SINGAPORE, March 16 — Amid a growing global trend by governments to decriminalise and legalise drugs, Singapore is standing firm that it will not go down that path.
Senior Minister of State (Home Affairs and National Development) Desmond Lee reinforced the country’s zero-tolerance stance against drugs at a United Nations (UN) event in Vienna, Austria, yesterday (March 15), speaking at the final negotiations during the 59th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. This meeting comes before April’s UN General Assembly Special Session, a platform for nations to debate the future of global drug policy and review a 10-year global plan started in 2009 against drugs.
In his speech, Lee said decriminalising and legalising drugs “is not applicable to societies that are relatively drug-free”, such as Singapore, where the number of drug abusers arrested last year comprised less than 0.1 per cent of the population.
“It is also contrary to the international drug conventions,” he said. “Other countries have, in recent years, decriminalised or legalised the use of cannabis, both for medical as well as recreational purposes. We will not do the same,” Lee added, pointing out that the authorities here “do not, and cannot see it purely as a public health or medical issue”.
Policymakers overseas who have decriminalised drug use have reduced or removed penalties for those with low-level consumptions, but it may still be a crime to sell and distribute the drug, or for high consumption, for example.
Legalising drug use means it is no longer a crime to consume the drug and the processes of drug distribution are also legal, with variations depending on the country’s lawmakers.
In a media briefing held in Singapore last week, Deputy Secretary for Home Affairs Goh Soon Poh had said that the increasing support for liberal approaches overseas has been a cause for concern.
In explaining Singapore’s drug polices, Lee said it takes a harm prevention approach and not the harm reduction stance as is done overseas.
It focuses its efforts to ensure that drug abuse does not take root in society, and places emphasis on rehabilitating those who use drugs, and reintegrating them into society. The practice of targeted prevention, tough laws and enforcement are supported by evidence and research, he said.
Last June, the Ministry of Home Affairs commissioned two six-month studies. In one study, Professor Stella Quah of the Duke-NUS Medical School weighed the harm reduction and harm eradication programmes adopted by 11 countries, including Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Harm reduction promotes one’s right to use drugs and the legalising of hard drug use. Advocates push for the provision of clean injecting equipment and safe injecting facilities. The end game: Reducing the transmission of HIV and other blood-borne diseases.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is harm eradication, practised in Singapore. It operates on the basis that one’s autonomy has been impaired by addiction, and emphasises the control of drug demand and supply.
In recent years, most of the 11 countries have shifted from harm reduction towards a harm eradication approach, Prof Quah said, adding that the prevalence of HIV and hepatitis C remains on the rise in the 11 countries.
In the other study, led by Institute of Mental Health’s general psychiatry consultant Jimmy Lee, researchers combed through more than 500 papers from medical journals to review cannabis use.
Dr Lee said: “Cannabis can be used for specific medical conditions (such as chronic pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting). But when it comes to the rest of the medical conditions, the literature doesn’t support the widespread use at the moment.”
The Central Narcotics Bureau revealed previously that among new abusers last year, cannabis has replaced heroin as the second most-abused drug in Singapore behind methamphetamine. It said the study’s findings would help in education programmes to correct abusers’ misconception that cannabis is not harmful nor addictive. ― TODAY
