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> Alcohol and other drug use Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of th

> Alcohol and other drug use Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like. Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? Yeah, nevermind any of that I guess. Meanwhile, Singapore will gladly imprison or execute you for possession of cannabis[0], but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity. From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc, and while I'm not saying those issues aren't important, I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o

s1artibartfast 2y ago
One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs. Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.
- pixelpoet 2y ago
  The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]: > The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)
  - EvanAnderson 2y ago
    > The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. I appreciate you posting this (even if it is terminology nitpick). The social connotations associated w/ verbally separating alcohol from other drugs hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to try to use this phrasing in the future.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect. Same goes for fermented fruit. Additionally even today it serves as a preservative and solvent. You cannot meaningfully eliminate it from use. Meanwhile drugs were always understood as something produced for the specific purpose of getting high. There's a distinction because these are in fact different things.
    - hippari2 2y ago
      >The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect Which one ? The most common food I found are just soy sauce / vinegar and I hope people are not drinking a bottle of it per meal.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Like I said above, Im not arguing that alcohol isnt a drug, just that I think you are making way to big of a deal out of the phrasing. Alcohol isnt viewed more favorable because it is held apart. It is held apart because it is viewed more favorably. It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine. One can argue that people should take alcohol more seriously, but coming at it from a semantic rationale seems silly.
    - serf 2y ago
      >It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine. it doesn't really work like that in practice though - there are plenty of 'drugs' that won't ruin your life or social-status, and they're not all listed separately like alcohol. I'm a firm believer that the reason the linguistics that we now use came about was due to the legalities of the substances involved and the market action. Alcohol is big business, and legal -- so it deserves a distinction. That's about the singular distinction. The market was allowed to push phrases into the public purview, and luckily for them the phrases stuck. During western prohibition it (alcohol) was called 'poison' or 'narcotic', or 'intoxicant' in the propaganda. The google ngrams viewer verifies this suspicion; the phrase ' drugs and alcohol ' wasn't in (real) use until much later in American history.[0] [0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alcohol&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alco...
The_Colonel 2y ago
> Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like. "drugs" often means illegal drugs in colloquial use while alcohol is legal in most places, so the distinction has a use. > I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. I wonder what's your motivation for such an extreme exaggeration. The article you linked quite clearly states that the "punishment" for consuming is a 6 months rehibilation which, while quite harsh, is very far from your claim of death penalty. You need to possess 500 grams of Marijuana to get the death penalty which is like a 1000 or more joints.
- pixelpoet 2y ago
  I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. Nobody is going to overdose on it, almost nobody is going to make a business of it if it were actually legal, ... this isn't a heroin, meth or even moonshine operation we're talking about. Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    > I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. I think it's a bad law, but surely not as bad as you originally tried to mislead people into believing. > Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Apparently yes, by intentionally making a false claim that you get executed for smoking a joint. > Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for? They won't get executed for being a drug user, but for trafficking drugs. Given that 500 grams is a huge amount, I think it's reasonable to consider the offenders to be drug traffickers (even if I don't agree with the punishment).
    - deleted 2y ago
BobAliceInATree 2y ago
Alcohol does not get a free pass in Singapore. Taxes for it are very high. For example the taxes for 700ml 40% liquor bottle is ~US$19
- Gud 2y ago
  On one hand, jail time. On the other hand, 10 minutes of working to pay the taxes.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    If the point of the policy is to make the society less dependent on drugs, this makes sense. It's difficult to outlaw what has been once legalized, so constraining the consumption by high taxes make sense while keeping the other drugs illegal.
    - pixelpoet 2y ago
      > less dependent on drugs There, you've done exactly the thing I was talking about! You're not actually talking about drugs in general, because that would include alcohol. You're talking about the drugs you don't like, and the use of language deliberately excludes alcohol from being a drug. To me it's extremely obvious and deliberate, and I'm sick of alcohol trying to get a free pass among DRUGS.
      - The_Colonel 2y ago
        Read again, my comment implies alcohol is a drug by saying "other drugs".
elphinstone 2y ago
This is incredibly, even blatantly misleading. Singapore does not execute people for marijuana possession. It has executed a handful of heroin traffickers. Maybe worry about your own failed state before spreading lies about others.
- a57721 2y ago
  A quick search for news articles will show you that Singapore does execute people for trafficking marijuana in rather modest amounts. [1] https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-execution-6f796226fb60d0313a5b63929c4fed59 https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390
dpc050505 2y ago
You don't get the death penalty for smoking a joint in singapore. You get the penalty for being in possession of stuff like a pound of weed or an ounce of methamphetamine with the intention to traffic it. Go read their laws. For the most part users just get forced into treatment. Not unlike in the Portuguese model of harm reduction.
- namaria 2y ago
  You are wrong. Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed. There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'. The law is pretty draconian, and if societies with strong rule of law and stringent requirements for prosecution can execute innocent people for murder accusations it's pretty undefendable to execute people for presuming that the 500g of weed found nearby them was theirs and destined for trafficking. Which, still if provable is a barbaric outcome anyway.
  - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
    > You are wrong. > Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed. > There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'. You are incorrect. Following is a link to the law—verbatim—from the Singapore Statutes Online: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2- https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2- Judges cannot sentence someone to the death penalty just 'being near half a kilo'. It has to be more than 500 grammes.
    - namaria 2y ago
      https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13- https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13- Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug, is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have had that drug in his or her possession. A friend leaves a key to a locker in your apartment. It has half kilo of cannabis. The cops find the key in your apartment? Toasted.
watwut 2y ago
Alcohol and other drugs completely makes sense in world where alcohol is legal and common while other drugs are not.
taylorius 2y ago
"From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc" That's because your politicians can't really be blamed for Haiti / Syria etc. And it's not directly their job to fix it. So they're happy to speak passionately about it all day, and hopefully direct the populations attention away from what they ARE responsible for, and might be held accountable for. (This is the case in many Western countries, of course - not just Germany).
delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
> but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity. Alcohol doesn't get a 'free pass' in Singapore. It's taxed to high heaven and back, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in Singapore, too. > I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich. Singapore does not 'get a pass' either. Case in point: your own comment that dragged Singapore into a completely unrelated conversation. Or the article you linked. Or the comments on the /r/worldnews subreddit on every article posted about Singapore executing someone for possession of cannabis. Or the many accusations of human rights violations levelled against Singapore, despite it being by far the safest and most secure seven hundred square kilometres on the planet. > From my German point of view At the risk of a slippery slope, I'm going to say: your German point of view also includes very delightful companies like Bayer, Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Heckler and Koch, etc etc, which all produce implements of various shapes and sizes expressly designed to do nothing but kill people. To me this seems a little bit hypocritical—it's not okay to kill drug traffickers because 'oh it's just drugs, think about their families', but it's alright to actually build and sell killing machines, because they're used to kill Russians or other brown people half a planet away. Your German point of view also includes allowing teenagers as young as 16 to partake in alcohol, which I find confusing, unless you clarify that you personally don't imbibe. For the record, Singapore also has an arms industry, and in general Singapore has no qualms about its position on the world stage. Tiny city-state with very little strategic depth, it does what it needs for its survival. If it means putting drug traffickers and murderers to death, so be it. And on a personal note, I neither drink alcohol nor consume recreational narcotics.
dzonga 2y ago
but why do you have to impose your German Values on Singapore ? As far as I can tell Singapore is a sovereign country, and its people have their own agency. I'm sure autocracy works well for them - just as democracy works well for Germany. they're free to choose their own "medicine" to maintain social order.
- dangus 2y ago
  Although they aren’t free to choose that if it’s an autocracy. In the US many cannabis legalizations have occurred from voter ballot issues where the legislature has no control over the issue. Citizens collected enough signatures and took the issue directly to the ballot for voters to vote on, and the state was bound to implement the change as the vote dictates (see: Ohio). Sure, maybe the hypothetical idea of forcing more democracy on a society that doesn’t want it is bad or something but it seems to me that Germans (and Americans) objectively have more self-determination over this issue. The idea that it’s an acceptable local cultural value for citizens to not have input on what crimes should receive the death penalty doesn’t seem like a local cultural issue, seems more like a universal human rights issue to me.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  Is this sarcasm? The entire point is autocracy doesn't allow the people to choose for themselves. The autocrat does. The autocrat likes beer but not weed, so one is a good time and the other a death sentence.
hoseja 2y ago
Perhaps your nation should have more energy to protest what's going on in Germany.
throwaway64853 2y ago
Do you give your own government a pass for supporting Israel's state-sanctioned murder? Most Singaporeans support the death penalty penalty for drug trafficking: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majority-singapore-residents-support-shanmugam-2535331 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majo...
gregors 2y ago
>>>> Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? I actually do know a person who did exactly that. Just because it isn't as prevalent as with alcohol doesn't mean it doesn't happen. >>>> Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well-understood. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/

s1artibartfast 2y ago

One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs. Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.

pixelpoet 2y ago
The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]: > The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)
- EvanAnderson 2y ago
  > The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. I appreciate you posting this (even if it is terminology nitpick). The social connotations associated w/ verbally separating alcohol from other drugs hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to try to use this phrasing in the future.
- Tade0 2y ago
  The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect. Same goes for fermented fruit. Additionally even today it serves as a preservative and solvent. You cannot meaningfully eliminate it from use. Meanwhile drugs were always understood as something produced for the specific purpose of getting high. There's a distinction because these are in fact different things.
  - hippari2 2y ago
    >The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect Which one ? The most common food I found are just soy sauce / vinegar and I hope people are not drinking a bottle of it per meal.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Like I said above, Im not arguing that alcohol isnt a drug, just that I think you are making way to big of a deal out of the phrasing. Alcohol isnt viewed more favorable because it is held apart. It is held apart because it is viewed more favorably. It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine. One can argue that people should take alcohol more seriously, but coming at it from a semantic rationale seems silly.
  - serf 2y ago
    >It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine. it doesn't really work like that in practice though - there are plenty of 'drugs' that won't ruin your life or social-status, and they're not all listed separately like alcohol. I'm a firm believer that the reason the linguistics that we now use came about was due to the legalities of the substances involved and the market action. Alcohol is big business, and legal -- so it deserves a distinction. That's about the singular distinction. The market was allowed to push phrases into the public purview, and luckily for them the phrases stuck. During western prohibition it (alcohol) was called 'poison' or 'narcotic', or 'intoxicant' in the propaganda. The google ngrams viewer verifies this suspicion; the phrase ' drugs and alcohol ' wasn't in (real) use until much later in American history.[0] [0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alcohol&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alco...

The_Colonel 2y ago

> Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like. "drugs" often means illegal drugs in colloquial use while alcohol is legal in most places, so the distinction has a use. > I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. I wonder what's your motivation for such an extreme exaggeration. The article you linked quite clearly states that the "punishment" for consuming is a 6 months rehibilation which, while quite harsh, is very far from your claim of death penalty. You need to possess 500 grams of Marijuana to get the death penalty which is like a 1000 or more joints.

pixelpoet 2y ago
I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. Nobody is going to overdose on it, almost nobody is going to make a business of it if it were actually legal, ... this isn't a heroin, meth or even moonshine operation we're talking about. Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  > I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. I think it's a bad law, but surely not as bad as you originally tried to mislead people into believing. > Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Apparently yes, by intentionally making a false claim that you get executed for smoking a joint. > Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for? They won't get executed for being a drug user, but for trafficking drugs. Given that 500 grams is a huge amount, I think it's reasonable to consider the offenders to be drug traffickers (even if I don't agree with the punishment).
  - deleted 2y ago

BobAliceInATree 2y ago

Alcohol does not get a free pass in Singapore. Taxes for it are very high. For example the taxes for 700ml 40% liquor bottle is ~US$19

Gud 2y ago
On one hand, jail time. On the other hand, 10 minutes of working to pay the taxes.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  If the point of the policy is to make the society less dependent on drugs, this makes sense. It's difficult to outlaw what has been once legalized, so constraining the consumption by high taxes make sense while keeping the other drugs illegal.
  - pixelpoet 2y ago
    > less dependent on drugs There, you've done exactly the thing I was talking about! You're not actually talking about drugs in general, because that would include alcohol. You're talking about the drugs you don't like, and the use of language deliberately excludes alcohol from being a drug. To me it's extremely obvious and deliberate, and I'm sick of alcohol trying to get a free pass among DRUGS.
    - The_Colonel 2y ago
      Read again, my comment implies alcohol is a drug by saying "other drugs".

elphinstone 2y ago

This is incredibly, even blatantly misleading. Singapore does not execute people for marijuana possession. It has executed a handful of heroin traffickers. Maybe worry about your own failed state before spreading lies about others.

a57721 2y ago
A quick search for news articles will show you that Singapore does execute people for trafficking marijuana in rather modest amounts. [1] https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-execution-6f796226fb60d0313a5b63929c4fed59 https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390

dpc050505 2y ago

You don't get the death penalty for smoking a joint in singapore. You get the penalty for being in possession of stuff like a pound of weed or an ounce of methamphetamine with the intention to traffic it. Go read their laws. For the most part users just get forced into treatment. Not unlike in the Portuguese model of harm reduction.

namaria 2y ago
You are wrong. Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed. There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'. The law is pretty draconian, and if societies with strong rule of law and stringent requirements for prosecution can execute innocent people for murder accusations it's pretty undefendable to execute people for presuming that the 500g of weed found nearby them was theirs and destined for trafficking. Which, still if provable is a barbaric outcome anyway.
- delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
  > You are wrong. > Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed. > There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'. You are incorrect. Following is a link to the law—verbatim—from the Singapore Statutes Online: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2- https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2- Judges cannot sentence someone to the death penalty just 'being near half a kilo'. It has to be more than 500 grammes.
  - namaria 2y ago
    https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13- https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13- Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug, is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have had that drug in his or her possession. A friend leaves a key to a locker in your apartment. It has half kilo of cannabis. The cops find the key in your apartment? Toasted.

watwut 2y ago

Alcohol and other drugs completely makes sense in world where alcohol is legal and common while other drugs are not.

taylorius 2y ago

"From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc" That's because your politicians can't really be blamed for Haiti / Syria etc. And it's not directly their job to fix it. So they're happy to speak passionately about it all day, and hopefully direct the populations attention away from what they ARE responsible for, and might be held accountable for. (This is the case in many Western countries, of course - not just Germany).

delta_p_delta_x 2y ago

> but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity. Alcohol doesn't get a 'free pass' in Singapore. It's taxed to high heaven and back, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in Singapore, too. > I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich. Singapore does not 'get a pass' either. Case in point: your own comment that dragged Singapore into a completely unrelated conversation. Or the article you linked. Or the comments on the /r/worldnews subreddit on every article posted about Singapore executing someone for possession of cannabis. Or the many accusations of human rights violations levelled against Singapore, despite it being by far the safest and most secure seven hundred square kilometres on the planet. > From my German point of view At the risk of a slippery slope, I'm going to say: your German point of view also includes very delightful companies like Bayer, Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Heckler and Koch, etc etc, which all produce implements of various shapes and sizes expressly designed to do nothing but kill people. To me this seems a little bit hypocritical—it's not okay to kill drug traffickers because 'oh it's just drugs, think about their families', but it's alright to actually build and sell killing machines, because they're used to kill Russians or other brown people half a planet away. Your German point of view also includes allowing teenagers as young as 16 to partake in alcohol, which I find confusing, unless you clarify that you personally don't imbibe. For the record, Singapore also has an arms industry, and in general Singapore has no qualms about its position on the world stage. Tiny city-state with very little strategic depth, it does what it needs for its survival. If it means putting drug traffickers and murderers to death, so be it. And on a personal note, I neither drink alcohol nor consume recreational narcotics.

dzonga 2y ago

but why do you have to impose your German Values on Singapore ? As far as I can tell Singapore is a sovereign country, and its people have their own agency. I'm sure autocracy works well for them - just as democracy works well for Germany. they're free to choose their own "medicine" to maintain social order.

dangus 2y ago
Although they aren’t free to choose that if it’s an autocracy. In the US many cannabis legalizations have occurred from voter ballot issues where the legislature has no control over the issue. Citizens collected enough signatures and took the issue directly to the ballot for voters to vote on, and the state was bound to implement the change as the vote dictates (see: Ohio). Sure, maybe the hypothetical idea of forcing more democracy on a society that doesn’t want it is bad or something but it seems to me that Germans (and Americans) objectively have more self-determination over this issue. The idea that it’s an acceptable local cultural value for citizens to not have input on what crimes should receive the death penalty doesn’t seem like a local cultural issue, seems more like a universal human rights issue to me.
Larrikin 2y ago
Is this sarcasm? The entire point is autocracy doesn't allow the people to choose for themselves. The autocrat does. The autocrat likes beer but not weed, so one is a good time and the other a death sentence.

hoseja 2y ago

Perhaps your nation should have more energy to protest what's going on in Germany.

throwaway64853 2y ago

Do you give your own government a pass for supporting Israel's state-sanctioned murder? Most Singaporeans support the death penalty penalty for drug trafficking: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majority-singapore-residents-support-shanmugam-2535331 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majo...

gregors 2y ago

>>>> Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? I actually do know a person who did exactly that. Just because it isn't as prevalent as with alcohol doesn't mean it doesn't happen. >>>> Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well-understood. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/