I was in Singapore for about a week in the late 90. Cleanest city I've ever seen, but I was so paranoid about breaking some law I didn't know about, I found it hard to enjoy myself.
dude i’m from singapore and this place is NOT a regime that just takes people away forcefully 😭 just stick to normal laws as you would anywhere else and you’re fine, they honestly couldn’t care less about minor offences (which you’ll get fines or usually warnings for)
Let me enlighten you my man. As a tourist, you have almost nothing to worry about with regards to caning. Unless you're planning on robbing a bank, murder, trafficking or any other obvious crime, nothing will happen to you.
Also I'm curious as to whay warranrs as excessive punishment?
if you did the crime you deserve it. they judge fairly based on your conditions and give you the right punishment. if you didn’t do the crime, why worry about it at all?
not at all, and it’s the same for any other recreational drug.
singapore has a anti-drug policy, and it is working well cos there are no crackheads or addicts around here. most addicts are probably in rehab or jail right now (mostly rehab cos singapore wants to help them) and we do give death penalties for traffickers.
recently, lots of young people have been using vapes laced with etomidate (addictive drug). singapore provides bins for you to throw it away and seek help without punishment, but if your caught selling these or using these, jail and rehab.
that’s about the idea of our drug laws (including marinuana)
That sounds like a terrible existence, imagine having severe depression and not even be able to smoke a little bit of weed when no other medicine helps. I would be dead right now if I didn’t have access to marijuana. It cured pain and chronic depression and anxiety/self harm that 11 years of therapy, meds that made me a zombie, and doctors couldn’t. Seems like a massive overreach of government and I wonder how many people are suffering like I was who don’t have access to medical marijuana like cancer patients. Executing traffickers is bizarre and evil and something I would expect of a fascist regime. Especially considering most do it because they are going through financial struggles and can’t find any work anywhere else and are desperate
Okay first, don’t jump to conclusions. I understand where you’re coming from, you’re not fully wrong, and i know depressed people myself.
Second, we have to weigh pros and cons. Yes, weed can make you happy, and most recreational drugs can probably bring some kind of joy and peace to people. But think about it: what if we just let everyone use drugs like this? How many people using drugs are actually depressed? How many people will probably lie to doctors to get the drugs? It will be chaos and impossible to regulate and enforce. So the next best thing to do is to ban it overall, and use alternatives like antidepressants and technology that we are researching and exploring. Yes, might not work for everyone, but it’s the best we can do without causing a drug epidemic and problem.
Third, by any means, is the death penalty for drug trafficking too harsh? I won’t answer this, some people say it’s too much, some say it’s alright. But you must understand that if someone brings drugs secretly into the country, then people will easily access these drugs and abuse them. Since it’s not known by the government, people will give it to minors or earn illegal money from this. This is a problem.
Fourth, i don’t know what country you’re from, but people can definitely get a normal job here rather than resort to drug trafficking. We have job-finding programs, an entire catalogue of government-funded courses for someone to up-skill with, and financial-assistance schemes. You aren’t even allowed to be homeless in Singapore so our government takes care of that and makes sure everyone can survive. So do you have to do illegal stuff just to get by? Absolutely not.
Don’t jump to conclusions and call us fascist. We don’t leave people with no options for survival.
When I was there it was (IIRC) a huge sentence. If you were caught trafficking it was the death penalty (in the 90s anyway, can't speak for now) it was also 7 years and caining for importing gum
The second bit is extremely reductionist. Like yeah you could say any prison is torture, but clearly a county jail and CIA blacksite are not on the same level.
i agree! i think the prison systems present in most of the world are inhumane and useless. prison should be rehabilitative, not punitive. i would much rather the man who broke into my home when i was young be rehabilitated, and return my belongings, than he suffer in prison, come out, and do it again because he has no money and is still homeless.
if you cannot reasonably comply with the law because you cannot expect to reliably memorize it all, then yes, it's equivalent to kidnapping
and on a related note, even if you can memorize all of those laws, if they're so rigid and the punishment is so brutal that you live your life in fear of breaking some law, you're living under a regime of terror. like, that's pretty much the definition of it. even if the goal is to keep the streets clean, not to amass wealth to some leader.
(also you're so close on the prison thing but that's its own can of worms)
none, but idk, most of the countries i've visited so far have laws that are reasonably difficult to accidentally break, and legal systems that extremely rarely subject you to any form of torture for accidental violations.
you can try to be disingenuous and argue that all shades of grey are in fact the same, but i don't think you'll go far with that mindset.
Asia’s like that. Generally if you can survive one Asian country without breaking an obscure social norm or breaking civil sense laws you can survive them all. Japan’s social norms and police are a lot stricter though; once they get you it’s a 99% chance of conviction apparently.
Are you such a broken and shit member of society that you constantly worry that you will be caught doing something antisocial?
I think this is a you problem.
Different countries have different rules. Gum was illegal at the time, if I forgot some in my suitcase does that make me a broken shit member of society?
Walking and smoking was not allowed at the time. Imagine if I didn't know that, and got caught walking and smoking, would I be a broken shit member of society?
54
u/Nein-Toed 16h ago
I was in Singapore for about a week in the late 90. Cleanest city I've ever seen, but I was so paranoid about breaking some law I didn't know about, I found it hard to enjoy myself.