CHEW ON THIS WAS SINGAPORE’S GUM BAN THE RIGHT MOVE?
Have you ever walked through a parking lot and stepped on gum, causing your foot to stick to the pavement with every step? Or have you felt somebody’s disgusting, chewed gum on the underside of a table at a restaurant? Experiencing one of these situations is enough to make you wish gum were outlawed. While chewing gum will likely always be legal in the States, there is one country where you’d have difficulty finding a single citizen chewing gum. In 1992, Singapore officially banned the sale, importation, and manufacturing of chewing gum. To understand the reasoning behind the chewing gum ban, you need to go back to the mid-1960s. Singapore had just gained its independence and was trying to find a way to establish itself on the world stage. Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first prime minister, designed a plan to make Singapore a “first-world oasis in a third-world region.” The country quickly became known for its cleanliness, but chewing gum remained a problem.
and Development Board reportedly spent $150,000 in Singapore dollars each year solely to clean up gum litter. Furthermore, there were countless reports of vandals sticking chewing gum on the door sensors of trains, disrupting their services. While citizens were divided over the chewing gum ban, it proved effective. In February 1993, there were only two chewing gum litter cases per day, as opposed to the 525 daily cases before the ban. While the ban remains in effect today, Singapore’s government partially lifted it in 2004 to allow dentists and pharmacists to prescribe
and sell therapeutic gum such as nicotine gum. Even so, you shouldn’t expect to see many people walking around Singapore chewing gum and blowing bubbles!
While some argued that chewing gum stuck to the pavement outside a business might mean a new burst of creativity was taking hold, Lee Kuan Yew felt differently. He stated, “Putting chewing gum on our subway train doors so they don’t open, I don’t call that creativity. I call that mischief-making.” He had a good point. The Housing
THE COLLEGE KID PRIVACY TRAP ‘I’m Sorry, We Can’t Tell You Anything’
Picture this: It’s 11:47 p.m. and your phone lights up with an unknown number from Burlington, Vermont. A nurse’s voice says your daughter, a freshman, skiing club newbie, was brought to the ER with a head injury. Your heart stops. Then she drops the bomb: “I’m sorry, I can’t share her condition without her authorization.” Click. If your child turned 18 before heading off to college, HIPAA and a stack of other privacy laws just slammed the door in your face. Legally, your “baby” is an adult; you have no automatic right to medical updates, to make treatment decisions, or even to confirm whether she’s stable or still in X-ray. Same goes for moving money around to cover tuition, rent, or — heaven forbid — air ambulance bills. Banks and hospitals don’t care how many nights you sat through Little League practice; the law says the info’s off limits. The fix is simple — if you do it before disaster strikes. 1. Health Care Proxy & HIPAA Release: Names you (or another trusted adult) as the decision maker and information gate opener if your student is unconscious — or just too frazzled to spell “concussion.” 2. Durable Power of Attorney: Lets you handle bank accounts, financial aid forms, or a surprise apartment lease while Junior focuses on midterms, not paperwork.
At Monteforte Law, these two documents are usually a no brainer add on for young adults. But because August move-in dates are barreling toward us, we’re running a College Safety Special now through Sept. 15, 2025: • Flat fee package for Health Care Proxy plus Power of Attorney — no hourly meter running. Special price of $350 for one child, and $499 for two children. But this deal is only for the first 20 clients! • Bonus: Upgrade your existing estate plan to either our 20/20 Hindsight Trust™ or the Retirement Protection Trust™ , and we’ll draft both college kid documents free — a $650 value, on us. Don’t use cheap online forms! Most of the time, they don’t work, and when you need them, it’s already too late! Look, you spent 18 years keeping them safe. Don’t let a paperwork glitch erase that superpower the minute they swipe their dorm key. Call us at (978) 657 7437 or go to ThreeYearCheckUp.com to book online. We’ll hammer out the paperwork now, so if the phone rings at midnight this fall, you’ll get answers — not apologies. Because when it comes to your child’s health and finances, “We can’t tell you anything” is the scariest sentence in the English language — and the easiest one to prevent.
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(978) 653-4092
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