4 ms·

And that is why I'll personally never go to any country that has a death penalty for something so stupid as "being in possession of X". We're not even talking k

And that is why I'll personally never go to any country that has a death penalty for something so stupid as "being in possession of X". We're not even talking kilos of the stuff with a potential to impact hundreds of people's lives. No, it is an amount consistent with her explanation she was "stocking up for a month". Yes, she admitted selling some of it. But, a death penalty for something like this is not just inhumane. It is uncivilised and extremely backwards. It reflects badly not just on Singapore as a country, but on all the countries that allow this to happen. Unfortunately there are a lot of state-sanctioned atrocities in the world. If we compare sentencing a small time drug trafficker to death in Singapore with mass organ harvesting from political prisoners in China the former seems less important. However the fact is, the western world has far less influence over China than a country like Singapore. Where are the threats of sanctions? Where is the mass condemnation in media? Kudos for BBC to write about it t, but their article should call a spade a spade, not dance around it.

jonhohle 3y ago
Devil’s advocate: There are around 20 death sentences for drug dealing per year in Singapore and an annual overdose death rate of 1.18 per 100k and approximately 0 death penalties for dealing. In the US, the overdose death rate is >20 per 100k. The penalties are severe, but if they contribute to the reduction of general population deaths, may be less worse than western approaches in terms of lives saved. (Obviously there are lots of factors that go into those stats, geography, access, culture, etc. and punishment cannot be the only variable evaluated) Edit for more scale: there are around 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US vs 60(!) in Singapore. A metro area of 5M in the US (the approx population of Singapore) would have >1,000.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  So the ends justify the means?
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    If there is a causal relationship between those who sell drugs on the black market and deaths from those drugs, I don’t know if the means aren’t justified. Could I give my life to save 20, I’d consider that an honor.
- Roark66 3y ago
  I think there are many factors for this. I'm not sure which year you picked up for the 100k numer, but it sounds insane. Are you sure this is correct? In the entire EU (comparable population to US) there are approximately 6k overdose deaths per year(5800 in 2020). In one member state Poland (I'm picking it as its my country, not because of any better/worse rate) it's around 240 people annually (2006-2016). That's 0.6 per 100k people. Half that you quote for Singapore and we have no death penalty. I suspect there must be something else at play here. Perhaps they (Singapore and USA) count all drugs like Tylenol/Paracetamol and EU/Poland only counts illicit drugs. I can't believe there would be such a huge difference unless there is a mistake in data somewhere.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    In the US there were over 100k deaths in 2021 [0]. 0 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db457.htm#:~:text=Drug%20overdose%20deaths%20have%20risen,increased%20from%2017.1%20to%2019.6 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db457.htm#:~:te....
    - Roark66 3y ago
      Very interesting, here is a good source that covers 2021 in Europe https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/european-drug-report/2023/drug-induced-deaths_en https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/european-drug-repo... It seems the difference really is that huge. US 32.6 per 100k in EU it is 1.83 per 100k(18.3 per million) so similar to Singapore. Within EU there is large variability between countries. In US it seems the number of overdose deaths raised 5 fold recently! Recently. In EU they say it raised recently in some countries but dropped in others so overall the trend is growing, but not that quickly. After reading how they report this data there is one component that seems different. US includes suicides in its count (about 4% of reported overdose deaths) while it is unclear if EU does the same. So we should probably lower the US numbers by that 4%, but still the difference is an order of magnitude. To me this data illustrates the point I made very well. Death penalty is not a crime deterrent. Coming back to this huge number I was interested in finding out if it's US that has more than average of these deaths, or is it EU that has less and it's difficult to find reliable data for many other places. So I looked at India for example and I found an official report that claims all causes accidental deaths(including suicides) per 100k is less than just drug overdose deaths in US. I wonder if there is any research that tries to answer why this is so. I'd love to find out.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Rereading this, the comment about zero death penalties for dealing was supposed to be after the US stats, obviously not Singapore. Failure by my part to edit or proof read correctly whilst mobile.

jonhohle 3y ago

Devil’s advocate: There are around 20 death sentences for drug dealing per year in Singapore and an annual overdose death rate of 1.18 per 100k and approximately 0 death penalties for dealing. In the US, the overdose death rate is >20 per 100k. The penalties are severe, but if they contribute to the reduction of general population deaths, may be less worse than western approaches in terms of lives saved. (Obviously there are lots of factors that go into those stats, geography, access, culture, etc. and punishment cannot be the only variable evaluated) Edit for more scale: there are around 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US vs 60(!) in Singapore. A metro area of 5M in the US (the approx population of Singapore) would have >1,000.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
So the ends justify the means?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  If there is a causal relationship between those who sell drugs on the black market and deaths from those drugs, I don’t know if the means aren’t justified. Could I give my life to save 20, I’d consider that an honor.
Roark66 3y ago
I think there are many factors for this. I'm not sure which year you picked up for the 100k numer, but it sounds insane. Are you sure this is correct? In the entire EU (comparable population to US) there are approximately 6k overdose deaths per year(5800 in 2020). In one member state Poland (I'm picking it as its my country, not because of any better/worse rate) it's around 240 people annually (2006-2016). That's 0.6 per 100k people. Half that you quote for Singapore and we have no death penalty. I suspect there must be something else at play here. Perhaps they (Singapore and USA) count all drugs like Tylenol/Paracetamol and EU/Poland only counts illicit drugs. I can't believe there would be such a huge difference unless there is a mistake in data somewhere.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  In the US there were over 100k deaths in 2021 [0]. 0 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db457.htm#:~:text=Drug%20overdose%20deaths%20have%20risen,increased%20from%2017.1%20to%2019.6 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db457.htm#:~:te....
  - Roark66 3y ago
    Very interesting, here is a good source that covers 2021 in Europe https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/european-drug-report/2023/drug-induced-deaths_en https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/european-drug-repo... It seems the difference really is that huge. US 32.6 per 100k in EU it is 1.83 per 100k(18.3 per million) so similar to Singapore. Within EU there is large variability between countries. In US it seems the number of overdose deaths raised 5 fold recently! Recently. In EU they say it raised recently in some countries but dropped in others so overall the trend is growing, but not that quickly. After reading how they report this data there is one component that seems different. US includes suicides in its count (about 4% of reported overdose deaths) while it is unclear if EU does the same. So we should probably lower the US numbers by that 4%, but still the difference is an order of magnitude. To me this data illustrates the point I made very well. Death penalty is not a crime deterrent. Coming back to this huge number I was interested in finding out if it's US that has more than average of these deaths, or is it EU that has less and it's difficult to find reliable data for many other places. So I looked at India for example and I found an official report that claims all causes accidental deaths(including suicides) per 100k is less than just drug overdose deaths in US. I wonder if there is any research that tries to answer why this is so. I'd love to find out.
jonhohle 3y ago
Rereading this, the comment about zero death penalties for dealing was supposed to be after the US stats, obviously not Singapore. Failure by my part to edit or proof read correctly whilst mobile.