Gum
No, you don’t get caned in Singapore for gum possession. But they don’t sell it here, and you can’t bring in a lot. Here’s the reason:
When the government created the MRT, the wonderful fully automated train system that moves people about cheaply and quickly, they put sensors in the doors to avoid crushing people. You experience these same sensors when you dash into an elevator and the doors refrain from smashing you flat. Well, kids being kids, Singaporean youths thought it was funny to put gum over these sensors and watch the results. The results were slow trains, dangerous doors, bad service, so the government promptly solved the problem by banning gum. It worked.
Do Singaporean kids miss gum? I don’t know. But foreign kids do. When my daughter’s class, which contains kids from Korea, the U.S., U.K., Japan, Indonesia and other countries, went on a trip to Malaysia, the bus stopped at the immigration kiosk for the kids to get their passports stamped. Then it stopped at a snack shop, about four inches over the Malaysian border. The children were disinclined to get off the bus at that point, eager as they were to get to their magical rainforest destination, until a whispered rumor spread that the shop would actually have gum for sale. Word of this possibility ricocheted throughout the bus and created a stampede of kids, hurtling through the door to fall upon the supply of forbidden delights. Some spent all their pocket money on boxes and gobs of gum and stuffed their cheeks with it, masticating, popping, snapping and blowing their way through the remainder of the field trip.
They had to use it all in Malaysia, though. On their way back through customs into Singapore those who still had gum had to yield it to the inspectors. The trains here still work, and the right of commuters to get around trumps the right of youth to chomp gum.