A prominent drug researcher has rejected the Singapore government's claim Nguyen Tuong Van was carrying enough heroin to ruin 26,000 lives.
Nguyen, who is due to be executed on December 2, was caught at Singapore's Changi airport in 2002 with almost 400g of heroin.
The speaker of the Singapore parliament, Abdullah Tarmugi, wrote in a letter to his Australian counterpart David Hawker that Nguyen knew the consequences of his actions, which would have supplied "enough for more than 26,000 doses of heroin for drug addicts".
But Melbourne University Associate Professor John Fitzgerald said, based on estimations of about 30 per cent purity at a street level, the heroin was enough for 6,000 to 8,000 doses - enough to supply just six to eight dependent users in one year.
He said Singapore's figures were "just plainly inconsistent with the way we understand the drug market."
"So any sense that the punishment fits the crime needs to be very much reconsidered," he said.
The 26,000 doses claimed in the letter, based on estimates that heavy users inject 17 times a week, would only service the needs of 26 heavy dependent heroin users over a year, he said.
Dr Fitzgerald added that not all heroin consumers had their lives ruined.
"We know that the proportion of people who have to seek treatment because of their heroin use is anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent of the total heroin use population," he said.
"There seems to be an overestimation of the impact of law enforcement on the heroin market at present."
Dr Fitzgerald said Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty had similarly overestimated in claims the AFP's contribution to the Bali Nine's capture was likely to save 2,000 heroin related deaths.
He said 400 Australians died at the peak of the heroin glut in 1999, and Mr Keelty's figures implied the action would have stopped heroin supply for several years.
This, he said, was "highly unlikely and in some ways misleading the community of the impact of interdiction on the heroin market".
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