Drug abuse figures in Singapore and Hong Kong

Court decision on Yong’s appeal case will either reinforce the role of mandatory death penalty or lead to a revamp of the law, as he will be a landmark case if his death sentence is to be reviewed.

Whether the tough penalties imposed on offenders of such crime in the Lion City are effective in combating drug problems, nothing conclusive has been proved in this aspect.

Statistics and figures from the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) in Singapore, however, do show that the problem seems to be in control.

A total of 1,883 drug abusers were arrested in 2009 and 553 of them were new abusers, according to figures from the CNB, compared with 1,417 and 508 respectively in the previous year – marking a slight drop of 2 per cent.

But there is no information on the number of drug traffickers arrested and demographics.

Since figures and data collection in Hong Kong and Singapore is different and it will not be fair to compare the two purely on figures and data.

But for the sake of giving an overview, 13,909 cases of reported drug abusers were recorded at the Central Registry of Drug Abuse and 4,396 were newly reported in Hong Kong,a city with a population of nearly 7 million, in 2009.

The most popular drug in the Lion City is heroin counting for 57 per cent of drug use by abusers, while Ketamine, a popular psychotropic substance among young drug abuser, tops the list in Hong Kong with 83.5 per cent.

The scenario might be best explained by the age of drug abusers in the two cities.

In Singapore, of the 1800-odd arrested drug abusers in 2009, 823 were aged 40 or above, while only 90 were aged below 20, while 4,097 were in the group of over 41 and 3,359 were below 20 in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong government recognizes the problem among young drug abusers is serious, as statistics for the year 2009 show 5,019 teenager first took drug when they were under 16 and 5,232 for the group 16 to 20.