Apparently, chewing gum was causing maintenance problems all over the place. In apartment buildings, vandals were disposing of spent gum in mailboxes, inside keyholes, and on elevator buttons.
Gum left on the ground, stairways, and pavements in public areas was driving up cleaning costs and damaging equipment. Even the seats on public buses weren’t safe from it.
So it was banned in 1992. Since 2004 though, an exception has been made for therapeutic, dental, and nicotine chewing gum, which can be bought from a doctor or registered pharmacist.
It’s worth noting that it’s not actually illegal to chew gum in Singapore. It’s just against the law to import and sell it, apart from the exceptions mentioned above.
And there we are. Whether you think these rules are too drastic or too silly, it doesn’t change the fact that they existed at one point or still do now.
If anything, it reflects us as a society pretty well. We can be pretty unreasonable, and naturally, we need equally unreasonable laws to keep us in check.
