SINGAPORE – In Parliament on May 8, Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam cited examples of how drugs were behind some heinous crimes in Singapore and in other countries.

He was delivering his ministerial statement on Singapore’s anti-drugs policy, and argued for the death penalty to continue to be used to deter drug abuse here.

He said Singapore was in the midst of a war on drugs, and must do all it can to protect innocent lives.

This was important, as there had been several recent cases where drug abusers committed horrific crimes.

Meth abuser who burned daughter’s body in a pot

Two-year-old Umaisyah was brutally assaulted to death by her father, a methamphetamine abuser, in March 2014.

The girl, who had three siblings, was abused by both her parents. They cannot be identified to protect their surviving children.

The man had taken methamphetamine on the morning that Umaisyah died. He and his wife got upset with the girl for playing with her faeces after soiling her diaper, and they slapped her.

Prosecutors said the man’s assaults caused significant traumatic brain injury, which led to a concussive seizure. After Umaisyah’s lips turned blue, her mother tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate her.

Worried that they would be arrested, the couple did not call for help and instead burned Umaisyah’s body in a metal pot to cover their tracks. They then placed the pot in a box, sealed it and took it back to the flat.

Over the years, they lied to their family and the authorities about the girl’s whereabouts.

The case was uncovered only five years later in 2019, when the woman’s younger brother opened the box.

Umaisyah’s father was sentenced to 21½ years in jail and 18 strokes of the cane for culpable homicide, while her mother was sentenced to 14 years’ jail for ill-treating her children and perverting the course of justice.

Man killed mother and grandmother

A young man who took mind-altering drug LSD out of curiosity ended up fatally stabbing his 56-year-old mother and punching his 90-year-old grandmother, causing her death.

Gabriel Lien Goh, then a 22-year-old full-time national serviceman, killed the two women on Oct 27, 2019, at their flat at Block 7A Commonwealth Avenue.

The court heard that after Goh took two tabs of LSD, he left the flat and returned holding a knife. He stabbed his mother, Madam Lee Soh Mui, after she went into his room to talk to him.

When his grandmother, Madam See Keng Keng, left the flat to seek help from neighbours, Goh punched her in the face, causing her to fall and hit her head on the metal railing along the corridor.

A report from the Institute of Mental Health found that Goh had acute hallucinogen intoxication at the time of the killings.

The report said the second tab of LSD led him to experience feelings of unreality, distortion of shapes, exaggerated colours, illusions, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and distortion of spatial order and sense of time.

The High Court found in September 2022 that Goh had committed the acts, but acquitted him of two charges of culpable homicide on the basis of his mental incapacity, and ordered that he be kept at the Complex Medical Centre in Changi Prison pending further orders from the law minister.

Drug abuser killed himself by driving into bus

A known drug abuser, Mr Alvin Wong Mun Loong, 31, crashed a GetGo rental car head-first into a public bus in Yishun on Jan 13, 2023, killing himself and injuring seven bus passengers.

Mr Wong was unconscious when taken to hospital, where he died that night.

An autopsy found traces of Ecstasy, methamphetamine and amphetamine in his body, along with painkillers and sedatives. The police also found drug apparatus in the car he was driving.

A coroner’s inquiry into his death in July 2023 heard that the combination of drugs could have caused cognitive impairment and affected his ability to drive safely.

A police investigation officer said during the coroner’s inquiry that Mr Wong had previously been sentenced to the Drug Rehabilitation Centre for 12 months and released on March 16, 2022.

He was then placed on drug supervision for 16 months, but had stopped reporting for urine tests in November 2022.

Father committed incest with daughter after sharing meth with her

In early 2023, the court heard the case of a man who had committed incest with his 17-year-old daughter after sharing methamphetamine with her, said Mr Shanmugam.

“She became reliant on him for sustaining her addiction and did not come forward with the truth for months,” the minister said.

Attacks in Sweden linked to gang fights over drugs and arms

Mr Shanmugam said that Sweden, which he called one of the safest places in the world, has been seriously affected by drug- and gang-related violence.

In 2022, there were 391 shootings, 90 explosions and 101 attempted attacks with explosives linked to fights between criminal gangs over drugs and arms.

The country’s former police chief Anders Thornberg said that its citizens were afraid and insecurity was increasing.

Young children recruited into the drug trade in Ecuador

Ecuador has become “wrecked with drugs and violence”, said Mr Shanmugam.

In one hideout used by drug cartels, the police found stuffed toys. The gangs purportedly used the toys to attract young children and recruit them as drug pushers, before handing them weapons and forcing them into the drug trade.

The country also saw its homicide rate increase by four times from 2018 to 2022, with reports of beheadings, car bombing assassinations of police and children being shot, said Mr Shanmugam.

Children in America with drug abuser parents

A study showed that in 2017, about 2.2 million children and adolescents in the US had a parent with an opioid use disorder or were affected by opioids themselves. It projected this number would jump to 4.3 million by 2030.

A poll in 2021 reported that about 32 per cent of Americans say that drug use has been a cause of trouble in their family, almost double the proportion in 1999.

Said Mr Shanmugam: “If (parents and guardians) become drug addicts, homeless and unemployed, it is the children who suffer disproportionately.

“These children often don’t have a proper home to grow up in, no role models to look up to, and no stability to anchor their development.”

Teens in Thailand hospitalised after eating cannabis-infused snacks

Tens of thousands of cannabis shops sprung up in Thailand after it became the first country in South-east Asia to legalise the use of medicinal cannabis in 2018, and then for recreational use in 2022.

Within six months of decriminalising the recreational use of marijuana, the number of addicts had increased by four times.

Young teens and children ate cannabis-infused cookies and candy, thinking they were ordinary snacks, and ended up hospitalised, said Mr Shanmugam.

The Thai government recently announced plans to reimpose a ban on recreational cannabis use by the end of 2024. But it is not going to be easy, as businesses will push back and drug addicts will find it hard to kick the habit, said the minister.

“The consequences, in many cases, can be irreversible. The impact will be very long-lasting.”