SINGAPORE -- Singapore has sentenced a young couple to one year in jail after a random drug test at a local border post showed they had smoked cannabis three weeks earlier.
Singapore's courts, which uphold some of the world's harshest anti-drugs laws, sentenced local couple Gavin Seow Lek Chen, 27, and Lynn Cheok Lye Peng, 22, on Monday. They had pleaded guilty.The court heard that the pair, asked to take a urine test by immigration officials after a period studying in Australia, had smoked cannabis at a party in Perth.
Cannabis can be detected four to six weeks after consumption.
In Singapore, a mandatory death sentence is meted out to anyone, aged over 18, who is convicted of trafficking in more than half an ounce of heroin, an ounce of morphine or 17 ounces of cannabis.
Singapore recently stepped up drug enforcement laws by targeting those who consume drugs abroad but test positive here.
Drug users can face up to 10 years in jail or a $12,000 fine, or both. Of more than 300 people hanged in Singapore since 1975, more than half have been drug traffickers.