No Gum-Lah

No Gum-Lah

By Enzo Kekligian

In Singapore, 1987, teenagers begun sticking gum in the door sensors of a five billion railway project (the teenagers didn’t get in trouble because it was a big amount of teens doing it and there weren’t a lot of cameras in Singapore) called Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) that leaded Lee Kuan Yew make a drastic and risky decision.

No one knows for sure what were all the facts that leaded Lee Kuan Yew to approve the law that makes selling gum illegal, but is probably because in the past a lot of people kept sticking gum everywhere. That gums stuck in the MRT make that revolutionary system fail and the government needed to rebuild the super new system.

Some people thought that whoever sells gum would be arrested but others thought that they would just pay a fine. However, no one actually knows what the punishment is for selling gum. Singaporeans don’t think that the law should be lifted because that law made Singapore one of the cleanest countries in Asia.

Thirty-three percent of students in SAIS (Stamford American International School) support the law. Sixty-four percent of students think that the law should be ditched because they really miss gum. Eighty percent of the students think that the law helped Singapore to be clean as it is today.

It is a very big issue because tourists and expats don’t know if they can bring gum and they think it is illegal to chew gum. The truth is the police will not arrest you if you chew or bring gum to Singapore. They will, however, arrest you if you try to sell it. Since 2004, you can bring a little amount of gum to Singapore so is not illegal to chew it.

Some countries think that selling gum is illegal is a weird and unnecessary law. Other countries think that the law is very important and helped Singapore to grow and be this important country in Asia.

If the whole population agrees that who stuck gum should pay a fine the government should ditch the law, but Singapore is clean because of that law that is why Singaporeans don’t want to ditch the law.