US president Donald Trump is known to have some highly questionable tastes (in both food and policies), so when Axios reported that he’s in love with Singapore’s mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking, it should raise some eyebrows.
For months, the American news site reported, Trump has been raving to his friends about Singapore’s low drug consumption rates due to the infamous policy to straight-up execute traffickers. According to a source who’s spoken to Trump extensively about the subject, the US president recounted the time when he spoke to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about combating drug usage in Singapore:
“He says, ‘When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] ‘No. Death penalty’.”
And it looks like Singapore’s strict position against drug consumption and trafficking really resonated with Trump. Five sources who spoke to Axios said that he often “leaps into a passionate speech” about how drug dealers are just as bad as serial killers, who should all be executed. As a non-believer in lenient approaches to drug reform, the president also expressed his wish to enact a law to execute all drug dealers in America, but privately admitted that it would be impossible to get the “harsh” law passed under the American system.
Currently, Trump and his advisers are considering to adopt other aspects of Singapore’s “zero tolerance” drug policies such as more anti-drug education in schools, the Axios report continued.
As Singaporeans would know, this “zero tolerance” against drug usage has seeped into all aspects of life here, no matter how minor they might seem. The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) even had issues with a Pablo Escobar-themed bistro bar, calling the glamorization of a drug kingpin “irresponsible and insensitive”. Singapore’s Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam was totally #nochill when he refused to soften his stance on marijuana in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
A low drug abuse rate doesn’t mean no drug abuse, nonetheless. CNB reported an overall improvement in Singapore’s drug situation, but the proportion of new drug abusers arrested last year remained high (hur hur), with close to two-thirds of those arrested under the age of 30.
Meanwhile, Trump often jokes about killing drug dealers. A senior administration official informed Axios that he’d say, “You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them.”
Reader Interactions