A young woman buys cannabis for friends – and finds herself facing up to 20 years in prison.
Kim* is a young professional who started using cannabis when family life became messy. Things improved, but her drug habit stuck – and by then, her social circle was primarily made up of people who also used. With a reliable local supplier of weed, Kim’s friends asked her if she would get some for them.
“That’s what I did,” Kim says. “I never marked up the price in any way, because this was friendship… It’s like, I’m helping you to purchase something we both use anyway.”
Singapore, where Kim lives, has some of the harshest drugs laws in the world.
If you sell, give, deliver, administer, transport or distribute narcotics, that’s drug trafficking. And the law also presumes you’re a trafficker if you possess drugs in quantities that cross certain weight thresholds.
Kim’s life unravelled very fast when one of the friends she sourced cannabis for was caught by the state’s Central Narcotics Bureau.
Kim was named as the supplier of the marijuana, and picked up too. After the authorities trawled through her phone, another friend was arrested – and Kim was charged with drug trafficking.
“I was wracked with horror,” she says. “To have charges of trafficking levelled at me? That was just overwhelming. I felt complete and utter fear of what was going to pan out for me.”
Cannabis for recreational use has been decriminalised in many places around the world. In the US, 24 states have legalised it. While cannabis is illegal in the UK, with the exception of medical cannabis prescribed by doctors, punishments for its possession have plummeted in recent years.
In Singapore, if you’re found with 15g you’re assumed to be trafficking – and with 500g or more, the death penalty is mandatory.
It’s a controversial policy and there have been several recent cases. The most recent execution – of a 64-year-old on a heroin charge – took place on 16 October.
The Singaporean government won’t tell the BBC how many people are currently on death row.
Read the full article at The BBC
