Landmark Drug Case in Singapore
If there has ever been a sign pointing to the progress cannabis has made as a medicine in the eyes of the world, it can be found in Singapore. Singapore is one of the strictest countries in the world in terms of drug possession and trafficking sentencing. Defendants are imprisoned for excessive periods of time for what many countries consider minor possession offenses, often caned in addition to this, and, in the case of “traffickers,” put to death. However, as described in the article below, a recent offender was spared a trafficking conviction based on his lawyer being able to prove the man’s medical need for the drug.
Article From: Today in Singapore
In a new legal precedent, a student of Hotel Institute Montreaux in Switzerland was let off jail, spared a fine, escaped the gallows, and allowed to smoke cannabis for his headache. According to usual sentencing practices for Singaporeans nabbed, first time drug offenders are swiftly jailed for 6 to 18 months.
Although he was caught while cruising along expatriate heaven Holland Road in his parent’s luxury Lexus with 65 grams of cannabis stashed in the glove compartment (weed on wheels), Paresh Ramanlal was charged by the arresting police officers only for possession and consumption, and waived the more deadly drug trafficking offence. The Singapore Misuse of Drugs Act’s penal provisions are considered draconian by most nations’ standards, as the law creates a presumption of trafficking for certain threshold amounts, e.g. 30 grams of cannabis, which attracts the death-by-hanging sentence. Ramanlal’s veteran lawyer Subhas Anandan submitted a medical report in which consultant neurosurgeon Prem Pillay indicated that student’s long term prognosis was unknown, but his brain tumor could recur and could cause blindness, paralysis, coma and even death. We assume Dr Pillay did not prescribe the medical dosage of cannabis, which Ramanlal used to relieve his headaches, since there are a lot of commercial pain killers available in Singapore’s well stocked pharmacies. A letter from a Dr Alex Fok, Ramanlal’s hormone specialist, stated that it was unlikely that adequate treatment was available in prison, Panadol excepted. Makes sense, since drug peddlars in Changi are normally sent straight to the gallows before they can stay alive long enough to make a sale. Judge Ng Peng Hong granted the defence lawyer’s request for compassion and understanding.
The same Community Court judge Ng Peng Hong recently sentenced Azmi Osman,a diagnosed schizophrenia patient of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), to 3 years’ jail and 12 strokes of the cane for punching an Ang Moh. We are not told if Respiradol for treating schizophrenia will be made available to Azmi while in prison. Apparently Singapore has one constitution but two justice systems.
Singapore’s drug laws are widely unaccepted by the rest of the world. Some of the terms of the Misuse of Drugs Act include guilt by association (if your roommate or another occupant of the dwelling is found to be in possession of drugs, it’s assumed everyone else present knew about it and were using them as well), police being able to demand urinary analysis from any suspects and the ability for law enforcement to search a a dwelling and its occupants without any form of warrant. Given the allowances afforded these police officers in arresting and investigating suspected drug users and the severe penalties handed down for conviction of possession or trafficking threshold amounts of illegal substances, the above case is truly groundbreaking for the small country. Maybe their northern neighbor Thailand is next and we’ll be needing a sequel to Brokedown Palace.
Sources: Today in Singapore & Wikipedia
