Oct 22, 2024 - 01:55
By edition.cnn.com

Exclusive: Inside the prison that executes people for supplying cannabis

Singapore CNN —

Though he is provided with a straw mat, Matthew says he prefers to sleep on the concrete floor of his cell in the maximum-security wing of Singapore’s Changi Prison.

“It’s more cooling that way,” says the 41-year-old former schoolteacher, who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and seven strokes of the cane for selling methamphetamine.

CNN met Matthew, who spoke on condition that his last name be withheld, during an exclusive tour of Changi Prison provided by Singapore authorities as they defended the city-state’s uncompromising position on drugs.

In recent years, dozens of US states and countries ranging from Canada to Portugal have decriminalized marijuana.

Matthew is serving a 7-year prison sentence in Singapore's Changi Prison for trafficking meth.

But Singapore imposes a mandatory death penalty for people convicted of supplying certain amounts of illicit drugs – 15 grams (half an ounce) of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 250 grams of methamphetamine and 500 grams of cannabis.

A 64-year-old man was hanged for drug offenses this week – the fourth person to be hanged so far this year.

The harsh sentencing puts the wealthy city-state in a small club of countries that includes Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, which execute criminals convicted of drug offenses.

K Shanmugam, Singapore’s Minister for Home Affairs and Law, characterizes the country’s war on drugs as an “existential battle,” and claims any easing of the government’s hardline stance could lead to chaos.

“Look around the world,” Shanmugam says. “Any time there has been a certain laxity in the approach to drugs, homicides go up. Killings, torture, kidnappings … that goes up.”