SINGAPORE: Singapore is “fighting a war” against traffickers who profit off the drug trade at the expense of thousands of innocent lives, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said in Parliament on Wednesday (May 8).
He framed Singapore’s fight against drugs as a war due to the “scale in terms of victims and lost lives” in this battle.
Delivering a ministerial statement on Singapore’s national drug control policy, Mr Shanmugam cited statistics from various sources such as the World Health Organization, which reported 600,000 deaths in 2019 due to drug use, and the World Drug Report’s estimates in the same year where 31 million years of “healthy” life were lost due to disability and premature deaths as a result of drug use.
“These are not mere statistics, but lives — fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters,” he said.
Mr Shanmugam added that he was delivering the ministerial statement because even though Singapore’s strict narcotics policies are effective and supported by Singaporeans, they are criticised “without merit” by some parties who are helping inmates to abuse the legal process and prevent penalties against drug traffickers from being carried out.
In his speech, Mr Shanmugam cited examples of how different countries and cities across the world have been affected by drugs, adding that Singapore is not exempt from the problems that these countries face.
In particular, Singapore is a target for traffickers as the street price of drugs here is much higher than in other parts of the region.
“In this war, we will have to decide: Do we want to go soft, and risk ending up like the countries I have spoken about earlier?” he asked.
“Do we want to become a ‘narco-state’, an ‘infamous brown town’, or a hotbed for drugs and violence?”
He was referring to how Barrow-in-Furness in the United Kingdom has become known as the country’s “most infamous brown town” due to it being plagued with drug-related problems.
In order to continue Singapore’s fight against the drug scourge, Mr Shanmugam reiterated that maintaining the death penalty is important to help the country defend itself and save “thousands of lives”.
“You remove the death penalty, drug trafficking will go up significantly. And there will be more robberies, house breakings and so on because drug abusers will need money to buy drugs.
“There will also be — evidence shows — more sexual assaults, homicides. And definitely, more people will die.”
He noted that Singapore’s “strict approach” has saved many lives.
In the 1990s, the Central Narcotics Bureau arrested about 6,000 drug abusers per year. The number has halved to about 3,000, even though the supply of drugs in the region has “exploded” and Singaporeans’ purchasing power has increased significantly.
“This is the war that we are fighting in Singapore. And if we don’t fight it, or if we lose it, thousands in Singapore will suffer.”
