Drug use in Singapore is waning after aggressive police crackdowns netted a “high society” cocaine ring last year and targeted synthetic “club drugs,” such as ecstasy, official statistics showed on Thursday.

Drug arrests fell for a second straight year in 2004, dropping 47 percent from 2003, following police campaigns targeting drugs popular at nightclubs in a country known for some of the world’s toughest drug laws.

“The drug situation has improved significantly in 2004,” Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told police and other security personnel in a speech while releasing the figures.

“Despite the improving drug situation, we should still be wary of synthetic drug abuse, which remains an area of concern in other countries,” he added.

Thailand as well as neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia are also confronting rising synthetic drug use - from ecstasy to more toxic methamphetamines and ketamine, intended originally as a horse tranquilliser and often known just as “K.”

Synthetic club drugs overtook heroin in 2003 as the drug of choice in the affluent city-state of 4.2 million people. In the same year, young ethnic Chinese outnumbered Malays as the biggest group of drug abusers for the first time in 15 years.

Several foreigners were arrested in October, including 35-year-old British-born magazine editor Nigel Bruce Simmonds and a Tunisian restaurant marketing manager.

Anyone age 18 year or older convicted of carrying more than 15 grammes (0.5 of an ounce) of heroin, or 30 grammes (1.1 ounces) of cocaine, 500 grammes (17.6 ounces) of cannabis or 250 grammes (8.8 ounces) of methamphetamines faces mandatory execution.

Singapore has executed about 400 people since 1991, giving it the highest execution rate in the world relative to its population, according to rights group Amnesty International.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard this week made a bid for clemency on behalf of an Australian citizen, Nguyen Tuong Van, convicted last year of smuggling 400 grams (14 ounces) of heroin at Singapore’s Changi Airport and sentenced to hang.

The U.N.-funded International Narcotics Control Board says that about two thirds of the world’s methamphetamine seizures take place in East and Southeast Asia.