but it changes the hormonal balances, and makes them lose interest in sex.

Paedophilia - permanent life - no parole. Simple as.

I would like, along with many people, for them sick people to be castrated, would make me feel that some justice has been performed.... but liberals amongst us, say that perhaps they can be re-educated.... be gratefull for the Mental health act 1983 and sections...... much more restrcitive than prison sentences. Chop there bits off would be justice, and yes people not just women get raped with bottles, there are some sick people on this earth beleive me, I know, I work with them ,I am a MH nurse and I am supposed to be impartial, but how can I be, I am human.

J

Yes as it happens, your point??

But rape isn't about sex it's about power

i don't totally agree with that

which bit? that you dont agree with?

J

that it's mostly about power, and not sex

Back to the subject of whether drug dealers deserve the death penalty...

What is the point of having laws ? What is the point of saying that certain acts deserve certain punishments?

You are labelled a murderer if you kill someone. You serve your time according to the law of that land you committed the offence in. You take illegal drugs into a country..... you know the law..... the potential to kill hundreds or thousands of people is in YOUR hands. You decide to take the risk... no matter what the punishment...... if it's the death penalty...
You deserve to die...
To catch you is to potentially stop those deaths.... is to potentially deter someone else from taking that risk. Stop 2 of you and how many do not get addicted and how many lives are saved?

I would be horrified if it were my child, but how could I sleep at night knowing that this is what my child had become, and that all those innocents will be taken away coz of something that they had made available? Something they had taken somewhere for money. And again, how could you want your child to spend the rest of their days in those places anyway?

It's a tough call, but you have to think objectively about this. There is no right answer. The only way I see it is to imagine that that person is someone you love and take it from there. Family may be important, being proud of that family - how about that ??

Completely agree with this - my heart aches for the family, especially the mother. I cant even imagine how much pain & anguish she must be in right now.

But he is not the first & certainly wont be the last.

Just wondering, do you people who support the death penalty would also support it for tobacco sellers?

I think you will find that tobacco kills more people then "drugs"

How about we hang Bush, Howard and Blair etc for invading Iraq?

As Gandhi said "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless"

As it happens, I think it's questionable whether capital punishment is appropriate for drug muling. However, it IS Singaporean policy and frankly nothing to do with another country. You take the risk and if caught in country A rather than B then perhaps you should have thought about it before trying it on.

In this case - and I'm referring to the reports - he was muling to get money to pay his brother's legal bills. His brother is reported to have incurred them because HE was caught doing the same thing.

If you take money from someone it's theft: if the government takes it, it's called a fine.
If you lock someone up, it's called kidnapping: if the government locks you up it's imprisonment.
If you kill someone it's murder: if the government does it's execution.

Apart from the depth of the penalties, it's exactly the same principle: the democratically elected state has a right to punish lawbreakers in such way that it deems appropriate.

IMO capital punishment is appropriate for first degree murder if only because it demonstrates the population' abhorrence at the taking of a life. And as for deterrence, I remember the fifties and the headlines then were not absolutely full of armed robberies, gun crimes and the like as they are now. Mainly because carrying a gun means that you might just use it - and the gallows were a powerful incentive to steer clear of THAT route. Nowadays the penalty for shooting your way out of arrest is likely to be little different to that for the robbery/rape or whatever, and killing a witness is probably a good idea in that case.

In singapore's case, Mr Lee once said "Yes, we ARE a dictatorship: the government says what should be done and every four* years the people are able to chuck the government out". (* four from memory)

Compare Singapore with just about any SE Asian state and it has the highest standard of living, the lowest crime and the safest streets. And the man in the street there appreciates it. When that American youth was sentenced to lashes for vandalising a car they were astounded that the US government tried to get leniency for a "small act of stupidity" - and so was I.

There is one tiny point that you seem to ignore - tobacco is legal........

Oh so because it's legal, that makes it right?

You realise the contradiction in what you are saying here?