Chewing gum is banned in Singapore.

Chewing gum has been banned in Singapore since 1992, when the former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew created a series of laws designed to make Singapore a “first-world oasis in a third-world region” after its independence in 1965. As the country’s first prime minister, Lee was setting the standard to make Singapore a clean utopia, and gum was not part of that plan. U.S. Journalist Tom Plate was able to write a book dictating his conversations with Lee and describes his opinion on why Lee eradicated the substance: “as far as LKY and his team were concerned, the yucky habit, commonplace in the old days, was a palpable enemy of progress. The way to edge forward toward utopia was simple: simply outlaw chewing gum”.

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