Should Psychedelics be Legalised in Singapore?

It is no secret that psychedelics are illegal for all Singaporeans. However, psychedelics are far from being the most dangerous substance on earth. Recent research implies that psychedelics could be beneficial to society as they can potentially be used to treat psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, with developed countries such as Japan currently experiencing higher suicide rates after the COVID-19 outbreak, the argument for psychedelics to be legalised in Singapore for therapeutic purposes is strengthened even further. Despite this, current research still presents both negative and positive effects from the use of psychedelics. From this, it must be contended that psychedelics should not be legalised in Singapore as proving definitively beyond reasonable doubt that psychedelics neither cause people harm nor have long-term negative consequences on society is not possible.

Psychedelics can potentially have positive effects on people. For instance, they have been shown to have the ability to assist with various mental disorders. Psychedelics such as psilocybin have been shown to be able to treat major depressive disorder through reducing feelings of depression among participants. The same psychedelic has also been observed to greatly alleviate the effects of obsessive-compulsive disorder, with improvements being visible within 24 hours of beginning psilocybin-based treatment. Another benefit of psychedelics is them being able to increase the overall happiness in people. They achieve this through amplifying positive emotions present in the brain, directly increasing the joy people feel. Psychedelics also dull depressive stimuli, reducing emotions relating to sadness, thus indirectly increasing the amount of happiness people feel. Lastly, psychedelics also have the possibility of increasing people’s ability to behave rationally. They help people empathise with others better, allowing them to make more informed decisions. Psychedelics also help to reduce anxiety, making people more likely to make decisions more calmly, and subsequently, allowing them to think and behave more rationally.

In spite of the various benefits of psychedelics, they are capable of inflicting harm on people. Psychedelics have the effect of distorting the emotions people feel. They reduce people’s responses to negative stimuli, potentially leading to people experiencing an insignificant amount of negative emotion in situations where they would normally experience a considerable amount of despair. Not only this, but they also amplify people’s responses to positive stimuli, potentially leading to them being unnecessarily excited over situations that are even slightly joyous in nature. In addition to distorting one’s emotions, psychedelics may also distort one’s perception of the world. Most psychedelics are capable of impairing fear recognition, leading to people possibly not perceiving danger when they are, in fact, in a threatening situation. On the other end of the spectrum, being under the effects of stronger psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is often coupled with visual hallucinations, instilling fear in people when in reality, there is no threat. Another way psychedelics can negatively impact the mental state of people is through contributing mental disorders that were already present beforehand. Psychedelics are known to cause extreme anxiety at times, possibly leading to already existing anxiety in an individual being amplified and subsequently, increasing the severity of panic attacks in them. Furthermore, symptoms of depression are commonly found among avid LSD users, showing the large extent to which psychedelics can contribute to mental disorders.

These drawbacks could potentially lead to long-term negative consequences on society. If psychedelics were to be legalised in Singapore, the country’s productivity could go down. While under the effects of psychedelics, users experience visual hallucinations, making them perceive the world around them inaccurately. This would likely lead to people not carrying out their duties as efficiently, increasing the amount of time they would take to produce a set amount of product, overall reducing productivity and leading to our output as a nation decreasing[1] . This decreased output would lead to Singapore’s profits diminishing as we would have less goods to export, leading to Singapore’s national income decreasing significantly if Singaporeans were to use psychedelics on a regular basis. The legalisation of psychedelics may also lead to Singapore being thrown into chaos. Psychedelics lead to one’s response to positive stimuli being amplified. This can increase the extent to which people get excited, resulting in them being more irrational. An increase in irrationality could potentially lead to people being impulsive and trigger-happy, making them more likely to commit crimes of violence without rationality. This alone could potentially result in more psychedelic-related deaths; however, psychedelics themselves can also be lethal. Even though they are not as lethal as drugs such as heroin and cocaine, people can still potentially die from overdosing on psychedelics, leading to the number of drug-related deaths possibly increasing if psychedelics were to be legalised in Singapore. Lastly, in spite of psychedelics commonly cited as being beneficial for mental health, they have also been shown to have the potential to worsen the psychological health of people. Psychedelics are able to exacerbate mental disorders such as depression and amplify anxiety, making already debilitating conditions even worse, decreasing their mental well-being. They also have the unintended consequence of crippling people’s ability to discern reality from fiction. Psychedelics in general cause hallucinations; however, it is not uncommon for hallucinations caused by stronger psychedelics such as ayahuasca to last for long periods of time spanning up to 24 hours. Seeing hallucinations for such a long period of time would lead to fear and anxiety as the user of the psychedelic would doubt their perception of the world around them, worsening their mental health overall and in drastic cases, leave them no longer in touch with reality.

While psychedelics are not exactly the most dangerous substances known to mankind, they are also certainly not the safest products to be involved with. There are products that are more dangerous than psychedelics that are currently legal in Singapore, such as cigarettes and alcohol. It would make sense for psychedelics to be more loosely controlled than such products due to the relatively little harm they do. However, the reason why alcohol and cigarettes are still legal is due to the fact that making something legal and making something illegal are two completely different ball games. Those products have been legal for a long time , and have already been largely integrated into our society. The revenue from the cigarette market in Singapore is projected to reach US$1302m this year and is expected to grow by 3.3% each year thereafter ,showing the large demand for such a product that is already present in Singapore. If such a product were to be made illegal, multiple companies would lose their revenue stream. Unrest would also surely develop among Singaporeans who smoke on a regular basis, potentially leading to riots and protests to prevent smoking and alcohol consumption from being illegal. If we went back to the 1960s, the period of time where Singapore had just separated from Malaysia, and the question up in the air was “Should smoking and alcohol be continue to be legal?” instead, the answer would be a definite “no”. When deciding to make something legal, the onus of proving beyond reasonable doubt that making that very thing legal would not destroy any aspect of society as it falls upon the people who want it to be legalised. And with current research, that is just unlikely. There is not enough evidence to conclusively prove that psychedelics only have positive effects: there are still a significant number of instances where psychedelics have negative effects. Besides that, there may also be unintended consequences of legalising psychedelics that we have not accounted for. As it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt that psychedelics neither cause people harm nor have negative long-term consequences on society, psychedelics should not be legalised in Singapore.