When he was just 16, his father turned him in to the authorities for drug abuse. For years after, the cycle – rehabilitation, then relapse – continued for Timothy York James.
It was only after he got married that the weight of it fully landed. In 2022, his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three months into their marriage.
She told him she would rather forgo treatment and die than watch him keep abusing drugs.
It was only then that James promised he would stop.
“I want to tell addicts that you are not alone. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to ask for help,” says the 44-year-old.
His story was among those featured at The Library of Stories, Unfinished, an installation at Suntec City atrium held as part of Singapore’s third Drug Victims Remembrance Day observance last May. Every account reflected lives shaped, disrupted and, in some cases, cut short by drug abuse – stories left unfinished.
Central Narcotics Bureau’s deputy director of Partnerships and Outreach, DrugFreeSG Office Kaye Chow says: “When people hear these stories, we hope it does not just move them, but also prompts them to ask harder questions about what is happening around them and potentially consider if there is something that we, as members of society, can do to prevent such harms from occurring.”
The 2025 National Drug Perception Survey found that more than 87 per cent of youth respondents said they understood the harms and consequences of drug abuse. However, awareness of harm is not the same as an accurate read of what is happening in one’s own social circle.
Dr Jasmin Kaur, a senior principal psychologist at the Home Team Psychology Division, says: “It’s not just about being tough or simply saying no to drugs. It’s also about building conditions and communities where drug abuse becomes harder to justify, and drug abstinence becomes easier to sustain.”
Chow adds that sustaining such an environment also depends on people being able to critically assess what they see online, where misleading or glamorised portrayals of drugs can quietly shape attitudes, weaken perceptions of harm and make drug use seem more socially acceptable over time.
“Young people today are navigating an information environment where cannabis is portrayed as harmless, where drug abuse is framed as a lifestyle choice and where these ideas spread quickly and subtly. When that becomes the backdrop of their social world, it shifts their sense of what is normal,” says Chow.
This is the premise behind the DrugFreeSG Video Competition 2026, which invites young Singaporeans to engage with the issue of drug abuse more critically: to investigate, examine and respond to it on their own terms.
Read Full Article At Source
