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Vincent Tan

Vietnam is seeking to end executions for drug trafficking under a draft revision to its Penal Code, a notable shift in a country with one of Southeast Asia’s toughest anti-drug regimes.
The proposal, presented to lawmakers last week, would remove trafficking from Vietnam’s list of capital crimes. Last year, Hanoi kept the offence on the list during an earlier round of death penalty reforms.
If passed, the revised law would leave capital punishment for four crimes: treason, murder, terrorism and illegal narcotics production.
For years, several Southeast Asian governments have treated serious drug trafficking as a crime that warranted the death penalty. However, some countries have re-examined their laws, leading to amendments.

Malaysia ended mandatory death sentences in 2023. Singapore retains the death penalty for the most serious trafficking offences in which the legal thresholds are exceeded for quantities of various controlled drugs.
The issue has led to debates on whether capital punishment still has a place in society, whether judges should have the discretion in sentencing, and how governments can disrupt the drug trade without the death penalty.
Hanoi’s gradual reforms
Vietnam’s proposal is not an abrupt departure from capital punishment but the latest step in a long-running, incremental recalibration, according to Hai Thanh Luong, a Vietnamese criminologist at Griffith University in Australia.
Luong described Hanoi’s approach as “retentionist-but-reductionist”, referring to the state’s steady narrowing of offences punishable by death and retaining the punishment for exceptionally serious crimes.
He said the proposal to remove the death penalty for drug trafficking reflected gradual political and legal reforms, doubts over whether executions could suppress drug supply and Vietnam’s deeper integration into global legal and diplomatic frameworks.
“The strongest driver [is] Vietnam’s gradual legal and political reforms rather than a sudden ideological shift,” Luong said.


The proposal would still allow the death penalty for illegal narcotics production, drawing a distinction between manufacturers – seen as more central to sustaining the drug trade – and traffickers.
Luong said the changes would not have a major impact on drug availability. “Drug markets quickly adapt by replacing arrested individuals and shifting routes,” he said.
When asked about the different treatment of drug traffickers in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, Luong said that the three countries viewed deterrence, social order and the state’s role in punishment differently, even as they faced similar challenges of curbing drug flows.
Singapore’s approach
While Singapore retains capital punishment for the most serious drug trafficking cases, it incorporates a broad anti-drug strategy that includes enforcement, education and rehabilitation.
Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam has said Singapore’s policy aims to prevent the harm caused by drugs, while imposing severe penalties on traffickers who bring substantial quantities into the country.
The city state’s Ministry of Home Affairs said a 2024 survey of 12,000 respondents in six regional cities found that 84.2 per cent believed the death penalty deterred people from trafficking substantial amounts of drugs into Singapore.
About 82.5 per cent considered the death penalty a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment, according to the survey.

Shanmugam has said the government would reconsider the policy if evidence shows that abolition helps or that the death penalty does not help. Until then, he said, Singapore would “hold the line”.
The death penalty is not a certainty under Singapore’s anti-drug laws, as they take into account the role played by convicted individuals in an offence.
Eugene Tan, an associate professor at Singapore Management University’s Yong Pung How School of Law, said offenders convicted of trafficking above the prescribed thresholds could receive life imprisonment if they had acted only as a courier.
They also had to obtain a certificate from the public prosecutor confirming they had provided substantive help to the authorities in disrupting trafficking activity.
Couriers whose abnormality of mind had substantially impaired their mental responsibility could also be sentenced to life imprisonment without a certificate, Tan said.
Tan explained that the framework allowed courts to differentiate between degrees of moral blameworthiness, while retaining zero tolerance against serious offences.
“The shift to the discretionary death penalty regime should not be misconstrued as letting up on serious crimes such as drug trafficking,” Tan said.
This Week in Asia has contacted Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs for comment.
Malaysia’s sentencing shift
In 2023, Malaysia announced that it was abolishing the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking, leaving courts to choose between execution and life imprisonment.
Ngeow Chow Ying, a Malaysian lawyer and deputy convenor of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, said the change led to a sharp fall in new death sentences.
Citing Amnesty International figures, she said Malaysian courts imposed 38 new death sentences in 2023, 24 in 2024, and 15 in 2025.
For drug trafficking cases, “courts now weigh aggravating and mitigating factors to decide between death and life imprisonment”, Ngeow said.

Mitigating factors could include an offender playing a lower-level role such as a courier or mule, the type of drugs involved and an early guilty plea, Ngeow explained.
“Appellate courts, for instance, have commuted death sentences to life imprisonment for young or first-time couriers caught with substantial drug quantities, in recognition of their limited role in the operation,” she said.
Even so, inconsistencies in interpretation persisted between different judicial levels in some cases, with High Court death sentences imposed on couriers later set aside by superior courts for life imprisonment, Ngeow said.
“This suggests that trial-level sentencing remains uneven and continues to depend heavily on appellate correction,” she added.
Law vs enforcement operations
For rights groups, Vietnam’s proposal matters because it targets an offence that has contributed to the largest number of death sentences.
Chiara Sangiorgio, Amnesty’s death penalty expert, said the latest proposal came after reforms in 2025 reduced the number of offences punishable by death to 10 from 18, alongside judicial guidance that further limited the imposition of capital punishment in some drug cases.
“We are hopeful that these reforms will lead to immediate and concrete impact, particularly given that the majority of new death sentences that Amnesty International has recorded in recent years were imposed for drug trafficking,” Sangiorgio said.
Amnesty’s preliminary assessment pointed to a decline in new death sentences in Vietnam so far this year following the reforms, according to Sangiorgio.
But official secrecy around executions has made it impossible to assess the reforms’ full impact.
Amnesty’s preliminary assessment pointed to a decline in new death sentences in Vietnam so far this year following the reforms, according to Sangiorgio. But official secrecy around executions has made it difficult to assess the reforms’ full impact.
Amnesty was also concerned that unfair proceedings had led to death sentences and executions in some cases in Vietnam, Sangiorgio said.
However, she added that recent developments in other countries suggested that sustained political will could move drug policies towards a humane, evidence-based and health-focused approach.
Regardless of the different legal approaches in Southeast Asia, Luong said the most effective way to deal with the scourge was to intensify efforts to cripple drug trafficking operations at their root.
“The certainty of detection has more preventive impact than harsher punishments,” he said. “Effective intelligence, cooperation, investigations and harm-reduction efforts are more sustainable than increasing severity alone.”


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The proposal has put a spotlight on the different legal approaches against drug trafficking offences in the region


The proposal has put a spotlight on the different legal approaches against drug trafficking offences in the region.


Vietnam’s move to end executions for drug trafficking sparks debate in region

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The proposal has put a spotlight on the different legal approaches against drug trafficking offences in the region

The proposal has put a spotlight on the different legal approaches against drug trafficking offences in the region