
Why Singapore banned chewing gum - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32090420
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parennoob
As someone originally from India, also a South Asian country, but where none
of these bans ("litter, graffiti, spitting, expelling 'mucous from the nose'
and urinating anywhere but in a toilet") are in place or being enforced -- I
totally understand LKY's way of thinking, and agree with it.

In India, a lot of people chew tobacco and betelnut leaves, spit them out
straight on the street. Litter? No problem, just chuck it out the window. I
have seen supposedly educated people throwing their banana peels and empty
potato chip bags straight out the window of a bus rather than waiting for the
next stop. Want to take a leak? Go against the nearest wall, and pee in the
stench of 20 people who have gone before you. People seem to have no concept
of keeping public spaces clean. Literally exactly the behaviours described in
the Singaporean rules are rampant in India.

All this leads to a fuck ton of garbage, filthy streets, and an image of being
an unclean country. I wish we had had someone like LKY in the early 60s who
could have prevented this from happening, and had given India an image of a
modern country but with an ancient back-culture.

I have often wondered about the deeper reason behind this behaviour; and my
hypothesis is that it is related to the concept of the family as the main
social unit in South and East Asian culture, rather than the broader society
as a whole. So people will keep their own house sparkling clean, but not
hesitate to spit against the wall in the street two blocks away. The
Singaporean solution ("ban the spitting and enforce it with steep fines") was,
in my opinion, the quickest and most pragmatic way of solving this problem for
a large, densely populated Asian city. Kudos to him.

~~~
beachstartup
public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london
were the same way in the 19th century. shanghai is rapidly developing and is
reasonably clean. tokyo is immaculate because it is fully developed. taipei is
very clean also.

in fact cities like london and san francisco still have problems with people
pissing and shitting all over the place, except it's due to alcohol and bums
and not the level of development. many parts of san francisco reek of piss and
shit and there's garbage everywhere after a busy saturday night.

~~~
parennoob
> public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london
> were the same way in the 19th century.

I agree, but

a) India's cities are largely unplanned, and way denser than NY. Not sure
about London.

b) Waiting for another century's worth of development is not an effective way
to make your country an attractive destination for tourism and investment.

~~~
selectodude
London isn't dense at all.

~~~
ZenoArrow
I agree with you, but I do wonder if the destructive acts of the Great Fire
and the Blitz had a part to play in that.

~~~
selectodude
Biggest reason is that the soil in London is soft clay, making it incredibly
expensive, and until recently, very difficult to build up, and very cheap and
easy to build subways. Allowed sprawl to occur earlier than in other cities in
the world.

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kleiba
I don't chew as much gum anymore now that I'm old. But even when it was a more
common habit of mine, I'm pretty sure that I never just spit it out on the
pavement -- not even in my "rebel" teen years. As a matter of fact, I don't
understand how you can just not care so much.

But then again, I remember an incident where a friend of mine threw a candy
wrap right onto the street as we were walking about. When I asked him what
that was all about, he argued that this would keep the people who clean the
streets in their job. I just gave him a blank stare.

But then again, we do teach little children that it's not okay to just drop
your garbage, and at the same time I've rarely met a smoker who doesn't snick
their cigarette butts onto the pavement as a matter of course when smoking
outside.

While theoretically speaking it does seem to sense that everybody cleans up
their own garbage, reality is not always sensical. I guess we have come to
accept that it's just a fact of life that people litter -- that's probably why
a chewing gum ban seems like such a weird thing.

~~~
kstenerud
And then you have Japan, where tossing your litter (including cigarette butts)
or vandalizing property are simply unthinkable. It's all in the culture.

~~~
sosborn
I'm not sure if you've spent any significant time in Japan, but this is
certainly not the case for cigarette butts.

~~~
kstenerud
I couldn't speak for Tokyo, but it is in Nagoya and many of the smaller
townships. There was a massive "smokin' clean" campaign a few years ago,
accompanied by sales of portable ashtrays.

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iQuercus
Often in interviews Lee Kuan Yew was quick to point out that Asian cultures
were inherently different to their Western counterparts, therefore what worked
in one place would not necessarily work in the other.

As a thought exercise, I do sometimes wonder what would happen if gum was
banned in New York City or London?

~~~
adventured
If you banned gum in NY, the first thing that would happen is a significant
increase in gum on the sidewalks, gum sales would soar; then after a short
rebellion, consumption would fall by half as the more pliant folded. It would
also generate a classic soda-ban type media circus, nanny state accusations,
and so on.

Lee Kuan Yew would know that Asian cultures vary as much amongst themselves as
they do compared to Western cultures. Strikes me as a convenient defensive
line to shut down debate.

The manners in China are very different than the manners in Japan for example.
Whether we're talking about spitting in public or line queuing. In his same
line of reasoning, what would work in Singapore, would not inherently work in
the Philippines.

~~~
notsony
I don't think cultures are that different. It's a question of education and
enforcement.

I see people spitting all the time in San Francisco, it's pretty disgusting,
and not just homeless people but also techies, hipsters, Marina crowd, they
all do it.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, spitting in the street is quite rare now due to public
education (government advertisements and notices) and of course hefty fines
which are enforced.

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davor_pavic
No matter how effective it is sometimes, something is fundamentally wrong in
banning trivial things like chewing gum. What about raising awareness of the
problem? I'd say it's the only right solution to this kind of problem

~~~
DanAndersen
Is "raising awareness" effective? I spent a fair amount of time in mainland
China, where lots of walls were plastered with propaganda signs about not
spitting or littering in an exhortation to "be civilized" (their words, not
mine). I don't know how much good the signs did.

~~~
davor_pavic
Opposite of "raising awareness" is almost always some form of implementing
totalitarianism. How effective is that on long run?

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ghshephard
This is the pragmatic LKY that everyone will be saying good bye to tomorrow.
Gum is a problem? Outlaw it.

Honestly, given that you can chew it if you have a medical prescription, no
great loss.

Obviously not the American Solution (see how much trouble Bloomberg had
outlawing the far more health hazardous soft drinks), but, certainly works
well in Singapore.

~~~
sirseal
Except juice, which has the equivalent amount of harmful sugar. It's more
because Bloomberg is a typical dickhead politician who makes policy only to
further his own power.

~~~
ghshephard
Ordering SuperLargeGulps of juice was so rare as to be nonexistent.

Bloomberg was most certainly not trying to further his own power in this
situation - he went to his assistants and asked, "What single thing is most
harming our population's health right now?" And the thing currently at the top
of the chart was super-large-sizes of soft drinks.

But, here is the thing - the United States (with the exception of Seat Belts,
in which the NHTSA managed to link federal funding and increased safety), is
typically not in the business of being a nanny state. The exception for
smoking was that it was _second hand_ smoking that was being legislated.

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aaron695
Some western countries have done this for cigarette smoking on beaches, it's
not longer the good old days when Singapore was an outlier.

[http://www.longwood.edu/cleanva/cigbuttarticles.htm](http://www.longwood.edu/cleanva/cigbuttarticles.htm)

Do we as human beings want our lives controlled or do we want to be free,
understanding that some small part of the population will abuse that?

From a risk management point of view control is bad, it allows for
catastrophic damage, where as allowing freedom of the populace has virtually
no risks ATM when compared to personal decisions and inequities.

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kschua
Just to clarify on the ban.

The ban is on the sale and import of chewing gum, not on the consumption of
chewing gum itself. The maximum penalty is a jail term, not a death penalty
nor caning.

Though the link below doesn't mention about the sale, I do remember that the
sale itself is prohibited.

([http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=...](http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=0;query=DocId%3A%22125e649f-9e18-4cd1-9950-619cd8e2e0a1%22%20Status%3Ainforce%20Depth%3A0;rec=0))

------
known
It's co-related to [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-
wo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-
racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html)

------
andrewfong
I wonder if anyone considered estimating the cost of fixing up a gummed up
train or cleaning gum off the sidewalk and simply passed that on as a tax.

------
manojlds
But then still allows so much smoking in public.

~~~
ghshephard
Less and less, and the regulations regarding how far away from doors you have
to be are closely folllowed. Also starting to crack down on all the shisha
places.

In all my time in Singapore (about two years now) - I've never had to deal
with undesired smoke.

~~~
unholiness
Given the number of smokers I knew when I was in Singapore, and that I never
saw anyone smoking in the street, I always assumed public smoking was banned.
When I heard there was no such ban, I asked a smoker about it. He said he
doesn't smoke in public out of consideration for others, and a lack of public
ashtrays (but that the latter was likely a bigger factor).

~~~
manojlds
This wasn't the case for me in Singapore. As a pedestrian, I get assaulted
with smoke all the time, especially while waiting at a crossing.

~~~
ghshephard
What parts of Singapore? I've been on the streets here for the last two years,
and honestly don't recall much smoke, as compared to California, or Vancouver
- both of which also have strict anti-smoking laws, and which I'm frequently
assaulted by smoke - though a lot of the smoke in those cities is cannabis,
which obviously isn't a problem in Singapore.

Perhaps it's because the areas I go to (Labrador, Harbor Center, Orchard Road,
Woodlands, Holland Village, Botanic Gardens, Newton) are more smoke free?

With that said - I just did a survey of everyone in the room, and they
indicated it's no better than anyplace in Canada - so perhaps I've just been
missing something.

