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Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

> We've definitely tried the Singaporean approach for decades in the US during the war on drugs. There's people currently serving life sentences for possessing a meager amount of Marijuana.

That’s not the Singaporean approach. The Singaporean approach is executing people for drug crimes. The US has never (to the best of my knowledge) executed anybody for a drug crime, as opposed to drug-related murders/etc.

Not saying the US should emulate Singapore - I personally believe the death penalty is immoral and should be abolished - but the US has never adopted Singapore’s approach

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If life imprisonment is not a deterrent then why would the death penalty be?

I don't think anything is much of a deterrent, because that overestimates the extent to which criminals are rational agents.

But there is a massive difference between life imprisonment and the death penalty – with life imprisonment, there is always the possibility of some day getting out due to a commutation, a change in the law, etc. Whereas, once someone is executed, they are dead.

Many of the problematic drug users get arrested frequently, including for violent crimes. It doesn’t need to be a deterrent to “work”.

By that logic life imprisonment would work.

Because a good amount of people on life imprisonment end up ... leaving jail. Also, there is a quiet movement to end life sentencing in this country, including releasing people. There's no movement to 'undead' people that has any scientific merit.

You also have to actually do it and not just say you're doing it. There's no point in jailing people for marijuana possession while parts of the government are selling cocaine to generate revenue.

Fair enough and some how I don't think that's the missing piece here given the number of drug users and dealers we've locked away for extended periods of time.

> The Singaporean approach is executing people for drug crimes.

No, that's not the Singaporean approach.

The death penalty is reserved for very few circumstances - smuggling large quantities or dealing in large quantities.

3,101 "drug abusers" were arrested in Singapore in 2023. Only a few were executed and they tend to be high profile smuggling cases.

Drug users are usually sent to mandatory treatment (basically prison + drug treatment). There are plenty of users who end up getting caught several times.

Even dealing in small quantities of drugs results in prison, not execution.

https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-re...

> The death penalty is reserved for very few circumstances - smuggling large quantities or dealing in large quantities.

Last year, Singapore executed a woman for possessing 31 grams of heroin. [0] Who considers 31 grams of anything a large quantity? Well, in Singapore, trafficking over 30 grams of heroin is considered a "large quantity" with a mandatory death penalty – and all the prosecution has to prove is possession, once that is proved, trafficking is legally presumed.

This is the amounts, possession of which gets you mandatory death penalty in Singapore: 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 250 grams of meth, or 500 grams of cannabis. [1] Those amounts aren't large, they are trivial. They are kinds of quantities that small time drug dealers would possess, but large scale drug traffickers would scoff at. As of August last year, there were 50 people on death row in Singapore, and only 3 of those had been convicted of murder, the other 47 had been convicted of non-violent drug crimes.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/28/singapore-woma...

[1] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/singapore-announces-plans-...

> Those amounts aren't large, they are trivial.

Those are quantities no user would reasonably have in their possession. Even small time dealers could skirt under those numbers.

Note these are counted as the "pure" amount, not like the US where they include the cuts.

So 15 grams of heroin would be >1,000 doses. 250 g of meth would be 10,000 doses.

And sure most of Singapore's death row are drug offenses, but Singapore has almost no crime otherwise, so comparing it to murder (<10 per year) isn't a good comparison.

Singapore is very harsh for drug smuggling, but drug use or small time dealing? They do treatment and short jail sentences.

> Even small time dealers could skirt under those numbers.

Just because a small-time dealer could skirt under those numbers, doesn't make someone who exceeds them not a small-time dealer.

Particularly consider there is a mandatory death penalty for possession of 500 grams of cannabis – and that says nothing in terms of "purity", low THC or high THC it is all the same.

According to [0] a "pound" of weed in California costs between US$200 and US$1400, depending on quality and potency. US marijuana dealers define "pound" as exactly 448 grams (as opposed to the modern Anglo-American avordpouis pound of 453.59237 grams). So, given that, the price of 500 grams works out to between (lets round up a little) US$225 and US$1565.

You think under US$2000 of marijuana is "too much" for a "small time" dealer to possess? No. You'd need to possess a lot more than that to count as a large scale dealer, or even a medium scale one. Yet Singapore has a mandatory death penalty for it. Singapore has a mandatory death penalty for small-scale marijuana dealing.

[0] https://www.vibebycalifornia.com/the-cost-of-cannabis-how-mu...

I don't disagree that the marijuana death penalty is excessive.

But I wouldn't compare the Singapore drug market to the US one. They are nowhere close to the same.

Costs are way higher and users are lower in number. You don't see seizures of tons of cocaine like you do in the US, it's likely hundreds of grams.

If they set "dealer quantities" of those drugs to be the same as the US, nobody would be a dealer.

> Costs are way higher and users are lower in number

According to a 2023 Straits Times article [0], 3g of cannabis in Singapore costs S$50, which is about US$37.

So a death penalty quantity of marijuana would cost about S$8300, which is about US$6100. (Probably less than that actually because, as with everything, the larger the purchase the lower the per-unit price.) Still nowhere near being "large scale".

[0] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/buying-cannabis-onlin...

Well, I don't think Singapore sets the death penalty based on dollar value of drugs.

And you ignored my comment on quantity.

Nobody is dealing in multiple kilograms of marijuana in Singapore. But that's super common in the US.

The government looked at what quantities users typically have versus dealers, and set the limit accordingly.

> And you ignored my comment on quantity.

Because, we are talking about a government killing people – I myself will say murdering people – over a plant. All your quibbles and defences are just irrelevant when you look at the big picture of what they are doing.

> All your quibbles and defences

We're not talking about a defense of the law, we are talking about Singapore's rationale of why they came up with those quantities.

And I would have thought when I said "I don't disagree that the marijuana death penalty is excessive." it was pretty clear I don't agree with it. I personally feel that killing someone over smuggling is absurd. Jail them if you feel they need punishment, but killing them isn't justice.

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