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by pauldenton 1022 days ago
If you want to see what a war on drugs looks like, just look at Singapore. Since 1975, after the proposal by then Minister for Home Affairs Chua Sian Chin, the death penalty was mandated as the sole punishment for drug trafficking, should the amount of whichever drugs exceed the capital threshold.[106] As a result of this legal reform, 28-year-old Penang-born Malaysian Teh Sin Tong became the first convicted drug trafficker to be hanged at Changi Prison on 28 April 1978, after the High Court found him guilty on 13 October 1976

The majority of executions in Singapore are for drug offences. Since 2010, 23 prisoners have been executed for drug offences, while only five have been executed for other offences, such as murder. Death penalty supporters, such as blogger Benjamin Chang, claim that Singapore has one of the lowest prevalence of drug abuse worldwide. Chang claims, for instance, that over two decades, the number of drug abusers arrested each year has declined by two-thirds, from over 6,000 in the early 1990s to about 2,000 in 2011.