 2007, said drug offenders are prone to "hyperdiscounting".

"Their reasoning in the face of threats of harsh punishment is skewed."

If the death penalty did deter drug traffickers, it would suggest that supply would reduce in the particular country, pushing up prices. Drug use would then also fall.

But a study of the experience of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia between 1999 and 2005, a time when Singapore and Malaysia were executing heavily and Indonesia was not, shows that drugs were significant cheaper in Singapore and Malaysia Drug use also rose in both countries and remained more prevalent in Singapore than Indonesia.

"During this era, 73 persons were executed in Singapore [including more than half who were drug offenders], compared to two in Indonesia," Kagan said. "Yet drug trafficking was increasing and drug prices were lower in Singapore."

Attorney-General Prasetyo describes the tentacles of crime syndicates spreading beyond the major cities to rural areas, saying 45 per cent of south-east Asia's narcotics market is in Indonesia.

But intimately involved with these syndicates are Indonesia's police force and, it is alleged, military.

Only this week in Jakarta, five police were arrested by anti-narcotics agents, including a member of BNN. One of them had in their possession 7000 ecstasy tablets and 700 grams of methamphetamine.

As well as being directly involved, bribe-taking by police is endemic. Notorious night spots where drug use is rife are also reportedly owned by military and police figures.

Jokowi's support for a graft suspect as the new police chief does not inspire confidence that he is prepared to tackle the issue seriously.

Dave McRae, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, believes the focus of a counter-narcotics strategy should be on high-level members of drug syndicates.

Many of the drug felons on death row in Indonesia were arrested in possession of drugs. "On face value they look like couriers or lower-level players," says McRae. "It is difficult to imagine high-level members of drug syndicates would be in direct possession of narcotics."

Indonesia's judiciary is also riddled with graft, a seemingly impenetrable barrier to convictions for drug barons.

McRae says rampant drug use in the prison population also needs to be addressed. It prevents rehabilitation and many drug dealers continue to organise their networks on the outside.

Indeed, the principle of rehabilitation has recently been enshrined in Indonesia's sentencing laws, but seems to have been jettisoned by Jokowi as well.

For Chan and Sukumaran, who have started multiple skills, anti-drugs and religious  programs at Kerobokan prison, the development is devastating for their bid to live.

Vivi's years of heroin addiction included a stint in prison. The two women in the cells on either side of her; one Thai, the other Nigerian; continued to deal drugs behind bars.

"They would use their mobiles to arrange business outside prison," Vivi says. For a cut, the prison guards would act as go-betweens.

Unlike her mother, Vivi, now 41 and clean, does not support the death penalty for narcotics. She knew Rani Andriani, an Indonesian woman who was executed last weekend for her role in an international drug ring.

Vivi says the sentence was unfair; that Rani was merely a courier, while her cousin Ola, whose life was spared, had introduced her to crime and was a bigger fish.

Marcus Mietzner, a leading analyst of Indonesian politics, says the Jokowi strategy betrays its main motivation – "showing political toughness".

"Had the Jokowi government offered alternative approaches to the drug problem, that would have been a different story. Better prevention through health and education, fighting corruption in the narcotics police, and so forth – this would have shown a real commitment to the drug issue itself," he says.

"Instead, Jokowi presents an uncompromising stance on executions as the most important element of the war on drugs. It is not going to work, and everyone knows that."

Vivi would like to see prison reform. She wants guards to be paid better so they do not supplement their salaries with drug money. And she would like to see better security at customs, particularly at sea ports where the putauw arrives in shipping containers from Chiang Mai and Myanmar.

"It's like a plant," Vivi says. "You can't just cut the top leaves off, you have to destroy the roots."