Is this the umpteenth time you heard someone making fun of Singapore for our chewing gum ban?

Well, one Twitter user, Sharan Kaur, was fed up with such derisive comments about Singapore.

So, she decided to defend the country’s chewing gum ban in a thread on Twitter, by laying out the rationale casually.

black*, damnit. it's been 19 hours and i'm still thinking about chewing gum so here's a thread, i guess.

— 🍍 __ 🙀 (@sharanvkaur) February 25, 2019

First a clarification

Kaur is right. There is no law in Singapore that bans the consumption of chewing gum.

Rather, under the Regulation of Imports and Exports act, only importing and selling chewing gum and bubble gum is prohibited.

Gum and high-rises don’t mix

But the bigger problem was...

Disrupting the trains

Smol Singapore

The US gets involved

Michael Fay didn’t get canned for chewing gum, but he did get punished for vandalism.

The American teen was sentenced to six strokes of the cane and four months in jail for, among other crimes, spray painting graffiti on cars.

The case brought international attention to Singapore’s unique justice system and gave the nation a reputation for having strict and stringent laws — such as the chewing gum ban.

This portrayal of Singapore as a draconian country with antediluvian rules was partly a media influence campaign by major American news networks exerting its soft power.

In conclusion

Quick summary

So, if you couldn’t be bothered to read every tweet, here's a quick summary:

When the government decided to build the MRT system in the 1980s, irresponsible commuters sometimes caused the trains to be disrupted by sticking chewing gum on train doors.

This would cause massive inconveniences to a whole lot of people as there were only two train lines at the time.

Disrupting one train meant that the whole line would have to stop until the problem could be fixed. Alternative routes were also not as readily available.

Hence to safeguard the efficiency of the public transport system and stop the country from being at the mercy of thoughtless gum chewers, the government placed a ban on the sale and import of chewing gum.

Sure, it might seem stupid to others. But as someone who has personally put his hand on the underside of a table, only to feel a soft, moist, and sticky object that can only be a freshly stuck piece of gum —- I’m all for the ban.

Top image from Pexels and @sharanvkaur Twitter