Obscenity in Singapore
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:32 PM

Singapore seems to have an interesting and altering relationship with vice. Prostitution is legal in Singapore. Pornography is forbidden, though it appears to be available easily over the web. The first 'adult' magazine, quite tame by US standards, became available recently. Legal casinos are on the way -- but not with the participation of Macau's questionable gambling monopolist.

This week marked a milestone of sorts, when a play about a native Singaporean ex-porn star opened. The actress, who featured in a 1995 movie shot in California, is apparently well-known in Singapore -- and the new play will enhance her celebrity -- but the movie itself, of course, cannot legally be sold there (in Singapore, that is, not in California).

Labels: Asia, obscenity, pornography, Singapore

 
More Asian Drug War Humanitarianism
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:09 AM

The point of the war on drugs is to decrease human suffering. If you enter a war for some other higher purpose, the inevitable casualties are a tragic but necessary price to achieve that paramount objective. But casualties that are sustained in a humanitarian war directly undermine the point of the war. They should be avoided at almost all cost, or the war itself should be re-thought.

Our attempt to make people better off via the war on drugs somehow skirts this logic. We not only do not go out of our way to avoid casualties, we actively seek them out. The most recent outrage (via D'Alliance) is the scheduled execution by hanging of a 25-year old in Singapore. He was convicted of trying to leave the country with a few hundred grams of heroin. So he must die. Presumably this death is necessary to deter others who might otherwise leave Singapore with heroin. Wasn't heroin completely legal once? How did we end up executing people for carrying a little bit of it? Don't such punishments run counter to the presumably humanitarian purpose of this war, this absurd war, on drugs?

Declare a substance to be evil and this is what happens: no standards by which to judge infractions, and a willingness to adopt any sort of enforcement that offers hope of reducing the use of the evil substance. Drugs do addle minds, no?

Asia seems particularly susceptible to drug war fanaticism, in the Santayanian sense of redoubling your efforts when you have lost sight of your aims. Here's a previous Vice Squad post on the lamentable phenomenon.

Labels: Asia, drugs, Prohibition, Singapore

 
Security Cameras Moving Singapore's Prostitution Trade
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:08 PM

There are some legal brothels in Singapore, but some illicit streetwalking takes place nonetheless, of course. Now security cameras have been set up in some of the usual spots, and they seem to have been effective at relocating the prostitution trade. But they have had an unintended effect, too -- instead of being a boon to "legitimate" businesses in the (former?) red light areas by keeping away the riff-raff, the cameras are scaring away custom:

The men are staying away because they're afraid of being misunderstood by their wives, while our women customers are staying away because they don't want to be mistaken as prostitutes," Joyce Low, who runs an acupuncture and foot reflexology business in the area, was quoted as saying. The manager of a clothing store, Simon Chan, also said business had been affected with sales down by 60 percent.

Thanks to one of my generous students for the pointer. On security cameras more generally, Scott at Grits For Breakfast explains why they don't seem to reduce crime.

Labels: Asia, cameras, prostitution, Singapore

 
Singapore Requires Shock Pictures on Cigarette Packs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:52 PM

Reuters reports that Singapore will soon join Brazil and Canada as countries that require large, nasty pictures on cigarette packs in an effort to raise the salience of the warning that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health. Some 15% of adults in Singapore smoke, as opposed to about 24% in the US, though adult males in Singapore are slightly more likely to smoke than are their US counterparts: only 3.1% of adult females in Singapore smoke. (Figures from an Appendix to the World Health Association's Tobacco Atlas.)

This strengthening of regulation seems to fly in the face of recent liberalizations in Singapore, which include the newly legal (but strictly controlled) sale of chewing gum, the lifting of the ban on Cosmopolitan magazine, and the permission to air an edited version of the TV series "Sex and the City." The Reuters article offers this tidbit, too. Say you are waiting in line for a bus in Singapore with one other person (a custom that must be a colonial holdover!) and smoking a cigarette. A third person then joins the line. Better put out the cigarette, as Singapore's public smoking ban applies to "queues of more than two people."

Labels: Singapore, tobacco

 
Singapore Defends Itself Against Amnesty International Charges
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:24 PM

Yesterday Vice Squad noted Amnesty International's report on executions in Singapore, the majority of which are carried out for drug-crime convictions. (Vice Squad failed to link to the actual AI report, however, an oversight that is remedied here.) Friend of Vice Squad Pak Shun Ng brings our attention to this article in Straits Times Interactive (registration required), noting that the Singapore government is defending its actions. A government spokesperson denied that the justice system in Singapore is shrouded in secrecy, and more generally, suggested that safeguards for defendants met international norms. Further, the spokesperson is quoted in the linked article pointing to the benefits of the Singaporean policy: 'Most Singaporeans know that our tough but fair system of criminal justice makes Singapore one of the safest places in the world to live and to work in.'

Singapore is not the only country that executes drug traffickers. Indeed, other Asian nations are said to be increasing their use of the death penalty. China leads the world in the absolute number of executions; from the Taipei Times: "In one particular death frenzy, Amnesty said at least 150 accused drug criminals were executed across China in June, 2002 to mark the UN' International Drugs Day."

Labels: Asia, China, drugs, Singapore

 
Recent Drug War Stuff on the Web
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:39 PM

A couple days ago I updated the potential Venezuelan drug decriminalization story thanks to a link to this week's Drug War Chronicle. The same issue contains a few other stories that are worthy of mention:

(1) The country with the highest rate of executions (in per capita terms) is Singapore. The majority of those executed have been convicted of drug offenses. Singapore hangs people who are caught with quantities of drugs that are sufficient to generate a legal presumption that the possessors are traffickers, though the amounts that trigger that presumption are not huge. Amnesty International has issued a report critical of the workings of the Singapore justice system. (Incidentally, Saudi Arabia is second in per capita (bad terminology in this case) executions.)

(2) The chewing of coca leaves is traditional in parts of South America. Bolivia allows limited amounts of coca to be grown legally to provide a supply for this traditional practice. Now the legal coca farmers are attempting to have those "limited amounts" increased.

(3) Salvia, "a Mexican herb with weird psychedelic properties," is apparently popular at a US Air Force base in Oklahoma. The herb is not illegal in the US, it seems -- funny that the expectation is that a psychoactive plant is illegal! The Air Force base is unhappy, though, and is now threatening to punish military personnel who use salvia. The linked article from Drug War Chronicle provides the Air Force's definition of a drug: 'any intoxicating substance, other than alcohol, that is inhaled, injected, consumed or introduced into the body in any manner for purposes of altering mood or function.' You mean they let folks in the military drink?

Drug WarRant points to a few excellent stories, too. First, there's this LA Times article (registration required) on industrial hemp. Here's a sample: "Among the world's major industrial democracies, only the United States still forbids hemp farming. If an American farmer were to fill a field with this drugless crop, the government would consider him a felon. For selling his harvest he would be guilty of trafficking and would face a fine of as much as $4 million and a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Provided, of course, it is his first offense."

Two other stories that Drug WarRant highlights are drawn from Left Flank Shooters. One is an update on the safe injection site for intravenous drug addicts that was opened in Vancouver in September; a second is an academic paper that looks at the relationship between drug law enforcement and crime using data from counties in New York state. (An exaggerated version of the bottom line would be, More Drug War, More Crime.)

Labels: Asia, coca, drugs, hemp, salvia, Singapore

 
Testing Accused Prostitutes for STDs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:52 PM

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution today links to a
2000 story out of Singapore, concerning deporting
foreign women with HIV. There is a long history
of essentially scapegoating women, particularly
foreigners and prostitutes, for the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As the
Marginal Revolution post concerns foreigners with
HIV, Vice Squad will focus on prostitutes.

The notion that sellers should face stricter regulations
than buyers in vice transactions isn't per se nutty, by any
means, in that the typical seller is involved in a
much higher volume of trades than the typical buyer.
And in vices from gambling to drugs to prostitution,
enforcement efforts are regularly focused on sellers.
(Here's an earlier Vice Squad post on this issue.)

But scapegoating is another matter entirely, and
many of the mandatory testing regulations seem
aimed more at humiliation than at public health.
Recently, a Ukrainian woman accused of prostitution
in Turkey tested positive for HIV. She was then
marched, weeping, in front of television cameras, while
the police encouraged her former customers to get
tested. Then she was deported. The police were
relying on a ruling -- it had been rescinded, but they
didn't know that -- that required public exposure for
HIV-positive foreigners arrested for prostitution.
(Apparently you can't contract HIV from a fellow
countryperson). Here's a Chicago Tribune article
(registration required) about the incident. The article
quotes one local as saying that the town is
conservative and that prostitute women are not
welcome there. Perhaps he should have checked
with the men involved in the more than 1300 sexual
encounters in which the woman was alleged to
have engaged during the previous three months.

Surely such treatment would never happen in America,
no? Well, maybe not, but an article concerning that
over-the-top prostitution sting in Maricopa County,
Arizona, in November claimed that Arizona state law
requires STD testing of those who are accused (not
convicted!) of being prostitutes. Here's the original
Vice Squad post on the Maricopa County incident,
with the article link and a quotation concerning the
presumed state law.

In the late 1860s, Britain was finding that some of
its naval ships were unfit for service because so
many of the crew were disabled by STDs. How did they
respond? They passed the Contagious Diseases Acts that
made it possible for the police to arrest and test
women who happened to be in the wrong neighborhood
or were otherwise believed to be prostitutes. Funny,
isn't it, how punishments for vice crimes have a way
of avoiding that messy due-process-of-law tradition
that requires conviction for a crime before punishment
is meted out?

Vice Squad hero John Stuart Mill, author of (among
other things) The Subjection of Women and On
Liberty, asked to testify before a Royal Commission
formed to look into the Acts. Mill was magnificent,
if years before his time. He basically took an
economic approach. He suggested that men who
frequented prostitutes understood the risks, as
did the prostitutes themselves. Like other
contracts among adults, these exchanges did not
require government intervention. The public interest
was twofold. First, some of the customers might
pass along their diseases to their unsuspecting
wives -- an externality, if you will. So rather than
scapegoat the prostitutes, Mill suggested that those
who passed on the diseases to innocent victims
should be punished. The second public issue was
the fitness of Her Majesty's seamen. Here, Mill
testified in favor of the direct approach, testing the
seamen themselves and punishing those who allowed
themselves to become unfit for duty in this manner.

For the story on Mill and the Contagious Diseases
Acts, see The Life of John Stuart Mill, by
Michael St. John Packe, New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Labels: Arizona, Asia, Mill, prostitution, shaming, Singapore