High on Drugs

Ernie
The Drunken Ramblings Podcast
5 min readMay 13, 2021

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“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
Edgar Allan Poe

The “Drug Problem” has been a topic that has plagued the world for ages. Governments all around struggle with deciding on and implementing the right laws to protect their people. However with a topic like this, I believe governments should always be questioned and the conversation should be everchanging to the times as well as the science.

I do not believe that there is a single right way to handle Drugs.

For a country like Singapore, the topic of drugs will polarize the country. One half, the supposed conservatives who in my opinion are also the most uneducated on the subject matter. While the other half, mostly following the trends of today. Let’s be honest here, a lot of people are looking for something to fight for. To have some purpose in life. But where are they when the topic in question has no media attention?

You finally have people who have actually experienced taking drugs themselves. They too are polarized on the topic. Some, brain-washed by the conservatives to preach their narrative. While the other half tends to just share their life experiences with people who tend to hear only one side of the story.

This is my personal opinion. The overall division comes from the government’s try-hard narrative forged through years or propaganda. A lot of people claim that issues like this come down to taxation. That the ability to tax cigarettes has allowed it to be legalized even though the impact is huge with data to back up the negatives. The same can also be said about alcohol.

Alcohol, smoking, etc, are far more dangerous than drugs like Weed in my personal opinion. There has been countless data collected from the use of smoking & alcohol to ban them for eternity yet they are still widely consumed in every society. Although local sources like to discredit any information one might find, there are also numerous considerations to factor in when you talk about topics like this. Another thing to consider when it comes to drugs is the systemic topic of the illegal drug trade, which is another massive topic that most tend to overlook and not consider. Oftentimes we blame the individual, race, family, upbringing, etc, because we’re up on our high horses. Ignorance. Is. Bliss.

Singapore is a dot on the map. The population density, the mix of cultures, the financial ability, etc, will play a part. If you want to compare stats to larger countries, then in most cases we will look terrible based purely on numbers that have been published. If I multiply Singapore by 100x or 1000x our numbers will be horrible to look at. If you use the COVID numbers as an example to think about this, it’s scary to think what Singapore would look like if we were a bigger country. So we are lucky that we are a small country. Really.

When we started talking about this topic, we were careful to do some research as it was a huuuuuge topic and we also wanted to cover a situation that was happening in Singapore. A man was sentenced to death, but due to COVID, was not able to say his goodbyes. We wanted this episode to be a conversation about how we felt as individuals and not as institutions and we hope that we achieved that.

I certainly don’t believe that you need a degree or a fancy title to be able to have an opinion on a subject. To me that’s an incredibly flawed concept. The idea that you need to be an expert to have an opinion but it is also important to make that aspect clear when creating any form of content. Once you get over that, we won’t be limited to only voicing our opinions through fake Facebook accounts or keeping how we really feel internally.

I come from the camp whereby anybody of a certain age or mental capability should be held responsible for their actions. I believe that a country like Singapore puts their cards on the table. If you still choose to disobey, you should pay the price & no, you should not get special treatment for whatever reason you may have. I may completely disagree about Singapore’s stance on drugs, but I do not hate on the government for enforcing the law even if I feel it’s one that comes with poor understanding on the subject matter. It’s purely my position on the single situation.

One of the topics we talked about on the podcast was about how Portugal handled their own drug situation. It was a situation that journalists have brought up to the Singaporean government before and has been brushed off as something that cannot be replicated here in Singapore. I firmly disagree on this because we are using a fear based system rather than a recovery and support based system. It’s a time versus money conversation rather than one of method.

When a person is given the opportunity to properly integrate back into society, they will be less likely to commit similar crimes. People who have their basic needs met, along with getting the right support and education simply do not go out to commit crimes of this nature. It is in many ways a compounding effect and the government should spend more to support and rehabilitate rather than to scare and prevent. There just aren’t enough support structures set in place for people to find their footing again. Especially with the incredibly poor social stigma they need to face in Singapore and most Asian societies. We can do much much much better in supporting the people facing this problem.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie

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Ernie

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Ernie
The Drunken Ramblings Podcast

Written from an Asian perspective. My opinions. My view. My perspective. My experiences. My side of the coin.