Exploring Constructions of the 'Drug Problem' in Historical and Contemporary Singapore

This paper considers the manner in which the phenomenon of drug use, with important references to amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS hereafter) use, is socially defined, constructed, and subsequently morally regulated and managed as a ‘social problem’ in Singapore. It also examines the ways in which ATS users are labelled as part of a ‘problem population’ (Spitzer, 1975) that requires serious and immediate attention. This paper locates ATS use within a wider historical perspective, and locates this intentionally with other similar anti-drug reforms but in different historical frameworks. It starts by situating the drug problem as part of a larger spectrum of moral regulation and claims-making projects in Singapore, and in so doing, introduces briefly the processes embedded in these projects. The core of the paper outlines the broad processes that have constructed general drug use as a social problem in Singapore historically from the pre-world war II period to the early 1990s when ATS use first surfaced and was subsequently labelled as a social problem in Singapore. It is important to begin in this manner for two reasons. Firstly, it sets the scene for the rest of the work, in as much as it reiterates and alerts the reader to the fact that the study sees the ‘drug problem’ as essentially a social and political construct that both continues and transforms over various times and milieux. As Lenson (1995:6) puts it: ‘“Sobriety” is a cultural construction created for the furtherance of a political and economic agenda’. 1 Noorman Abdullah (noorman.abdullah@gmail.com) is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Sociology in the University of Bielefeld (Germany), where he is currently working on his dissertation, ‘Alternative Discourses, Local Knowledge and the Reconstruction of Realities ‐ Spirit Possession among the Orang Melayu in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia’. His research interests include crime and deviance, law and society, gender, race and ethnic relations, sociology and anthropology of religion, and sociology of everyday life. The author wishes to thank Roxana Waterson, Kelvin Low, and four anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this paper.