Testing hair of supervisees to detect drug abuse will be the norm by 2026

Expanding hair testing for drugs to all supervisees and strengthening partnerships with Malay/Muslim and Indian community partners are among the steps the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is taking to enhance rehabilitation and strengthen reintegration of offenders and former offenders.

- Samuel Devaraj

During the debate on MHA's budget on March 4, Minister of State for Home Affairs Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim said that while the drug situation in Singapore was under control, there were areas of concern, including the rise in the number of young drug abusers.

Here are some highlights of how MHA intends to tackle the problem and enhance rehabilitation and reintegration efforts:

1. ALL SUPERVISEES TO UNDERGO HAIR TESTING BY 2026

To better curb long-term relapse, MHA announced in 2024 that it will enhance its approach under a new Supervision 2.0 regime to better support the supervisees' reintegration journey through more efficient monitoring.

Under this pilot, hair analysis tests are used as the default monitoring mechanism.

Associate Professor Faishal said these tests can detect drug abuse over a longer period compared with urine tests, allowing supervisees to report less frequently and reducing disruption to their daily lives.

Providing an update on March 4, he said the preliminary findings from the pilot were positive.

"CNB (Central Narcotics Bureau) was able to swiftly detect more supervisees who had relapsed via hair tests as compared with under the urine supervision regime, due to the longer detection window for hair tests," he said.