Freedom lovers, rejoice: the notorious chewing gum ban in Singapore has been… relaxed. You’re now permitted to chew gum—just not any gum. Only 19 medicinal brands are allowed, most aimed at nicotine withdrawal, and you’ll need a license and a valid identity card just to buy a pack. Get caught slinging Juicy Fruit on the black market, and you’re looking at two years in prison.
To most Americans, the idea of showing ID to buy gum is absurd. To ban it altogether? That’s invasive, rubber-gloved, industrial-strength fascism.
And yet.
Here in Boston, the MBTA just announced it will begin conducting random ID checks on commuters. According to the Boston Herald, “MBTA police are preparing to conduct ID checks on the 1 million commuters who hop aboard trains and buses each day.” A million people. Randomly checked. For reasons that remain vague and vaguely ominous.
Some folks are outraged. Others—numbed by years of color-coded terror alerts and ambient airport panic—shrug and call it safety.
No.
No.
No.
I will not show my ID to ride the T. I will say I don’t have it, and they can do their worst. Arrest me for refusing to prove I’m not a terrorist while taking the Red Line to work.
Where does this end? National ID cards? RFID tags under our skin? A voice scan to buy a Charlie Card?
This country cannot keep trading civil liberties for the illusion of safety. We’re not safer—we’re just slowly being trained to associate uniforms with obedience and suspicion with vigilance. It’s already bad enough that every station blasts those grainy, static-filled “If you see something, say something” announcements every two minutes like we’re all extras in a Cold War reboot.
God forbid another attack happens—I don’t want that, anywhere, and certainly not here. But I also don’t want to live in a country that requires a constant state of suspicion just to feel like it’s functioning.
Singapore thinks it’s protecting itself from gum. They’ve wrapped themselves in laws and fines and policies so strict they squeak. And maybe they feel comforted by that. Maybe they truly believe the right to chew is not worth the public menace of a single spearmint wad on the sidewalk.
But what about paint? Rocks? A rogue crayon in the wrong hands? Should those be licensed too? What happens when all the visible messes are outlawed—and the real dangers were invisible all along?
