Organized crime is kind of regulated too (a lot of the tongs that would have been in the drug trade ended up in the postitution trade and construction)
The government knows if they ban it. It drives it underground. So they tolerate it and try to ensure locals don’t use it.
The twin standards and negative stereotype issue were there in Singapore 20+ years ago .. and common enough in various forms in many countries.
I worked in geophysical remote sensing and across many years visited | worked in nearly 3/4's of the ~190+ countries and territories across the globe.
You rapidly develop a habit of identifying the best and worst aspects of variopus countries and rolling along with whatever locals you are there to liase with and suspending judgement.
My year or so of working in and out of Singapore surveying the Spratly islands region exposed me to many "contradictions" of life there - overall it's a nice city | island with a strong dash of double think surrounding issues of (say) local Singapore citizen V. expat worker expectations.
- You have to be between 21-35 years of age
- You cannot be Malay or Muslim
- You cannot be Male on your ID card (this includes pre-operative transgender persons)
- You have to be from a list of approved countries (i.e. China, Malaysia, Thailand, etc)
There are organizations that support sex workers in Singapore that you can find out more:
It also had negative impacts on Vietnamese and Thai women in Singapore due to the stereotypes that women from Vietnam and Thailand are only there as sex workers.
This was also around the time that Singapore was seeing a severe backlash against immigration (eg. The anti-CECA protests, the KTV stuff, Opposition MPs stoking the xenophobic fires, etc)
> To be clear twenty years back I was taken for business meetings to a 20+ story tower that was lounges and clubs from the basement to to the top floor .. with a strong height from ground correlation to sophistication|sleeze levels.
Orchard Towers. It's open knowledge it's all brothels there. The SG govt legalized and heavily regulates prostitution and organized crime.