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Vice
explodes in Singapore
Singapore
Democrats
23 Jan 08
Sex, drugs and rock & roll are
soaring to new heights in Singapore – at least the first
two anyway.
The red-light districts are teeming with
ladies of the night, many of whom are the not-so-talented from
our neighbouring countries. Reports even suggest that these
streetwalkers are so numerous that they are spilling over into
the avenues of our HDB estates.
Alarmed? Wait till the
casino comes to town...
More than 5,000
foreign sex workers caught in S'pore
AFP
22 Jan
08
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gviWnNqdA7JeY3MaCKqJhFIM4FY
Singapore
arrested more than 5,000 foreign prostitutes last year but it is
unrealistic to expect vice to be eliminated, the Home Affairs
Minister has told parliament.
Wong Kan Seng was responding
to a question from an MP about efforts to curb "rampant
gambling and prostitution" in Singapore's red-light Geylang
district.
"The vice situation in Singapore is under
control," Wong said in a written response released
Tuesday.
He said police across the city-state last year
conducted 950 vice-related operations, up from 890 the previous
year. They arrested 5,400 foreign sex workers, a 25 percent
increase over 2006, he said.
Despite its reputation as a
straight-laced society, prostitution is legal in Singapore, where
licensed brothels operate in designated areas such as Geylang.
Pimping and public solicitation are illegal.
Foreign women
working voluntarily in the sex trade cannot be arrested unless
they are caught offering their services out in the street or
violate immigration and other laws.
Wong, who is also a
deputy prime minister, said installation of closed-circuit
television cameras in Geylang has helped deter solicitation.
He
said daily police operations to target gambling in the back
alleys of Geylang led to 280 arrests last year and an improvement
in the situation.
"Illegal gambling in Geylang is not
rampant," Wong said.
"But I should add that it
is not realistic to expect vice to be totally eliminated,"
he said, particularly as the city-state seeks to promote
tourism.
"Among those who come, there will be a very
small number who enter under the pretext of social visits but
engage in vice activities. This is the reality which Singaporeans
should face up to.
Heroin-linked arrests jump by
600%
Teh Joo Lin
The Straits Times
16 Jan 08
670
cases in all, the highest figure since 2002; more than 40% were
ex-Subutex users
Heroin arrests shot up again last
year after hitting an all-time low in 2005, going by figures
released yesterday.
The number of arrests linked to its
use reached 670 last year, a six-fold jump over the previous year
and the highest since 2002. The white powder was the drug of
choice for three in 10 drug abusers nabbed.
At a briefing
yesterday on last year's drug scene, the Central Narcotics Bureau
(CNB) disclosed that 2,166 people had been arrested for drug use
last year. It offered two reasons for the jump in heroin
Use.
First, the increase could simply have been due to the
fact that heroin was now cheaper than Subutex.
Subutex was
introduced in 2002 as a prescription drug to wean heroin addicts
off their habit. The following year, the number of heroin abusers
- which had already been dropping since the mid-1990s - fell to
just 567, the first time since the 1970s that the figure was
below 1,000.
But addicts began abusing Subutex, forcing
the authorities to reclassify it as a controlled drug in August
2006. This meant that people caught using or
trafficking in
Subutex could attract similar harsh penalties to those facing
heroin abusers: long jail terms and caning.
Over 40 per
cent or 285 of the heroin addicts nabbed were former Subutex
users who returned to 'chasing the dragon'.
But CNB deputy
director S. Vijakumar called this a 'limited' switch back to
heroin. The 285 heroin addicts who were former Subutex users made
up only 6 per cent of the 5,000 known Subutex users, he said. He
pointed out that some addicts could have gone back to heroin
because heroin cost $50 per 0.2g straw against Subutex's street
price of $120 per 8mg tablet.
The second reason offered
for the rise in heroin-linked arrests: the release of about 4,000
hardcore drug abusers from prison over the years. They could have
influenced each other or drawn other people into taking up the
habit again.
'We can't make it impossible for them to
fraternise and meet each other,' said Mr Vijakumar.
Nine
out of 10 heroin addicts caught last year were repeat abusers.
For more than 60 per cent of them, the return to the habit will
put them behind bars for long terms.
The CNB seized
17.2kg of heroin in raids last year, about three times more than
in 2006. It also arrested 769 traffickers, while only 590 were
nabbed
in 2006. But Mr Vijakumar stressed that the rise in the
supply of heroin was not a response to higher demand for the
drug. Rather, he said, it came from syndicates bringing in the
drugs 'in the hope of finding buyers'.
He said that there
had been reports of bumper harvests of opium poppies in the
region. This could swell the heroin supply, but the CNB will
continue to be vigilant, he added.
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