Is Singapore's war on drugs working? | Hacker News Reader

Is Singapore's war on drugs working?

singapore-samizdat.com

41 pointspantalaimon58 comments

Article cherry picks the numbers to downplay success of Singapore drug policies.

For example it highlights that SG has disproportionate number of people in jail for drug offenses but when you actually normalize it per prison population, USA has higher number of people in jail for drug offenses per 100k population (132 in US vs 120 in SG). Further US data downplay number of people for drug offenses in prisons as many people are in prison as result of drug addiction (robberies, stealing, etc) but not because they were busted with drugs.

And here are actual data on substance abuse in US prisons. SG has frankly right even if harsh policy.

>While the exact rates of inmates with substance use disorders (SUDs) is difficult to measure, some research shows that an estimated 65% percent of the United States prison population has an active SUD. Another 20% percent did not meet the official criteria for an SUD, but were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their crime.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/criminal-ju...

Frankly my personal opinion - either drugs have to be fully legalized (even hard one) and sold at groceries or fully and effectively banned like in Singapore. Anything in the middle creates more misery.

> fully and effectively banned like in Singapore

Really? Alcohol and tobacco are available everywhere.

Nobody in history has mugged someone to raise funds for a six pack and a pack of smokes

smokes cigarette with a beer to think about this....

You're comparing it to the USA, which has by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world. 5 times more than the average country.

Syria, Yemen, Sudan have lower incarceration rates than Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden. Wow, must be nice, safe places to live.

Pakistan has a lower incarceration rate than Japan. So does The Central African Republic.

India's incarceration rate is equal to Iceland, among the lowest in the world.

Some of the most dangerous places on the planet have comically hyper low incarceration rates.

Without a lot more context incarceration rates don't tell you very much in fact.

Pakistan has a severe shortage in jail capacity.

Bingo,

As a policy-maker, Law Enforcement, you should be optimizing for

f(Incarceration Rate) * f(Violent/Property Crime Rate)

Merely focusing on Incarceration rate (which the progressives are so fixated on) is naive.

This is something I always ponder. My country (Nigeria) has a relatively low incarceration rate -- 33 in 100,000 [1] -- compared to let's say America -- 639 per 100,000! [2] --but I wouldn't say we're more safe,in fact we're facing a high wave of insecurity and banditry.

Part of the reason is that we can't even afford a suitable correctional and judiciary system. Here, most cases such as theft, assault get settled at the police station (precinct) by dialogue between the affected parties, and bail, cough bribe paid. Maybe our relative poverty favors us this way, because honestly I'll never wish my worst enemy to spend time in a Nigerian prison, it's horrible.

As a side note, the Central African Republic is the country with the lowest incarceration rate [3] and it's a major warzone.

1- https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/nigeria

2 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-th...

3 - https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/lowest-pr...

> either drugs have to be fully legalized (even hard one) and sold at groceries or fully and effectively banned like in Singapore. Anything in the middle creates more misery.

You make a good point here. Additionally, drug abuse is a symptom of psychological and social distress.

Regardless of your views on drugs, any effective ban effectively hides the symptom.

But the underlying problem is still to be addressed.

>Frankly my personal opinion - either drugs have to be fully legalized (even hard one) and sold at groceries or fully and effectively banned like in Singapore. Anything in the middle creates more misery.

As someone who thinks most drugs should be legalized: that's absolute insanity. The only way you are going to safely allow a drug like heroin on the streets is to have it be prescription based and ideally paired with free mental health services. The illegal drug trade will still obviously exist, but with the uptick in fentanyl lacing, I have a feeling folks will seek out "legitimate" sources if available.

> The only way you are going to safely allow a drug like heroin on the streets is to have it be prescription based and ideally paired with free mental health services.

If that's your standard, it's already a failure. You are never going to "safely" allow heroin on the street. You're never going to "safely" allow children's playgrounds.

All prescription heroin is going to be is something that anyone who wants to ever have a better life (free from the record of having taken heroin) will avoid. Imagine if alcohol were only available by prescription, ideally paired with mental health services. In fact, you don't have to, because prescription alcohol was available during prohibition.

edit: Hell, prescription opiates are available everywhere, and it turns out to be a bit of a problem.

>If that's your standard, it's already a failure. You are never going to "safely" allow heroin on the street. You're never going to "safely" allow children's playgrounds.

The rest of the world disagrees with your assessment.

https://drugpolicy.ca/our-work/issues/heroin-assisted-treatm...

Heroin by prescription is already available in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, and Canada, probably a number of other countries. In some places, it is considered the standard of treatment for intractable heroin addiction that has failed other treatments repeatedly. This is not new; the idea has been floated around for about a century and used on-and-off, particularly in the UK. Methadone therapy is basically the same idea but substituting a different opioid due to the stigma associated with diamorphine. Hydromorphone is becoming popular lately for this too. When taken under medical supervision (most programs require the addict to come to a clinic daily for dispensing) the physical and social harms are considerably less than using street heroin. The lack of legal, personal and other chaos from always chasing after the next dose often lets people stabilize their lives and wean themselves off.

In one of the more thorough studies on this, in Germany about 15 years ago, almost 40% of participants had voluntarily weaned themselves off with slowly decreasing doses after two years. Nearly all had decreased their use of street drugs. Nearly all were housed, some 60% were employed. Most persons admitted to the program had been homeless and and all were unemployed at the start. The average duration of heroin use was more than 20 years.

That is a remarkable result. It led to Germany making maintenance therapy generally available for addicts. And it keeps being repeated. There's a large body of evidence supporting the slow self-guided taper for benzodiazepine addiction as well, and a small but growing body that suggests it may work for a great many kinds of various addictive drugs, including stimulants. If we minimize the social and economic chaos to the addict by simply giving them their drug, that give them the opportunity to choose to stop using it. It's an uncomfortable proposition, counterintuitive to some, but the study results are compelling and must be wrangled with.

The article runs in a lot of circles, but doesn't really have any evidence that I saw on a skim that the super draconian policy isn't working. % of prison population isn't really proof of anything. The racial profiling is almost certainly economic based. The homophobic thing is almost certainly just overt homophobia. The censorship stuff is tangential. The studies don't seem to be specific to Singapore which is tough to jive with the previously stated statistics that drug stats were on the decline. Those are probably cherry picked stats by the government. But what would have been better than most of this article is just more drug stats on the actual outcomes. Or a title that was more to the point of just not liking the singapore drug policy. Which, yeah, sounds extreme. It doesn't need to be not working to oppose it.

I don't understand your dismissal of the aspects to do with racial/economic profiling and homophobia.

Isn't it irrelevant if the law is specifically targeting gay people? If a law exists that makes unjustly targeting gay people a lot easier, that's bad. Police resources can be directed at pure discrimination ("just homophobia"), but logged in the crime statistics as just a successful drug operation. The argument is the same for other various forms of discrimination.

All of this is doubly unjust if the law is ineffective for its stated goal.

And it's often quite useful to note these minority discrepancies because they can explain why a large problem may be hidden because dominant groups ("preferred" racial categories, sexual orientations, classes) are unaffected. It shows that your lack of personal experience with the problem doesn't mean it isn't a significant or widespread problem.

Of course, getting rid of the law doesn't decrease homophobia, but having such a law may be doubly illegitimate if there is common overt homophobia. It's like how you shouldn't be allowed to operate certain heavy machinery if there isn't the training/conditions in place to operate it safely.

If you think singapore is worried about discrimination, then it shows your lack of experience with this problem. It is illegal for a man to have sex with a man in Singapore.

I certainly don't agree with that policy, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that the drug policy is an important part of that system. It definitely is not.

Fair enough, I didn't know the laws were that severe, but I only used homophobia as a shorthand/standin for all the other groups I mentioned as well (racial groups, lower classes).

> If a law exists that makes unjustly targeting gay people a lot easier, that's bad.

Are gay people more likely to do heroin than straight people? Seems pretty sweeping and homophobic to say "gay people are more likely to be drug users / addicts / drug mules"

> All of this is doubly unjust if the law is ineffective for its stated goal.

Las time I walked in a park in singapore I did not see a single used needle on the ground. I frequently see them in the park in London.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying there can be targeted enforcement. And I'm using gay people as a single example, but the point applies to other minority groups.

As for "needles in the park" as a measure of policy success, I don't think it works. If a city is more benevolent or actively brutal towards its homeless population, you're going to see a drop in needles in the park. In London, the homeless are largely ignored and just shuffled around (which is a kind of passive brutality). There are so many confounding variables there.

> I'm saying there can be targeted enforcement.

How is this law different to any other then? Are drivers permits a racist and homophobic tool? Murder laws? Fraud?

The singapore law is that it is illegal. The approach is zero tolerence, and the law is enforced. The western world, the US for example, it is also illegal. The approach is then to sort of enforce it when you want and to not the rest of the time. Some days you can shoot up next to a police officer, some days they put you in jail for it.

Which of these two systems sound more likely to be problemeatic when it comes to enforcement. The zero tollerence one or the one where the law is enforced based on what the mood of the officer on the day is (or maybe just the color of your skin)?

If junkies doing heroin in the kids playground and leaving their used needles in the sand pit is a sign of success, and a lack of them a sign of failure - I want to live in a society that has failed. The more it has failed, the less time I have to spend checking the sand for a needle before my child plays the better.

> Many of Singapore's drug policies have a horrifying potential for cruelty. Singapore’s Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act allows the authorities to detain an individual indefinitely without trial, if they are suspected of drug trafficking. Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Act makes it an offence to not only traffic drugs, but also to provide information on drug use (even online). The authorities can also demand a urine test without a warrant, with refusal seen as a sign of guilt.

In particular note the last sentence. I think it's pretty obvious how broad powers such as this, mixed with selective and targeted enforcement, is bad.

And even with zero tolerance (in enforcement) you absolutely don't guarantee zero bias (in targeting). A pathological example for the sake of argument would be asking every person you think has Malay ethnicity to submit to a urine test.

My whole point is just that you can't easily dismiss these factors when assessing the justice/injustice of the current policies, when answering the question in the subtitle: Who bears the brunt of Singapore's drug policies?

For reference, Portugal has decriminalized drugs for personal use in 2001 (20 years ago!) Claims:

- Drug-related deaths have remained below the EU average since 2001

- The proportion of prisoners sentenced for drugs has fallen from 40% to 15%

- Rates of drug use have remained consistently below the EU average

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...

This gets repeated all the time by people who want to institute decriminalization in the US, but it’s always without an important bit of context. Although possession of personal use amounts is decriminalized, Portugal does force people into drug treatment. Drug users still get arrested when they’re caught in public with drugs, they just aren’t sent to prison. That step is critical, but almost always left out of the discussion. My home state decriminalized all drugs in personal amounts without any such forced treatment mechanism, after promising the results Portugal had. Turns out, much like a recipe it doesn’t work so well if you leave out important ingredients.

What a weird WEIRD article.

Marijuana is illegal in Singapore.

You can be randomly drug tested without consent (for any reason).

You are a presumed trafficker if you have 4/10th of an oz of marijuana.

If you have keys to a building with drugs in it - you are presumed drug user (and many other presumptions like this if you are around drug users)

With laws like this, we are looking at how many folks are in jail for drug use charges as a measure of drug use? Is this a joke?

I can walk down a street in San Francisco and see many folks - NOT in jail, who are using drugs.

Or you can fly through an airport in Singapore and be busted with drugs or just fail a drug test without ANY drugs in your possession - and get arrested.

Umm... if you applied this type of law in the USA, the rates of folks arrested for drug charges would be much much higher.

I don't have enough information to form an opinion on the policies, but comparing "Percentage of Prison Population Convicted for Drug Offences[sic]" is not useful at all. You need to look at things like substance abuse disorder rates among the general population, hospitalizations due to overdoses, and rates of other crimes directly linked to substance abuse before you can tell if it's "working".

The question of wether or not it's the right policy is separate from wether or not it's working but this article seems to be focusing on the former, in spite of the title.

> According to the Singapore Prison Service, those convicted of drug offences made up around 67% of Singapore’s prison population in 2020. When compared to other contexts, this is a disproportionately high figure.

Maybe to some other contexts, but when compared to other contexts, it’s not high at all. Singapore has rather average total incarceration rate, globally. This is already a good look for them: most of the crime in developed world is committed in cities, especially large ones, and as practically entire population of Singapore lives in a huge city, one would expect its criminality to be significantly higher than global average. For comparison, if you subtracted crime committed in its large cities, United States would be extraordinary safe place, with very low resulting incarceration.

Now, if drug offenders make up two thirds of its already low (when controlled for urbanization) prison population, it means that its population of non-drug offenders is extraordinarily low. This means, for example, that its entire non-drug population is (per capita) half as big as those of New York City jails, which only contain those in pretrial detainment, and serving short sentences under a year (and not even all of them at that), and do not detain those NYC criminals serving longer sentences — and NYC in recent years has been known as rather safe big city, with low crime by US standard.

So, Singapore is a place with extraordinarily low crime, and extraordinarily low incarceration of non-drug offenders, and low incarceration overall (when controlling for urbanization). And that means that Singapore drug policy doesn’t work. Okay, I guess.

I bet a lot of drug offenders were framed. If someone wants to get rid of someone else they no longer need to commit homicide or whatever, they just need to plant a bunch of drugs and get them caught. It’s even simpler actually, you just need to spike their drink or food with something because in Singapore you don’t need to possess drugs to be prisoned, if your blood tests positive for drugs then you can get death penalty.

> if your blood tests positive for drugs then you can get death penalty

This is false, I think.

you are right, only trafficking and import/export is punishable by death with following exceptions listed on the government site: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P1III-#pr33B-

I have no skin in this game but I am really impressed by how safe and overall pleasant Singapore is.

If the strict laws are the reason, let it be.

Thanks but no thanks. Plenty of other countries that do just fine without them.

It's the high average wealth level together with affordable food and high density = affordable residential areas.

In the US, homelessness and people stealing for food are problems. In Singapore, both is less severe due to much lower prices.

Very few people are stealing for food in the US. Free food for the homeless is widely available in every major city.

This is untrue; not everyone lives in a major city; and the vast majority of people who can't afford food have somewhere to live. People steal food everywhere, everyday, and when I was homeless, finding free food was nearly a full time job, which failed often. There were particular days with particular churches (with particular requirements), but no sort of blanket food coverage that didn't involve constant hunting.

>people stealing for food are problems.

this is absurd

I don't think I'd feel safe in a place where the full force of the law can be applied based on mere suspicion:

> Singapore’s Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act allows the authorities to detain an individual indefinitely without trial, if they are suspected of drug trafficking.

It's "safe" right up until you piss off the wrong person - then your life is over.

> It's "safe" right up until you piss off the wrong person - then your life is over.

This is true everywhere. Just some places are more honest about it than others.

I would wager that it is a bit more dangerous when that principle is actually codified in the law, because it makes it much easier to use without much backlash.

While it can happen anywhere, it is at least not "totally cool and legal" in most developed countries, which imo acts as a deterrent.

> It's "safe" right up until you piss off the wrong person - then your life is over.

I guarantee that in your country there is a magic word they can say that means you can be detained indefinately without trial.

Singapore had 19 million visitors in 2019 including yours truly. I wasn't afraid of getting framed for drug smuggling anymore than I would be afraid of getting shot in the US.

I lived in Munich for five years and it was extremely safe and pleasant, without draconian laws.

(Also kinda boring, for a major city anyway, but you can’t win ‘em all I guess.)

Am I understanding you correctly? If the price for Singapore being convenient for you to visit as a tourist is the government killing their citizens who violate Draconian laws (or are accused of it), does that seem right to you?

> Singapore being convenient for you to visit as a tourist

The laws were not made for the benefit of tourists. Normal Singaporeans are the main beneficiaries of a safe and functional city.

I'm not advocating Singapore's punitive drug policies, but to their credit I don't think that fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for people aged 18-45 like it is currently in the United States.

It is likely suicide, which is better, how?

Try again, Singapore has lower suicide rates than liberal darlings Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden. Ah, you think there may be other reasons for suicide? May be weather? Try South Korea

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SGP/singapore/suicide-...

Them not killing themselves at a higher rate than left-leaning countries does little to excuse draconian drug laws, that OP had implied.

https://www.asiaone.com/health/singapore-happiest-nation-asi...

This is classic liberal ideology, pushing an imagined ideal version from the comfort of well-protected jobs and living conditions on countries who seem to do better on their own

I'm not implying a value judgment about Singapore's drug policy. Drug policy is what I'd call a Wicked Problem[1] and there's no black and white 'right' thing to do. They might execute some drug dealers and imprison a bunch of people, but on the other hand they have drastically reduced overdose deaths, which in the US' 18-45 age group have killed nearly twice as many people Covid[2]. Is that an excuse for the authoritarianism? That's not a judgment I'm making, just pointing out that there are tradeoffs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/

Offtopic: I'm genuinely surprised to see "samizdat"[0] as a part of media name from a country way outside ex-Soviet block.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

NYC seems to be going in the opposite direction: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/nyregion/supervised-injec...

Citizens of NYC are complaining:

> “Not only can I buy my drugs here but I can safely shoot them up in a comfortable atmosphere where people are watching over me?” Ms. Asberry-Chresfield said. “And then they go outside and they wreak havoc in the neighborhood. We can’t live like this.”

The question is whether people shooting up outside with dirty needles somehow improves that situation.

If we consider per capita drug related-offense, most East Asian countries are doing way better than USA. If you match it against Holland then it will appear Holland's policy is great. If you match it against ALL crime rates, then EU countries are very dangerous. East Asian countries typically set their policies wholistically (SG isn't part of East Asia, but demographically majority do traced back there). So a death sentence on drug-offense will only get captured in Western drug-related statistics. Things like a less broken home due to no drug trafficking parents which kids grow up to be a law abiding citizen will never appear in Western analytics. OP should do a comparison between Philipines and Singapore. They have different drug policies in the same region. Harsh policy do work. It is harsh and it is not 100% effective. Lax and humane policy do work too and it is also not 100%. Nothing works 100%. Even my Tesla can break down despite the marvel of engineering with absolute determinism of physic laws in action. So the issue really boils down to how effective IN COMPARISONS and how acceptable to local communities enforcing those policies.

As the article doesn't dive into the statistics, I have taken some time to go through the official statistics.

In this graph, found on the Singapore Government's website, https://www.cnb.gov.sg/images/default-source/drug-situation-... (source: https://www.cnb.gov.sg/newsandevents/reports-(overview)/drug...).

The numbers are,

    2000 - 3,157
    2001 - 3,417
    2002 - 3,393
    2003 - 1,809
    2004 - 956
    2005 - 793
    2006 - 1,218
    ...
    2008 - 2,537
    2009 - 2,616
    2010 - 2887
    ...
    2018 - 3,438
    2019 - 3,526

It is almost certain that this data is misleading. The police have a wide latitude on whom they arrest, why they arrest them and when. From the article and my reading, it seems more like a way to deal with poor people, minorities and the occasional sex worker than a coherent drive.

Discounting the fact that there are almost certainly more than 3,500 drug abusers in a city with 5.6M people. It is apparent that between 2000 and 2019, they've run very very hard to stay where they are.

A more interesting indicator are the reports of drugs seized. As drugs fall in and out of style, I am going to focus on Cannabis, mostly because of its increase in popularity worldwide, and that it more accurately reflects middle class and upper class casual drug use.

The statistics from the government page I linked above suggested that in 2000, Singapore seized,

   Cannabis - 8.53kg (18.8lbs)

I found two distinct news articles in 2021, where Singaporean authorities broke their own multi-decadal records twice in as many months,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-drugs-idUSKBN2B...

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-says-ma...

For these two busts, one month apart, the data is,

   Cannabis (Bust 1) - 20.5kg (~45.2lbs)
   Cannabis (Bust 2) - 23.7 kg (~52.25 lb)

These are two shipments that they've seized. Assuming that they've gotten better over time, as have the smugglers, it means that the amount flowing into the country, is probably in the 500lb+ range. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the thousands of pounds.

On the other hand, in the US, with the legalization of pot slowly across the States, the cartels are being forced to go legit, enter other businesses or go bankrupt. As it is cheaper (when not too heavily taxed by other businesses and governments), safer and more pleasant. These figures have been obtained from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, “Independent Review of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Reporting of Drug Control Performance Summary Reports,” 2008, 2011; Customs and Border Protection, “Sector Profiles,” 2012–2017; Customs and Border Protection, “Enforcement Statistics FY 2018,” August 31, 2018; Carla Argueta, “Border Security,” Congressional Research Service, April 19, 2016.,

   2013 (pre-legalization) - 114lbs/agent
   2014 (post) - 92lbs/agent
   2015 - 76lbs/agent
   2016 - 65lbs/agent
   2017 - 44lbs/agent

And it keeps going down from there. Although the Cato Institute is a biased source, this article has excellent material, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-legalizing-marijuan...

Overall, the drug war is a fantastic tool for beating and suppressing the other in society, but it's a very poor tool for actually controlling drugs.

One of the (arguably) best introductions in Cinema history spells out why fairly clearly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwoCyF6qJzE , perhaps someone should ask the Singaporean politicians to watch the movie?

I am biased. I am coming from an extreme on the pro-drug side. It is my hope that eventually humanity will get past these immature hang ups and genetically engineer/implant drug glands into ourselves that would allow us to alter our neuro-chemical states as we wish.

I first read about them in Iain M. Banks' Culture series and they seem like an amazing idea. Feeling stressed? Gland calm. Need to stop reading HN and work? Gland focus. In a life-or-death situation? Gland combat.

Perfectly tailored mind states, when you need them, delivered when you ask for them. It sucks to be "Human-basic" as Banks' called it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Physiology

> Discounting the fact that there are almost certainly more than 3,500 drug abusers in a city with 5.6M people.

It is not at all certain.

> it seems more like a way to deal with poor people, minorities and the occasional sex worker than a coherent drive.

What are you basing this assumption on?

Whatever they’re doing is clearly working in comparison to whatever it is the entire west coast of North America is doing. Are you saying that they could be doing even better if they just emulated San Francisco?

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