Community resilience against drug abuse roundtable – Speech by Mr K Shanmugam, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs

Home Team Colleagues, Partners, Volunteers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

1. Very good morning to all of you.


Global Situation

2. This is an important meeting to discuss a very serious topic.

3. When you look at the book, you will understand the amount of thought that has gone in, the amount of research, and it really typifies the approach that the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), Prisons, and the Home Team take towards any such issues. On drugs, there’s been a lot of research done internally by our officers.

4. Today, I would like to talk about a broader topic before I come back to the book and it’s about the international drug situation, explaining again why we take the position that we do, what the public support is, and then we talk a little bit about the book.

5. If you start with the World Drug Report 2025. It says the number of drug abusers has increased significantly across the world.

6. About 316 million people are estimated to have used drugs in 2023 worldwide. That number was 292 million just one year before. So that is an increase of 8% from 2022 to 2023. We don’t have the numbers for 2024 and 2025 yet.


Costs of Drugs

7. Abusing drugs imposes very real costs at several levels.

8. At one level, it harms obviously the abuser, and of course, the abuser’s family and loved ones.

9. At another level, drugs corrupt and damage the entire society.

10. What’s happening is this: drugs are extremely profitable. The moment the Government – any Government in the world – is tolerant or not so effective on dealing with drugs, immediately what happens is criminal gangs move in.

11. They terrorise entire neighbourhoods, cities. They take over towns, and they buy up the police force and law enforcement and public officials. Effectively, they then run many parts of the country for their own benefit.

12. All of this has happened and is happening, and you don’t read about it enough in the journals, articles and media, which proposes liberalisation and legalisation of drugs. Once the drug gangs and criminal gangs take over, you measure the deaths in terms of thousands of lives, sometimes tens of thousands. You again don't hear about that.

13. And this is happening around the world – even as we speak.


South America

14. Let me start and give you a real set of examples around the world, starting with South America.

15. South America has become a key source for drugs as well as a key transit point for cocaine.

16. Violence, therefore, has become a feature of daily life in 18 out of the 21 countries in South America, effectively the whole continent.

17. Take Uruguay for example. It used to be considered the Switzerland of Latin America. Wonderful place, great climate, a lot of assets.

18. An article by the Financial Times last year stated that: In 2024, Uruguay had a 41% increase in homicides compared to 10 years earlier - effectively increased by half.

19. Gangs have gotten completely brazen. In September last year, they attacked the house of Uruguay’s anti-narcotics prosecutor with guns.

20. You move to Mexico, the missing persons have increased by about 3 times over 10 years, from about 4000 to close to 13,000 reports in 2025.

21. The assessment is that this is due to the increasing takeover of vast areas of the country in Mexico by criminal gangs, diversification of their criminal activities beyond drug smuggling into other areas, which includes kidnapping, organ trafficking, human and sex trafficking, migrant smuggling. Who suffer? The most vulnerable in society – women, children.

22. Media reports that law enforcement has simply been unable to keep up with the cartels, because the pay scales for the criminal gangs compared to the law enforcement – they can’t match. And much of the law enforcement is then bought over by the criminal gangs. And they are expanding their territory in Mexico.

23. Many other Latin American countries – I said 18 out of 21 – are in a difficult situation. If you look at this Financial Times article: “18 out of the 21 nations are main countries of source or transit of cocaine”. This includes Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and drug cartels are now criminal enterprises, explosions, murder, shootings, extortion, robberies, human trafficking, gold smuggling, trading of illegal amazon timber. You name it, they are doing it. They have the money; they have the resources. And that's the best way to make more money.


Marijuana Situation in the US

24. You move from Latin America to the United States (US). Legalisation of marijuana has taken place in a number of states. More people now use marijuana with very significant public health consequences.

25. The New York Times has reported that more Americans now use marijuana daily than they use alcohol. Just think about it. More use marijuana than alcohol on a daily basis. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the US have used marijuana almost daily in recent years. The figure was about 6 million in 2012. That is an increase of 3 times over 10 years.

26. In the US, nearly 2.8 million people suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) every year. This comes from long-term use of marijuana.

27. For example, the state of Virginia reported a 29% increase in emergency visits between 2020 and 2024, due to CHS.

28. And many other negative public safety consequences because of legalisation. People researching this area have assessed the toxicological data for homicide victims. They looked at nine US states over a period of 12 years, from 2004 to 2016, and they found that the prevalence of marijuana almost doubled, increased from 22% in 2004 to 42% in 2016.

29. More than 10 years ago, the New York Times had supported the legalisation of recreational marijuana in the US.

30. Today, in an about-turn, it says marijuana must be better regulated because marijuana is causing more harm than predicted. The harm was entirely predictable; it was just that media and many sections of society get carried away with a certain liberal mindset without taking a hard look and the politicians go along with that.

31. Quoting the New York Times – “Use has gone way up. Addiction has gone up. Illness associated with marijuana has gone up”.

32. If you are in the media – with no offence meant to the media here – you can take one position now, and then 10 years later, you can change your views, and you don’t bear any consequences or responsibilities. They don't have to answer to the people. Meanwhile, lives are lost, families are damaged and those harms cannot be reversed, and they carry long-term consequences for the next generation.

33. Governments take their positions. Sometimes when you look at the evidence, you may have to change your position, and Governments do change their positions. But when you take a position, Governments have to be very hard-nosed, very clear-eyed, and you can’t just take a position and then, every time you feel like it, change your position.

34. In Singapore, from the 60s, we looked at the evidence, we thought it through. We were clear from the beginning while the rest of the world were saying, ‘let’s go legalisation’. You look at major international newspapers, respectable journals, The Economist, the New York Times, and of course, the lobby groups financed by drug firms, pharma firms, all pushing anti-death penalty, anti-criminalisation. Legalise it. You make more money, but making more money is less important than the health of our people.

35. So we thought it through. From the beginning, we were clear that we have to say no and take a very tough zero-tolerance approach.

36. Research has all along shown that cannabis is harmful and is addictive. Multiple studies, including the latest World Drug Report, have linked cannabis use to acute psychosis and the development of cardiovascular symptoms.

37. It can also impair psychomotor performance, increase the risk of fatal accidents on the road. And these effects can be experienced even by first-time users.

38. Our Institute of Mental Health has conducted a review of literature over a long period on the effects of cannabis use. Its findings: there was evidence linking the use of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the psychoactive compound found in marijuana, and it showed that it was linked to impaired psychomotor performance.

39. There was also evidence linking THC use to an increased risk of fatal accidents by a factor of seven.

40. These findings show and support our position to keep cannabis as a Class A controlled drug, even as around the world you see moves towards legalisation.

41. Good governance means saying no to lobby groups and even if the rest of the world is moving one way - If we believe honestly that our position is good for our people, as long as we are able to explain it and get our people to support it.


Europe

42. Now, I’ve I spoken about South America, I’ve spoken about the US. Let’s look at Europe.

43. In Europe, there is again now, after years of being lax, now, there is increasing concern over cocaine. In 2023, EU Member States reported a record amount of 419 tonnes of cocaine seized at European ports.

44. December last year, the then-Executive Director of the EU Drugs Agency, Alexis Goosdeel, gave a very sobering assessment of the drug situation that they were facing.

45. He said that Europe is waking up to the “hyper-availability” of illegal drugs. I mean, if you take a lax approach, you allow drugs to come in, then of course, you will wake up to hyper-availability.

46. And he said: that was only the “tip of the iceberg”, and the scale of Europe’s narcotics crisis is “not even possible to imagine”.

47. The agencies and law enforcement and so on, have tried to step up enforcement efforts to fight drug trafficking.

48. But even then, their approach had been fairly tolerant. Criminal gangs have taken root. And Europe is not that special, they are now corrupting officials, recruiting young persons to carry drugs, traffic drugs and assassinate others. For a very perverse reason – because if you take a very young person to do all these bad things, they cannot be charged in court. So it makes very good logic, but it destroys the lives of young people.

49. Let me give a few examples.

50. In Belgium, the then-Justice Minister described the violence as “narco-terrorism”. He is, in a sense, my counterpart. The police couldn’t guarantee his safety and therefore they had to put him in safe houses due to threats from the criminal gangs – in a first-world European country.

51. In the Netherlands, the Mayor of Amsterdam has said that the country “is in danger of becoming a narco-state”. She went on to argue for a harm reduction approach – which is a completely different from our approach, but this is the mayor of Amsterdam.

52. In Sweden, a lawyer who works in this area said that children “carry the drug markets in Sweden on their shoulders”. If you open up the children’s backpacks, instead of books you will find drugs, or with books you will find drugs.

53. In France, the former French Interior Minister said France is being inundated by a “white tsunami” of cocaine.

54. I can go on, give more examples. But these examples show what Europe is facing. And we don't even need to talk about parts of Asia. Just a few hundred kilometres away, in the North, you have the Golden Triangle. You have drugs all over, you have drug gangs, which are infiltrating many countries in this region, because law enforcement is not the same as Singapore. And in many sectors, you can buy up people. It’s a huge epidemic of drugs in parts of Southeast Asia.

55. Despite all of these evidence, and you don’t see it set out in these stark terms. You get essentially balderdash from people about why you should take a liberal approach, why you should go easy, why you should legalise, and without any reference to what’s actually happening on the ground.

56. And the anti-death penalty activists are the same. I’ve said many times that the death penalty is imposed because it’s a cynical crime. People choose to make money by trafficking drugs into Singapore. And they know the consequences. Our sympathy should be with the victims, not people who cynically focus on making money.


Socio-Economic Costs

57. In addition to what I’ve said, the large socio-economic costs that drugs impose on society cannot be underestimated.

58. If you go back to 2019, the economic cost of drug use in the US was an estimated US$500 billion. Half a trillion. That includes costs from lost productivity and healthcare costs.

59. Put another way, that is more than US$1,500 for every American.

60. There is also a cost to people’s lives and the lives of their children.

61. In 2021, worldwide, 28 million healthy years of life were lost due to disability and premature death resulting from drug use.

62. In the US, more than 320,000 children lost a parent to drug overdose in the 10 years between 2011 and 2021. If we look at the scale of these costs, it is quite staggering.


Singapore’s Approach

63. In Singapore, our guiding philosophy is harm prevention not harm reduction.

64. We do everything we can to prevent drugs from taking root in Singapore. We know it’s available. We know there are abusers. We know there are parts of our society that think that it is okay to use. But we have taken a tough line also so as not to rationalise it and make it acceptable, so that everyone understands that it is actually not acceptable. And that itself imposes some value system for parents and schools and it helps us overall to keep drug abuse to the margins.

65. Our policy is anchored on three aspects: Enforcement, Education, Rehabilitation.

66. First, we have a very tough framework of laws and robust enforcement. That's the foundation of our policy. But really, it's only part of the picture, if you only have that, we will fail in this task.

67. We have to, and we do, invest very heavily in upstream preventive education. That's a second aspect.

68. We work with parents, schools, the community, and other stakeholders, to try and spread awareness about the harms of drugs, in a variety of ways.

69. In 2024, because people kept talking about the drug traffickers facing death penalty, we decided it was important to remember the real victims, and therefore we introduced Drug Victims Remembrance Day. It is observed on the third Friday of May every year, to remember the people who have been victimised by drugs: those who have lost their lives, those who have lost their livelihoods, family members and loved ones who have suffered due to drug abuse.

70. The third aspect of our approach is rehabilitation.

71. We have a differentiated approach for drug traffickers versus drug abusers.

72. Drug traffickers are treated as criminals very seriously, drug abusers are treated as persons who need help.

73. Drug abusers who have not committed any other criminal offence will go straight for treatment and rehabilitation without a criminal record.

74. We invest very heavily in our rehabilitation programmes, to help them break the cycle of addiction, to give them a helping hand to move on with life.


Public Support

75. And if you look at public support, which is critical. Our efforts are showing results.

76. Around the world, attitudes towards drugs are becoming more tolerant.

77. In Singapore, the picture is completely the opposite.

78. The 2025 National Drug Perception Survey – we do this regularly, show that nearly 93% of youth respondents and more than 96% of adult respondents said that we should continue to maintain our tough laws to keep drugs out of Singapore.

79. We started out as tough policies, the rest of the world was moving in the opposite direction; likewise, we saw that Singaporeans were also moving in that direction. We took a stand and we publicise and spoke about it, and continued to take a very tough line, continued very intensely with our public education.

80. What this survey shows is that we moved the needle. We have made it the norm in Singapore – the acceptable norm, 93% and 96%, much more than the norm, that drugs are bad and people buy into it. Now, some of the young people may say because it's the politically correct thing to say, and may still abuse drugs, but the key point is not that. The key point is that people feel that they have to take a position that drugs are bad, and the state should have a tough laws. Once you get that kind of buy-in, more than nine out of 10, then your policies are much easier to implement, it is easier for parents, schools, and everyone said this is the standard; this is the framework in which we operate, quite apart from the laws.

81. And support among young people, youth respondents, significantly increased from the last survey, which was two years ago, two years before that, in 2023, while support for this amongst adults, has been high and largely stable; and more than 87% - nearly nine in 10 of youth respondents say that they actually see the harms and consequences of drug abuse.

82. I think that is a result of public education. Now that is a significant increase – more than four percentage points increase from 2023.

83. For adults, the figure was about 90%.

84. This survey data is extremely heartening.

85. It shows that when a Government takes the leadership, has a clear policy, it articulates it, has community support. All of you are key factors in this, because you go out there, the desistor network, the NGOs, you accept this, you buy into this, and you go out to your own networks. Effective public education can bring across to our people the harms of drugs, and people then are prepared to support our policy, tough policy. So while many parts of the world have either given up the fight against drugs or have said they are going to legalise for a variety of reasons, either because they want to tax the trade, they don't realise that while you collect some money on tax, research shows that money you pay through public health considerations is much higher, so you end up losing money. Apart from the fact that no government morally should do this, just because you make money, because you're making money off the misery of people.

86. We have swum against the tide, and we have actually increased our support from the population, including our young people.


Lex Lasry

87. Now despite all of this evidence, you get a vocal minority, a small minority in Singapore, and a few people outside of Singapore, who keep putting forward misleading points on our policies. I'll name one such person, a lawyer named Lax Lasry, an Australian. He had tried to act for a drug trafficker in Singapore and complained that he was not allowed to appear in the Singapore courts.

88. Look, Singapore lawyers are not allowed to appear before the Australian courts. And I think it shows a colonial mentality that he demands to have a right of appearance before our courts. And if we don't, it's somehow something wrong with our system. If I, as a practicing lawyer, went to Sydney and said I want to appear, the Australian courts would tell me to buzz off, because I'm not called to the Australian bar.

89. In 2024 he wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald. He asserted that the death penalty does not have a deterrent effect. He keeps asserting this in Singapore's context – that is completely false.

90. [There is] clear evidence of the effectiveness of the death penalty in our context.

91. In 2024, we conducted a study in parts of the region around Singapore, outside of Singapore. We chose countries, areas where significant numbers of visitors, significant number of traffickers come to Singapore.

92. The study found that more than 84% of the respondents believed that the death penalty deters people from trafficking substantial amounts of drugs into Singapore.

93. The study also found that more than 82% of the respondents believed that the death penalty is more effective than life imprisonment in discouraging people from trafficking drugs.

94. Now, if we did not have the deterrence, you can imagine that the drug supply would explode because [with] Singapore’s high GDP per capita, you can afford to pay more. It'll be very, very profitable to bring drugs into Singapore, and people will bring in, and they don't have to fear for their lives. And when the supply explodes, our CNB will no longer be able to cope – simple as that. You need to control supply , and you need to control demand.

95. You look at another data point. In the 1990s, we used to arrest about 6000 persons for drug abuse per year. Now, it has come down by almost half to 3000.

96. All things being equal between 1990 and now, 35 years, 36 years, Singaporeans are richer. There are more drugs available in the region. The drug market is more sophisticated, and the movement in and out of Singapore – in terms of flow of human traffic, is much higher. So all things being equal, we should be arresting at least three or four times the number of people we were arresting in 1990, but we actually arrested half, not because our agencies are less effective, but on the whole, substance abuse has gone down proportionately, and that is incredible when you look at what is happening in the rest of the world.

97. So you can say, the 3000 persons per year – there are some double counting, but roughly 3000 persons per year have been saved from the scourge of drugs. Their families have been saved. Imagine the number of households, loved ones, who have been saved from the effects of drugs, the amount of crime that has been reduced.

98. Research shows there is a prevalence of crime and there is a prevalence of drugs. So when you reduce it, crime has stopped. People will go on to live, lead, fulfilling, meaningful lives.

99. Now moving on to another topic, the death penalty. Again, it commands tremendous public support in Singapore. For example, last year, we conducted a public perception survey on attitude towards the death penalty.

100. Nearly 87% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the death penalty should be used for the most serious crimes, including drug trafficking. That’s almost 10 percentage points increase from 2023, just in two years – from 77% to 87%.

101. And the figure was something like somewhere between 50 and 60% a few years ago. So public support has increased tremendously, even as we dealt with arguments by the activists, anti-death penalty activists. We dealt with international NGOs, which wanted us to change our policy, and we kept explaining to Singaporeans why we take this approach.

102. It's a harder route, it would have been easier to just abolish. The route we took was harder, but the public understood.

103. The survey also found that nearly 77% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the mandatory death penalty was appropriate as punishment for trafficking a significant amount of drugs. From memory, that was in the mid-50s% some years ago. But from 2023, there was an increase of about eight percentage points.

104. This meant that some of the activists keep quiet, they ignore the statistics, and whenever someone is on death row or to be executed, they try and humanize. They say he has got a mother, father, sister, he is a poet, he is this, he is that, and the state is going to kill him. His victims also have parents. His victims also have a future ahead of them, and there are many more victims in drug trafficking compared to trafficker.

105. Others now have to acknowledge, and do acknowledge, somewhat grudgingly, the high level of public support for the death penalty. But they find it difficult to accept.

106. So, they come up with a new reason: they say Singaporeans support the death penalty, because the Government “has inundated the public with pro-death, pro-war-on-drugs propaganda”. The Government is so effective and propaganda that they inundated the public with pro-death, pro-war-on-drugs propaganda. They accept that people support it, a large majority, but it’s not because the people are really well-informed, our people are like sheep and the Government has changed their minds through propaganda.

107. That is a lazy, infantile argument if I may say so.

108. Singaporeans’ internet usage is more than 100%, everyone has an account, everyone accesses, everyone is online, Singaporeans are well-educated, well-informed.

109. We can see what is going around the world, the consequences elsewhere.

110. Yes, the Government takes the points, position, the government explains, but it doesn't mean automatically people will accept it. You have to support it by rational arguments, like the way we are doing and Singaporean public knows what is in their interest, what is in the interest of their children. They can see what is going around in other countries.

111. Our approach is based on evidence, and the evidence shows that what we have done – suite of laws, rehabilitation, all of which are effective in terms of the position in Singapore.

112. And I have said publicly, I say it again, whether it's the death penalty or any other policy, if there is evidence to the contrary, we will change the position. We are not wedded to any particular policy, for ideological reasons. Our only ideology is the benefit of the public at large. If we think that doing away with the death penalty helps, or at least the death penalty doesn't help, [we will] do away with it, but until then, we will continue to hold the line.

113. Our duty is not to listen to others, but to do right by Singaporeans. Even if it looks like we are out of step with other parts of the world. And even if we get criticised in the international media for that.


Launch of book, “Island of Hope: Psychological Perspectives on Drug Harm Prevention”

114. Now, we are launching a very important book today, titled “Island of Hope: Psychological Perspectives on Drug Harm Prevention”. Before I came in, this is the book. I’ve had a few minutes to look through the index page to see the topics. It, in a way, exemplifies all that I'm trying to say. What you will find inside are not vacuous, ideology-based arguments, but hard data, surveys, scientific analysis, research-based approaches validated by what actually happens. Chapter after chapter, psychologists, prisons, officials, counsellors, various people, come together to put across different points which deal with how we approach this whole area.

115. I commend the book. I recommend it to all of you. I don't get the royalties. It is the meat behind our approach, and it's a very important effort, edited by Home Team psychologists, and they are trying to promote a shared understanding of what works.

116. Please feel free to challenge any of the points, because you only become better by challenging ourselves, not by saying: well, this is the position and we all just adopt it. Do you think there's a different approach? Think something else works better? Tell us, we want to do well by our people.

117. The contributors of this book worked directly with recovering drug abusers at the [Drug Rehabilitation Centre] DRCs and drugs supervises in community.

118. They spent years researching and understanding: what draws abusers to drugs, what helps them to break free, and what supports their recovery.

119. Understanding that behaviour allows us to ground our harm prevention strategies in evidence. That is what gives our system its strength. And we have to continuously look at the evidence. If the evidence changes, we must change our approach .

120. This book is the first book to bring together the psychological research in the local scene that underpins our drug prevention efforts, that shows our assessment tools and rehabilitation strategies.

121. I think it will serve as a valuable guide as we take the work forward.

122. I congratulate the team on this extremely important accomplishment.


Conclusion

123. Now, our goal is clear. We want a drug-free society, we want a drug-free country.

124. Let us continue to work together, press on in the fight against drugs.

125. Thank you, and I wish you a fruitful session.