Extraterritorial legislation works fine for drug interdiction without sending in soldiers to burn poppy fields. Think of the DEA concept for anti-drug ops.

I thought Mas Selamat was caught OUTSIDE the country. Did we need to attack other country to pursue him?

We can’t even find Yong’s boss or do anything with him, you want to talk about burning poppy fields. So its either Yong dead or burn poppy fields. No one or syndicates are in between.

I am talking about the agent that Yong is expected to meet up with to pass the ‘gift’ over, not random agents. If they can’t be bothered to track just this lead, don’t even talk about looking for random agents.

Yong thought that drugs were like cigarettes. If he had not had to give up on education, if the Malaysian schools talk about drugs in their schools, Yong could have been aware of the damages drugs can cause. If you really think that courtesy campaign can be more important in improving the quality of life, I wish you good luck in finding quality of life.

Suppliers already mentioned ad nauseum. They are OUTSIDE the country. Do you want us to invade another country? or maybe get our NS boys to Afghan to burn poppy fields?

Agents peddling on the streeting, I do not know since I am neither CNB nor there was much news. The only ‘news’ is on CNB website which may not be the most objective. Unfortunately, since it is the ONLY news I can find…

Anyway, go to the website yourself and decide for yourself if they are indeed doing nothing or too little.
http://www.cnb.gov.sg/Newsroom/index.asp?name=TmV3c3Jvb20gLSBPcGVyYXRpb25z&year=MjAwOQ&type=Q3VycmVudA&view=Q3VycmVudA

If you care so much for peoples lives,

I care for the quality of lives, not just life itself. If courtesy campaign improves quality of life, then I am all for it . Do note that I do not think the govt can carry off any campaign well enough for it to mean anything… regardless of anti-drug or courtesy. The only one that worked (too well) is the stop at 2 I guess.

However the problem here is that Yong is a foreigner; I am not sure the Singaporean taxpayer should pay for his rehabilitation. I can imagine the hordes of foreigners over-flooding the local jails especially in land scarce Singapore.

If Singapore has extradition treaties with other countries, it could ship them back to their home country to serve out their sentence.

If you care so much for peoples lives, what about the drug suppliers and the agents peddling them on the street? Do you not call for investigations on them? You should also be asking the authorities to spend on anti-drugs campaign instead of courtesy campaign, go into the schools and tell children about the destruction of drugs, better still make the govt include this in the curriculum. There are so many things the govt can do, not just executing mules.

One more thing, there should be prominent signs reminding immigrants of the drugs law and death sentence, at embarkation. The airport security should allow immigrants to declare the illegal drugs if they carry them to avoid the death sentence. Those who declare are spared but not allowed entry into Spore and banned, at the same time, they should be handed over back to their countries’ authorities to deal with them. Afterall, Spore is not interested to investigate further and cannot arrest anyone overseas, so what is the point of detaining them. The law should not be set up as a trap to execute people, it is there to safeguard drugs entering the country.

JayF @170

Yong Viu Kong was not caught SELLING the drugs. He was caught in posession of them. Who he is bringing the stuff to, we do not know. This 19 yr old is not a rich young man, he did not have the money to own the drugs for sales. Yes, he works or carries the drugs for someone. Who this someone is, we do not know. The authorities do not seem interested either.

For the potential harm he might have done in aiding the smuggling of the drugs, he should be given a jail sentence. Many of us take his background into consideration when arguing against his execution, I think it is not Yong himself who is using it to escape punishment.

The drug peddling scums make use of people like Yong to stake their lives. Yong was certainly easy target for them, and the drug law in SG is certainly easy loophole for the drug peddling scums. The scums themselves will never do the trafficking themselves and never get into trouble with this law.

The law is wrong, very wrong and needs to be changed. Notice I have not even argued for or against capital punishment yet.

JayF, I personally cannot bring myself to hate Yong, although I hate drug abuse. I have seen lives damaged by drugs but somehow there is something in Yong that I cannot bring myself to condemn him. I cannot explain it myself but there is something there shouting this boy deserve another chance. I have just wept (literally) when I read that he knelt down to his mum and bowed to her 3 times (by Rachel Zeng). My eyes are welling up again as I write. If a person has feelings, he has hope. It is a beautiful relationship between him and his mum which will be a good basis for him to start a new life after his jail sentence if he is given another chance. It is too cruel to take away this young life and from his mum, both of whom had never had it easy from Yong’s early days.

JafF, I am personally sad for you that you do not feel anything for a young human life.

You realised you are experimenting with people’s lives here?

If atonement was a serious consideration, wouldn’t sparing him from death penatly and long-term imprisonment / rehab be more effective? At least there is a chance of him repenting and contributing to society in any way.

I sell life destroying merchandise and I want to play up my “tragic” circumstances to hope I’d avoid doing the Irish tap dance now that I got caught

Hang the drug mule and be done with. At the least give him the dignity of a death to atone whatever little for all the lives he had ruined.

Pull the lever, we got more drug peddling scum on the list.

I think the point I’m trying to make is… we make death penalty into law, and yet, despite the gravity of taking away one life, we don’t seem to be making the corresponding effort to really really make sure people get the message.

All we get are excuses.

That really punctures the whole ‘deterrence’ as a message angle, and show the double standards of the punishment system.