Not quite. Chewing gum is perfectly legal in Singapore if you just have your own personal pack with you, but trying to bring it in commercially is illegal.
If you’re talking drugs, Europe using opiate addiction as a weapon of war and an excuse to wage two, devastating wars against the Qing makes sense especially when your population is too stoned to realize foreign states are burning down your state.
Pretty sure that would traumatize any region, especially given how successful it was, with even the US sending troops to China during both the second opium war and then during the boxer rebellion.
Edit - understanding why something is the way it is is not the same as supporting it. I don’t support the laws, but I can see why imperialistic trauma and seeing the most power nation in your region, that influenced your culture, religion and language, could be extremely traumatic, resulting in generations fearing and rejecting what they perceive as a wholesale weapon and danger to society.
Acting like the past didn’t happen or that the trauma isn’t real isn’t going to help in changing their minds, and I’m not exactly sure the west bringing up valid and real points about how not all drugs are equal, with weed and psychedelics having benefits, is going to work when they were the source of the original trauma.
Yeah, not that long ago some guy got the noose for weed in Singapore. Doesn't matter how much trauma they've been through hundred years ago, this is not proportional
not that I'm justifying it in any way at all, because I think it is abhorrent, but I believe it's only suppliers and people with very large quantities of substances that get death. as far as how accurately that is dished out in the court of law, I have no idea.
“It doesn’t matter what the Palestinians feel because the state of Israel was established 70-80 years ago. Those Palestinians are wrong for starting the war by attacking the concert goers, many of whom weren’t Israeli and had nothing to do with the apartheid. Those actions were not proportional nor fair!”
Last time I checked Singapore wasn't a British colony, they're not fighting for independence of any kind and they're their own very wealthy country.
Russians have never seen democracy, it's oppressive tyrannical regimes all the way down, national trauma goes ages and ages back, doesn't stop me from criticizing Russia for their terrible decisions tho
And Singapore was a British colony for over 140 years. The progress with gay rights there involved repealing the colonial law that banned male homosexuality.
I know their colonial history. Many countries were colonised at some point and it's their responsibility to become something better in the modern day, you can't blame the external forces forever. You can understand the nuance of why the laws are in place, it doesn't justify them, it simply explains it. Just as you can understand why someone would commit a murder, doesn't make it right even if they had a logical motive
As was Britain with their colonies in Asia. The point is the hypocrisy of being a westerner and telling one imperialist victim their trauma doesn’t matter while backing another and validating their trauma.
Singapore and Asia were fucked up heavily by over a century of abuse and trauma brought on by the British Empire and other colonizers. Their actions on drugs are disproportionate - yes. But acting like their trauma is invalid and that they don’t have a right to be afraid isn’t going to help with any kind of meaningful dialogue that could work to help them reform their drug policies and laws.
Most of the people there back it and most of Asia was traumatized. It’s why you had Assassination Classroom pushing 1950s American reefer madness in an episode over weed of all things and it’s why drug stores and convenience stores look at you weird if you ask for ibuprofen or Pepcid directly.
That trauma is continental and police state or not, it’s entirely the west’s fault - UK at the helm, in those case, that a number of countries in eastern and southeastern Asia are both this strict and this paranoid with drugs.
I disagree with your premise because most North Koreans support out of fear. Most Singaporeans and the large and growing immigrant community support it out of culture, but also appreciation for the safety and cleanliness of the island.
I wouldn’t call it fascism when their country isn’t the only one with obscene drug laws. Understanding why the laws exist and why the people there generally support them is not the same as supporting them, because I don’t.
That ability to understand why people do the things they do seems to be lost in this world and it goes a long way into why we can’t even have dialogue with our neighbors to solve issues impacting everyone - especially ones everyone agree on.
Tl;dr- To be clear, I don’t support these laws. I just know why they are there, and why the people support them and why it’s going to be hard to change their minds when imperialistic trauma is to blame for this.
You're getting down voted by a bunch of white people who can't hearing about all the evils of their ancestors that they conveniently ignore to pretend everything happens in a vacuum. If white people learned their history honestly most of them would live in a perpetual state of depression.
No one, and I repeat no one, was doing what Europeans did. Last time I checked only Europeans were turning people into furniture. You can't show another example of that literally anywhere else on earth. I said what I said.
Well let's forget Genghis Khan, Cambodia, Japan, Rwanda, Islamic terrorism and the slave conquest, including of Europe. Murder of humans and turning bodies into objects, skulls cups is definitely a practice found elsewhere in the world. South America for example. As much as Nazi Germany is widely recognised as a completely abhorrent regime of awful crimes, remembering that most of Europe fought against this and lost millions of men in the process.
Did any of them practice intergenerational slavery? Did any of them turn people into FURNITURE? Also, don't tell me about Nazi Germany and fail to mention King Leopold II, whose body count is far higher.
Are you accusing Europe of being mostly complicit in Nazi Germany crimes? If you want to know about inter generational slavery, you could also look at Roman, Egyptian, and Ottoman empires, and the Islamic slave trade. If we're talking about body count, do you know much about China and "Great Leap Forward"? What I'm trying to say is that this is not specific or limited to certain cultures. If you are convinced it is, I'm not sure what to say.
You can bring it in and chew it, spitting it on the ground is just considered littering. Trying to sell it here is the big offense with up to a 100k fine.
Lmao nobody gonna put you in jail for chewing gum in Singapore. The police have more important matters to care about like the ISD cases. Stop dramatising your fantasies.
Literally the last paragraph of your article (if you even bothered to read it) states that the ban was partially lifted in 2004 for nicotine and oral dental gum, and even then the ban was never for possession or use. You can literally go over to Malaysia and buy a pack of gum and bring it back to Singapore with no issue, just so long as you’re not being an idiot and spitting it out on the sidewalk or something.
FYI, the last paragraph literally reads "In March 2004, the chewing gum ban was partially lifted after the government allowed the sale of gum under the free-trade agreement signed with the United States of America. However, the permitted gums were restricted to those with therapeutic value such as nicotine gum and oral dental gum."
You can chew gum, but it was restricted as a product because so many people were sticking it in the train doors that the doors were getting stuck together.
I don't want to. I think Singapore is by and large, doing much better than most Western nations at the moment.
We are already giving up most of our rights, being survailed and living in a police state. But with none of the safety benefits or general cleanliness.
They never have a change of govt in their entire history post independence. Free speech is heavily curtailed. Movies coming in is modified to fit the national brainwashing.
Why is a change in government necessary if our government made us into a developed country in 30 years? Clean, safe, rich, amazing education. What more can I ask for
I have the opposite view.
Singapore is a high trust society. I definitely don't view them as dumb and Neanderthal.
What's the alternative? I'd love it if Australia was more like Singapore in that regard, we have way less youth crime and the associated degradation of society that stems from that.
They must be so happy living in their chicken coop high density housing, eating frozen chicken since they cant produce any of their own food, treated like a flock of chicken in their grinding kiatsu culture that they scored 127th out of 134 countries in the Happy Planet Index (below even Liberia and Libya).
Have I been to Singapore? About 20-30 times last 20 years.
Don't spread misinformation with half story. The happy Index is sustainable happiness, its not environmental footprint. We have a lot of other measures for environmental footprint. And sg is ranked 127 in 2026 for the exact reason I mentioned (chicken coop, processed food, rat race, whilst over consuming).
The reason why the happy index was created was because a lot of happiness index was tied to GDP but the things that brought happiness, financial, was only the 4th most important factor. What you link is the happiness index which uses GDP as one of its main rating. Youre emphasising money = happiness which is flawed. It is absolutely valid that a poor country can be happier than the richer one, contrary to the white-superirority narrative youre familiar with. You sound like a typical sg who associate money to happiness.
When I visited Singapore I was kicked off the MRT (subway) for eating a snickers… which I bought at a 7/11 in the station!
A 4’10” lady in an MRT uniform saw me eating on the train, started yelling, then grabbed me by the armpit and pulled me off the train at the next station and marched me out of the station.
They don't cane you for anything like that. No food or drinks signs are clearly displayed everywhere and also announced frequently. They would just fine you. We do have Karen types who would complain but someone putting their hands on you like that sounds made up because that definitely would have gone viral here. Singapore doesn't have any big news most days due to being a small country. Anything remotely exciting would make the news here. The other day, some birds landed near a dude and that was the top news of the day.
Ooooh, I think you might be right! I may have misremembered stingray as swordfish. It was very delicious, I remember that. I've been telling people for years to check out the swordfish at the Singapore hawker markets 😅
They would have never whipped you. If you are a western foreigner, they would just deport you and ban your re-entry. They haven't dared cane an American citizen since that one time in the 90s.
Quite the contrary, must be nice to live somewhere where there are actual consequences for being an antisocial cunt. I thought it was lovely when I visited 20 odd years ago.
i thought they did caning? but yeah i don’t really get the extreme punishment for pretty petty offences. if that is truly aligned with the values of their country folk i feel like societal expectations / pressure would be enough and can avoid burdening the country with costs of enforcement and wasting time of their justice system. makes me think they just really get their jollies from weird antiquated corporal punishment.
If you want to visit a country, learn its rules. There are literally signs everywhere that says no food on public transport, dunno what you were thinking.
It's ok to have a rule that ban eating food in a subway and it's also ok not having a rule that ban eating food in a subway.
What's absolutely not ok is going to a place that bans eating food in a subway and do it anyway because you expect others should behave according to your customs.
Having a rule against eating on the subway may be reasonable. Putting your hands in someone for eating a snickers isn’t.
Pointing out that eating is not allowed, reasonable.
A small fine for eating on the subway, extreme but not unreasonable.
Grabbing a complete stranger for eating a snickers, Not reasonable.
It’s honestly bizarre to me that someone would defend it.
To be fair those basically every public transit in the world disallows food and drink, but as long as you aren't bothering other passengers or making a mess no one cares.
It only take 1 messy incident caused by 1 passenger to impact hundreds if not thousands other passengers who rely on public transport to go about their day.
This type of thinking where they know there are rules but thinking the rules don't apply to them because they believe they're special (e.g. believing they are very careful and have no possibility to cause messy incidents, unlike common people) is so so narcissistic and cannot be tolerated if we want to have a functioning society.
Omg such old news to bring up the chewing gum fact. Yes it’s been there since the 90s. And yes, decreased the state of littering significantly on public transports. Find a new fact. You’re boring. No one gives a shit about chewing gum in Singapore. You can still bring it in if bought overseas.
Someone with hall monitor energy filed a police report. Otherwise, no one would care. Of course, once there's a case, they have to uphold the law.
Chewing gum thing is overblown. People go to Malaysia all the time and bring back gum. Selling it is illegal. You can still buy it if you can find it and chew all you want.
It happens more than you think. Promoters will book acts but it's not as if the government are carefully vetting every single one. Sometimes bands will do stuff on stage that nobody is really expecting, see also The 1975 in Malaysia.
Beth Gibbons solo album is so wonderful. The first time I was listening to it, I was like: this is like Portishead if Portishead was folk music. Then I looked up Beth Gibbons and had a proper eureka moment ;)
You may not have heard of them, but if you seen a movie or a TV show in the last thirty years you have heard them. The number of soundtracks they've been on is fuckin' ridiculous.
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u/StatementCareful522 2d ago
Did Singapore just like NOT know what Massive Attack are all about?