I remember well a conversation I had with a Singapore shopkeeper on the wisdom of hanging drug trafficers. He told me in the late 1950's and early 1960's, it was estimated that one in ten Singaporeans were hooked on drugs. They determined that only Draconian measures would rid the island of the problem. In one generation, it largely has.
He then compared the couple hundred or fewer people hanged in Singapore every year for drug trafficing with the several hundred killed in drug related violence and overdoses in an American city of comparable size.
Singapore hangs locals just as fairly as it does foreigners. The so-called thriving drug culture is due to users, determined by the amount of the particular drug they are caught in possession. Life for users is no picnic. If caught, users can be caned. Repeat users are exiled to small islands off the Singapore coast with no hope of release until they are demonstrably clean. It is very effective policy. Drug related crime (petty theft and such) in Singapore is virtually nil.
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That's the so-called thriving drug culture, all right.
The ACTUAL thriving drug culture is that enjoyed by Singapore's dictatorial oligarchy which effectively owns Burma/Myanmar and operates it as a subsidiary and launders, banks, invests and obscenely hugely profits from Burma's and pretty much all of South East Asia's heroin money.