Fill Singapore's 1870-1951 cannabis history gap

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+# Singapore: closing the 1870–1951 history gap, 25 October 2026
+
+Singapore's timeline jumped from the 1870 Excise Ordinance to a 1951 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance
+entry whose only source was a Library of Congress survey. This pass recovered the missing 1927
+law, corrected the 1973 and 1990 entries, and wrote explanatory articles for the 1927, 1973 and
+1990 changes. The 1951 ordinance itself remains unread; no article was written for it.
+
+## Sources actually read
+
+- **Straits Settlements Government Gazette, vol. 62, no. 51** (2 June 1927), pp. 992 and
+  1027–1049, through the National Library Board's BookSG flipbook. Page 992 carries the Objects
+  and Reasons for the Liquors Revenue Bill; pp. 1027–1049 carry Ordinance No. 7 of 1927, the
+  Deleterious Drugs Ordinance, with the First and Second Schedules. The ordinance was passed on
+  16 May, assented to on 2 June and published on 10 June 1927.
+- **Singapore Statutes Online, Misuse of Drugs Act 1973, legislative history.** Part 1, items
+  11–18 give the 1926 Revised Edition of the Deleterious Drugs Ordinance, the 1927 Ordinance,
+  its 1928 and 1935 amendments, the 1936 Revised Edition, and the 1951 Dangerous Drugs
+  Ordinance. The 1951 ordinance repealed the 1936 Revised Edition and commenced on 1 March 1951.
+  Part 4, item 32 gives the 1973 Act's commencement as 7 July 1973. Item 48 gives the 1989
+  amendment's commencement as 15 February 1990.
+- **Misuse of Drugs Bill 1972 (Bill No. 46/1972)**, clauses 3, 6, 8, 15, 21–22 and 28, the
+  Second Schedule, and the Explanatory Statement. Read from the Singapore Statutes Online bill
+  supplement; first reading 22 November 1972.
+- **Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Bill 1969 (Bill No. 7/1969)**, the Schedule and Explanatory
+  Statement. The schedule covers amphetamine and its derivatives, lysergamide, mescaline and
+  related substances, and does not list cannabis.
+- **Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act 1989 (No. 38 of 1989)** and its **Bill (No. 39/1989)**,
+  sections 17, 22, 31, 33 and 37, the Second Schedule and the Explanatory Statement.
+- **MHA Home Team Journal**, January 2020 special edition, pp. 59–61 and Table 1. Used for the
+  1975 morphine and diamorphine thresholds, the 1988 arrest figure, the Minister's reasons for
+  the 1989 amendment, and the cannabis trafficking data. Table 1 dates the 1990 commencement to
+  15 January, which conflicts with the Act and was not followed.
+- **Library of Congress, Cannabis laws in Singapore** (1970 survey), section 6 of the Dangerous
+  Drugs Ordinance, 1951. Used only for the 1951 possession penalty in the 1973 article and entry.
+- **Los Angeles Times**, 11 February 1990, "Law Extending Death Penalty in Drug Cases to Take
+  Effect This Week in Singapore" (Reuters). It says the law would come into force on the coming
+  Thursday, 15 February, and corroborates the Act's commencement.
+
+## Database changes
+
+- Added `singapore-deleterious-drugs-ordinance-1927`, dated `1927-06`, category `tightening`.
+  Section 22(a) made cultivating, buying, selling or possessing the Cannabis sativa plant an
+  offence; section 22(b) did the same for the resin and preparations based on it. The First
+  Schedule defined Indian hemp as the dried flowering or fruiting tops from which the resin had
+  not been extracted, and a proviso kept Indian hemp and galenical preparations of it outside
+  section 22. Indian hemp therefore became a licensed "deleterious drug": possession required a
+  licence or a doctor's or veterinary surgeon's directions under section 17, dealing required a
+  licence under section 21, manufacture a licence under section 26, and chemists supplied it on
+  prescription under section 25. Import and export were vested in the Principal Civil Medical
+  Officer under section 5. The general penalty under section 23 was up to $10,000, three years or
+  both; self-administration under section 20 carried up to $5,000.
+- The Objects and Reasons explain why the change came in 1927: the bhang provisions were removed
+  from the liquor code because the 1925 Geneva International Opium Convention had made them
+  inadequate, and restrictions on Indian hemp and its derivatives moved into the Deleterious
+  Drugs Bill.
+- Date precision is a month, not a day. The Statutes Online history gives 2 June 1927 as the
+  commencement, while the gazette's bracketed date is 10 June 1927. The ordinance was passed on
+  16 May and assented on 2 June. June is the only date all three accounts support.
+- The 1927 step is `{possession 1, cultivation 1, enforcement 2, sharing 1, consumption 1,
+  access 0}` before and `{possession 1, cultivation 0, enforcement 2, sharing 0, consumption 1,
+  access 0}` after. The plant ban and the end of open dealing are the changes a user would feel;
+  possession and consumption were already restricted by the 1870 excise system, and the new
+  licensing route did not create a patient access channel. The 1973 entry was re-based to the
+  same vector so the chain stays continuous.
+- Revised `singapore-misuse-of-drugs-1973`. The Act replaced the 1951 ordinance and the 1969
+  Act, put cannabis in Class B, set possession or consumption at up to 10 years and $20,000,
+  trafficking at 3–20 years, $5,000–$40,000 and 2–10 strokes, trafficking to a person under 18
+  at up to 30 years, $50,000 and 15 strokes, and growing at 3–20 years and $5,000–$40,000. The
+  trafficking presumption was 15 g of cannabis or cannabis resin. The 1969 Act did not cover
+  cannabis; that exclusion is now stated in both the entry and the article.
+- Revised `singapore-cannabis-death-penalty-1990` and dated it 15 February 1990. The 1989
+  amendment set death for trafficking more than 500 g of cannabis or 200 g of resin; 330–500 g
+  of cannabis or 130–200 g of resin carried 20–30 years and 15 strokes; the trafficking
+  presumption was 15 g of cannabis or 10 g of resin. It also covered importing and exporting,
+  not only selling or distributing. It is marked `unscored`: Singapore was already at zero on
+  every segment, so the death penalty deepened an existing prohibition rather than moving a
+  score that had room to fall.
+- Merged the 1927 ordinance and its Objects and Reasons into one source record. The site builds
+  reference lists by URL, and the two records pointed at the same NLB page; keeping them apart
+  produced a citation link to a reference that the page never created. The merged record gives
+  both locators.
+
+## Articles
+
+- `articles/singapore-deleterious-drugs-ordinance-1927.md` covers the move from licensed bhang
+  shops to medical and pharmacy licences, the plant and resin ban, the Indian hemp proviso, who
+  could still handle hemp, and the repeal in 1951. It links the 1870 entry and the country page.
+- `articles/singapore-misuse-of-drugs-1973.md` covers the two earlier laws, the 1969 Act's
+  exclusion of cannabis, Class B, the penalty schedule, the trafficking presumption, and the new
+  arrest, search and urine-testing powers. Its opening now cites the Statutes Online history for
+  commencement and repeal.
+- `articles/singapore-cannabis-death-penalty-1990.md` covers the 1975 heroin and morphine
+  threshold, the 1988 arrest figures and the Minister's reasons, the cannabis thresholds, the
+  wider trafficking definition, the other drugs in the same schedule, the urine-testing change
+  and the later 1993 and 2013 amendments.
+
+## Remaining gaps and blocked leads
+
+- The 1951 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance is still known only through the Library of Congress survey
+  quoting section 6. The Ordinance itself was not retrieved, so the existing 1951 entry remains
+  a context entry with its original source and no article. Its date could be tightened to
+  1 March 1951 once the text or commencement notice is read.
+- The 1928 and 1935 amendments were not read. The Statutes Online history gives their
+  commencement dates (21 July 1928 and 1 April 1936), but their text was not needed for the 1927
+  entry.
+- The 1969 Act's operation and the 1971 creation of the Central Narcotics Bureau are covered
+  from secondary sources already in the database; no new primary text was read for them in this
+  pass.
+- The MHA table's 15 January 1990 date was treated as an error. The Act's commencement notice,
+  the Statutes Online history and contemporary reporting all give 15 February. The discrepancy
+  is recorded in the entry's source locator rather than silently ignored.
+
+## Validation
+
+`node scripts/data-status.cjs chain sg` gives 1870-07-15 `100 → 11`, 1927-06 `11 → 8` and
+1973-07-07 `8 → 0`, with no flagged steps. `npm run history:test` passed 37 tests,
+`npm run answers:test` passed 13, and `npm run build` built 4,138 pages. All citation links on
+the three new pages resolve to a reference on the same page, and their related and country links
+point to pages that exist. Working downloads and extracted text are under the ignored
+`tmp/history-singapore-2026-10-25/` directory.