A Modest Proposal

Criticism to the policy and practice responses

Risk management and risk analysis usually used technical-scientific for scientific evidence which can be calculated and measured through effective methods to deter the risk (Lupton, 2013). Agencies can use risk assessment such as “Singapore Prison Short Risk Scale” to predict offenders rate of recidivism and can have risk knowledge of the offenders to categorise them under low, moderate or high risk so that suitable rehabilitation center can be allocated to drug abusers to rehabilitative effectively (Leo, 2014). It is good that Singapore government categorise the drug addicts based on risk so that high-level risk drugs abusers are prioritised in the treatment and for the lower risk abusers, they

A study done by Osman (1998), observing ex-drug abusers two years after released from drug programs and comparing between the relapse group and the success group. The study was strictly based on Malay offenders as the race contributed to the highest number of drug offenders in Singapore. There are various factors that need to be taken into consideration such as Marital, Education, History, Employment and Family relation (Osman, 1998). Those with better qualities of the factors tend to have successful stories as compared to the relapse case (Osman, 1998). Thus, it is mandatory to consider other desistance factors that can assist ex-offenders to be in the same position as its successful cases of ex-offender (Osman, 1998). Social identity theory can also challenge the rehabilitation programs where offenders are given free time between 7 am to 7 pm which may allow offenders to engage with same negative ingroup that causes individuals to commit drugs, thus, with the similar groups, it can be harder for offenders to break from their old lifestyles (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). There is also debate on how the ‘cold turkey’ methods are inhumane for the drugs individual and are not actually effective in reducing the relapsed rate (Kamarudin,

Campaigns that were formed in Singapore are proved to be effective as Ching (2014) did a study, under NCADA, on students age 13-21 to survey them on their knowledge on drugs and harms of drugs and the parents’ relation. The result showed that youth answered them positively at a rate of 97.3% where respondents would say NO when being offered drugs. However, there is a limitation as students might avoid telling the truth that can put them in trouble, thus, affecting the result (Choi and Pak, 2005). In contrary, the anti-drugs campaigns might not be effective as a study done by Hornik et al. (2008) found that campaign has little to no effects on youth in United State. The study was based on a long-term survey, 4 times at their houses, from 1999 to 2004 on 3 cohorts of US children, a total of 5126 went through till the last surveyed and only 86-95% of the surveyed were considered, ranging from age 9 to 18. The reason Singapore campaign model proved to be more effective as it encourages families to engage with the youth and have a healthy relationship, free from drugs on the level of both youth and parents (Osman, 2002). With this, Singapore maintained a low rate of drug user with only less than 0.1% of its population were arrested in 2014 (MHA, 2015). Thus, it is mandatory to involve the relationship of youth and families for the campaign to be effective, if not, individual can easily involve in