Mexico City Doesn't Ban Chewing Gum—That's Singapore

The claim that Mexico City banned chewing gum appears to be a conflation of several real facts that created an urban legend. First, Singapore famously banned the sale, import, and manufacture of chewing gum in 1992 due to gum litter disrupting their Mass Rapid Transit system—gum stuck in train doors caused service disruptions. This real ban may have been confused with Mexico in retellings. Second, Mexico City does have a significant gum litter problem, with the downtown Francisco Madero Street found to have up to 150,000 pieces of gum stuck to its pavement. In 2013, a Mexican congressman proposed a tax on gum to fund cleanup efforts, but this was never a ban. Third, the archaeological site of Chichen Itza does prohibit bringing chewing gum onto the premises to prevent damage to the ancient ruins, though this is a site-specific rule, not a city or national law. The irony is that Mexico actually gave the world modern chewing gum—chicle, the natural latex extracted from sapodilla trees in southern Mexico, was the original base for chewing gum before synthetic alternatives. Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna introduced chicle to American inventor Thomas Adams in the 1860s during his exile in Staten Island, leading to the creation of the modern chewing gum industry. Today, Mexicans chew an average of 1.8 kilograms of gum per person annually, making them among the highest consumers in Latin America. Rather than banning gum, Mexico City officials have instead invested in expensive steam-cleaning machines from Germany to remove gum from sidewalks, and in 2019, a lawmaker proposed fines of up to 16,898 pesos ($880) for littering gum—but not for selling or chewing it.