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> Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like.

"drugs" often means illegal drugs in colloquial use while alcohol is legal in most places, so the distinction has a use.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer.

I wonder what's your motivation for such an extreme exaggeration. The article you linked quite clearly states that the "punishment" for consuming is a 6 months rehibilation which, while quite harsh, is very far from your claim of death penalty. You need to possess 500 grams of Marijuana to get the death penalty which is like a 1000 or more joints.

I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. Nobody is going to overdose on it, almost nobody is going to make a business of it if it were actually legal, ... this isn't a heroin, meth or even moonshine operation we're talking about.

Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

> I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis.

I think it's a bad law, but surely not as bad as you originally tried to mislead people into believing.

> Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this?

Apparently yes, by intentionally making a false claim that you get executed for smoking a joint.

> Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

They won't get executed for being a drug user, but for trafficking drugs. Given that 500 grams is a huge amount, I think it's reasonable to consider the offenders to be drug traffickers (even if I don't agree with the punishment).

This response reads to me as, at best, a bad faith intepretation of hyperbole.

It seems very obvious why someone could get worked up over demonizing a relatively benign psychedelic over literal poison that is responsible for myriad health issues and daily violence.

If you can't meet in the middle and actually discuss the substance of the topic rather than nitpicking their comment, why comment at all?

It is not bad interpretation, it is accurate interpretation. Hyperbole is valid thing if you are not trying to use to to sneak in false facts.

In this case, it was attempt to sneak in lies.

Who cares? You're missing the forest for the trees. Alcohol is still legal and kills thousands (millions?) times more people. If we can't discuss that, being correct has no value. If the only thing you want to contribute is to point out a lie, why have the conversation in the first place? It's just wasting everyone's time.

Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion. Pointing out lies serves to facilitate discussion. Why is that controversial?

> Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion.

No, it isn't. Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any. Third, you're perfectly capable of communicated despite this, and certainly more than pointing out a disagreement over facts. Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement and don't appear willing to discuss the bulk of the commentary?

Meanwhile, "good faith" actually is a precondition for decent conversation.

EDIT: Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim. So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value. Eg https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

> Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any.

I take such an extreme case of misrepresentation / exaggeration as an attempt to mislead readers, which for me is malice.

> Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement

I didn't point out a disagreement, but a wrong fact.

> Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim

Let me cite from the article you linked: "The man, ..., had been imprisoned for seven years and convicted in 2019 for trafficking around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of cannabis" - how is that strengthening op's case that you get executed for smoking a joint?

> So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value.

I'm happy to discuss things once facts are settled. You're killing the conversation by this weird insistence that setting facts straight is wrong?

Why are you getting bent out of shape defending a death penalty for owning about enough weed to get a frat house hyped on bob marley? How is that not horrible?

Why are you responding to imaginary comments? If you want to make that argument, make that argument in the first place.

A single plant can easily produce 500 grams. In other words - you could be killed for growing one plant for your own personal consumption.

That's an extreme upper range for specific strains under ideal conditions which you aren't likely to achieve as a simple consumer.

It's certainly very easy to stay under this limit if you're growing at home. It's difficult to cross that threshold accidentally, for sure.

This is not true at all.

500 grams is roughly a pound. 2 pounds (or more) of trimmed flower per plant is very achievable growing outdoors with many strains (not autoflowers).

We're talking here about 500 grams of dried buds, the final product.

Yes, we are. 1-2 pound(s)+ (dried flower) is very easily achievable outdoors from a single plant with most strains. 4 or 5 pounds+ dried product from a single plant is not unheard of. Cannabis can get extremely large.

(this is actually inconsequential to the point of the article I just wanted to point it out).

but why do you have to impose your German Values on Singapore ? As far as I can tell Singapore is a sovereign country, and its people have their own agency. I'm sure autocracy works well for them - just as democracy works well for Germany. they're free to choose their own "medicine" to maintain social order.

Although they aren’t free to choose that if it’s an autocracy.

In the US many cannabis legalizations have occurred from voter ballot issues where the legislature has no control over the issue. Citizens collected enough signatures and took the issue directly to the ballot for voters to vote on, and the state was bound to implement the change as the vote dictates (see: Ohio).

Sure, maybe the hypothetical idea of forcing more democracy on a society that doesn’t want it is bad or something but it seems to me that Germans (and Americans) objectively have more self-determination over this issue.

The idea that it’s an acceptable local cultural value for citizens to not have input on what crimes should receive the death penalty doesn’t seem like a local cultural issue, seems more like a universal human rights issue to me.

Is this sarcasm? The entire point is autocracy doesn't allow the people to choose for themselves. The autocrat does. The autocrat likes beer but not weed, so one is a good time and the other a death sentence.

"From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc"

That's because your politicians can't really be blamed for Haiti / Syria etc. And it's not directly their job to fix it. So they're happy to speak passionately about it all day, and hopefully direct the populations attention away from what they ARE responsible for, and might be held accountable for. (This is the case in many Western countries, of course - not just Germany).

> but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity.

Alcohol doesn't get a 'free pass' in Singapore. It's taxed to high heaven and back, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in Singapore, too.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich.

Singapore does not 'get a pass' either. Case in point: your own comment that dragged Singapore into a completely unrelated conversation. Or the article you linked. Or the comments on the /r/worldnews subreddit on every article posted about Singapore executing someone for possession of cannabis. Or the many accusations of human rights violations levelled against Singapore, despite it being by far the safest and most secure seven hundred square kilometres on the planet.

> From my German point of view

At the risk of a slippery slope, I'm going to say: your German point of view also includes very delightful companies like Bayer, Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Heckler and Koch, etc etc, which all produce implements of various shapes and sizes expressly designed to do nothing but kill people. To me this seems a little bit hypocritical—it's not okay to kill drug traffickers because 'oh it's just drugs, think about their families', but it's alright to actually build and sell killing machines, because they're used to kill Russians or other brown people half a planet away. Your German point of view also includes allowing teenagers as young as 16 to partake in alcohol, which I find confusing, unless you clarify that you personally don't imbibe.

For the record, Singapore also has an arms industry, and in general Singapore has no qualms about its position on the world stage. Tiny city-state with very little strategic depth, it does what it needs for its survival. If it means putting drug traffickers and murderers to death, so be it.

And on a personal note, I neither drink alcohol nor consume recreational narcotics.

>>>> Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint?

I actually do know a person who did exactly that. Just because it isn't as prevalent as with alcohol doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

>>>> Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well-understood.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/

You don't get the death penalty for smoking a joint in singapore. You get the penalty for being in possession of stuff like a pound of weed or an ounce of methamphetamine with the intention to traffic it.

Go read their laws. For the most part users just get forced into treatment. Not unlike in the Portuguese model of harm reduction.

You are wrong.

Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

The law is pretty draconian, and if societies with strong rule of law and stringent requirements for prosecution can execute innocent people for murder accusations it's pretty undefendable to execute people for presuming that the 500g of weed found nearby them was theirs and destined for trafficking. Which, still if provable is a barbaric outcome anyway.

> You are wrong.

> Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

> There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

You are incorrect. Following is a link to the law—verbatim—from the Singapore Statutes Online: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2-

Judges cannot sentence someone to the death penalty just 'being near half a kilo'. It has to be more than 500 grammes.

https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13-

Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug, is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have had that drug in his or her possession.

A friend leaves a key to a locker in your apartment. It has half kilo of cannabis. The cops find the key in your apartment? Toasted.

From your own quote, I emphasise:

> (1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control

So no, as much as you want to think of Hollywood-esque scenarios where a friend or some random plants a drug on you, which gets you the death penalty for being completely innocent, you actually get a lawyer and a trial in court where you can prove your innocence. Singapore does not do kangaroo courts. The prosecution needs to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you conspired with said friend to hide the key in your locker. And needless to say they also have to prove you had the knowledge that said key controlled access to narcotics.

And chances are, this has never happened in reality because drug traffickers into South-East Asia are an extremely close-knit group who in general don't go around handing 'drug locker keys' to their friends and random people on the street. The law exists to prosecute conspirators, not randoms.

I'm confused by this is exchange. Half a kilogram = 500 grams = (approximately) one pound. What is it you're disagreeing about?

Perhaps your nation should have more energy to protest what's going on in Germany.

One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs.

Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.

The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]:

> The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)

Like I said above, Im not arguing that alcohol isnt a drug, just that I think you are making way to big of a deal out of the phrasing.

Alcohol isnt viewed more favorable because it is held apart. It is held apart because it is viewed more favorably.

It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

One can argue that people should take alcohol more seriously, but coming at it from a semantic rationale seems silly.

>It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

it doesn't really work like that in practice though - there are plenty of 'drugs' that won't ruin your life or social-status, and they're not all listed separately like alcohol.

I'm a firm believer that the reason the linguistics that we now use came about was due to the legalities of the substances involved and the market action. Alcohol is big business, and legal -- so it deserves a distinction. That's about the singular distinction. The market was allowed to push phrases into the public purview, and luckily for them the phrases stuck.

During western prohibition it (alcohol) was called 'poison' or 'narcotic', or 'intoxicant' in the propaganda.

The google ngrams viewer verifies this suspicion; the phrase ' drugs and alcohol ' wasn't in (real) use until much later in American history.[0]

[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alco...

Alcohol is by far the most socially accepted drug.

You talk about legalities and that returns to the same point. legalities are different because it is more socially accepted.

What about caffeine?

> The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

I appreciate you posting this (even if it is terminology nitpick). The social connotations associated w/ verbally separating alcohol from other drugs hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to try to use this phrasing in the future.

The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect. Same goes for fermented fruit. Additionally even today it serves as a preservative and solvent. You cannot meaningfully eliminate it from use.

Meanwhile drugs were always understood as something produced for the specific purpose of getting high.

There's a distinction because these are in fact different things.

>The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect

Which one ? The most common food I found are just soy sauce / vinegar and I hope people are not drinking a bottle of it per meal.

> This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef"

People do say that they don't eat meat but they do eat fish.

Alcohol and other drugs completely makes sense in world where alcohol is legal and common while other drugs are not.

Do you give your own government a pass for supporting Israel's state-sanctioned murder?

Most Singaporeans support the death penalty penalty for drug trafficking: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majo...

This is incredibly, even blatantly misleading. Singapore does not execute people for marijuana possession. It has executed a handful of heroin traffickers. Maybe worry about your own failed state before spreading lies about others.

A quick search for news articles will show you that Singapore does execute people for trafficking marijuana in rather modest amounts.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390

Alcohol does not get a free pass in Singapore. Taxes for it are very high. For example the taxes for 700ml 40% liquor bottle is ~US$19

On one hand, jail time. On the other hand, 10 minutes of working to pay the taxes.

If the point of the policy is to make the society less dependent on drugs, this makes sense. It's difficult to outlaw what has been once legalized, so constraining the consumption by high taxes make sense while keeping the other drugs illegal.

> less dependent on drugs

There, you've done exactly the thing I was talking about! You're not actually talking about drugs in general, because that would include alcohol. You're talking about the drugs you don't like, and the use of language deliberately excludes alcohol from being a drug.

To me it's extremely obvious and deliberate, and I'm sick of alcohol trying to get a free pass among DRUGS.

Read again, my comment implies alcohol is a drug by saying "other drugs".