Singapore’s approach to drugs works for Singaporeans

March 25, 2025 journo

By Anil Nayar

March 25, 2025 — 7.00pm

In recent times, two opinion pieces have been written about Singapore’s strict approach to drugs. On December 3, 2024, Lex Lasry called Singapore “intransigent” in the use of the death penalty for drug offences, and on March 10, 2025, Zach Hope similarly penned an article questioning Singapore’s strict approach to drug trafficking and our laws on public assemblies. I think it is important for us to explain our position on both these issues.

A prison van brings Australian Nguyen Tuong Van to a court appearance in Singapore on drug-trafficking charges in 2003. He was later executed.Credit: Luis Ascui

Singapore’s approach to drugs

First, on our drug policies. Singapore strives to rehabilitate drug abusers. Drug abusers who have not committed other serious criminal or drug offences receive rehabilitation without a criminal record, regardless of how many times they relapse. Our rehabilitation efforts have worked well; our recidivism rate more than halved from 1993 to 2022, from 73 per cent to 30.8 per cent.

The World Health Organisation reported that more than 600,000 deaths in 2019 were attributable to drug abuse, more than twice the number of deaths caused by firearms. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that in 2022-23, one in 10 people aged 14 and above had been a victim of an illicit drug-related incident. On December 2, 2024, one day before Lasry’s article, 13 people were charged over a seizure of 2.34 tonnes of cocaine in Australia. This was Australia’s largest cocaine seizure, and, if not intercepted, would have equated to 11.7 million individual street deals.

Drugs affect people all around the world. But Singapore is particularly vulnerable to the menace posed by drug trafficking as a small country with a small population. We are at the doorstep of the Golden Triangle – a region which the United Nations described as “literally swimming in methamphetamine”. We are also well-connected to the world, and traffickers have much to gain if they succeed in smuggling drugs to and through Singapore. Needless to say, this would also have an impact on Australia, which is only slightly further afield.

This is why Singapore has adopted an uncompromising approach towards the threat posed by the drug trade, including capital punishment in serious cases.

Lasry suggests that 15 grams of diamorphine (pure heroin) is too low to justify the death penalty. Hope makes a similar point, noting that relatively small hauls of 52 grams “don’t even make the news”. But this misses the point – the quantities may be small, but the impact is not. Fifteen grams of diamorphine may be lower than Victoria’s commercial threshold, but is enough for about 1250 straws of heroin, which can feed the addiction of 180 abusers for a week – 180 and more lives irrevocably affected, including innocent families.

Lasry claimed that the death penalty was an ineffective deterrent. Singapore’s experience suggests otherwise.

After Singapore introduced capital punishment for trafficking more than 1.2 kilograms of opium in 1990, there was a 66 per cent reduction in the average weight of opium trafficked into Singapore in the four-year period thereafter.

A 2021 study conducted in regions where many of our drug traffickers come from found that 87.2 per cent of respondents believed that capital punishment deterred people from trafficking substantial amounts of drugs into Singapore. Of those polled, 82.5 per cent also agreed that capital punishment was more effective than life imprisonment for this purpose.

Singapore’s public assembly laws

Second, on public assembly laws, Lasry claimed that local anti-death penalty activists were persecuted for their political views. Meanwhile, Hope questioned why assemblies in Singapore were confined to a place in the city centre called Speakers’ Corner, where he had attended a vigil for a death-row inmate.

As Hope’s experience shows, activists in Singapore are free to express their concerns, as long as they do not break the law. The assembly he attended was held without the need for a police permit, as were the previous anti-death penalty demonstrations held there. No one is persecuted just because of their political views.

It is true that Singapore has strict rules on public assembly. With the exception of Speakers’ Corner, public assemblies in Singapore require a police permit for the purpose of ensuring law and order. This is to guard against what we have seen all around the world, where many well-intentioned protests started out peaceful, but spiralled out of control and devolved into fiery chaos and violence. These risks are even more acute for densely populated Singapore, given the inherent fault lines in our multi-racial, multi-religious society.

We thus make no apologies for regulating, and even prohibiting at times, protests that could be extremely divisive and contentious for our society. But these laws apply equally to everyone in Singapore, regardless of their political views or opinions.

Singapore’s policies have worked to create a safe, stable, and relatively drug-free society. Hope has seen the effects of our policies himself. He notes that Singapore can “point to some of the safest big-city streets in the world”, and that it is “nothing to walk alone here at night”. A 2023 survey showed more than 75 per cent of Singapore residents supported the death penalty for the trafficking of a significant amount of drugs. In 2024, Singapore was ranked second in Gallup’s Law and Order Index.

Our policies suit our geographical and social context. We have no desire or interest in imposing our approach on others. But we will continue to correct misrepresentations – deliberate or otherwise – and protect our people from the harms of drugs.

Anil Nayar is Singapore’s High Commissioner to Australia.

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