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Thai Immigration Discovers Foreigner With Cocaine At Checkpoint?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a foreigner who got caught with cocaine at a checkpoint here in Thailand, Immigration checkpoint to be specific. I'm not putting a 'foreigners behaving badly' thumbnail on this one for one specific reason. First of all, I'm not a big fan of substance, illegal substance laws to begin with. Secondly, whether this was this person's or not, which they found it in this person's passport which I will get into a moment, but it looks like it was basically an honest mistake. This was not somebody coming in looking to raise hell over here, that's my only point. Again, there is a difference between being somebody who has been apprehended by Thai Immigration for example in a situation like this and being somebody who I don't know, knocks over a senior police sergeant major and takes their gun, okay? There is a wild difference, a fundamental difference between those two individuals, so that's kind of the reason this isn't a 'foreigners behaving badly' video, this is just a video about incidents with Thai Immigration.
In any event, the article is titled: British man's holiday nightmare as cocaine is found between the pages of his passport on arrival in Phuket. British tourist’s Phuket nightmare as cocaine was found in his passport at a Thai airport checkpoint leading to his arrest. A 29 year old British man is behind bars in Phuket after a shocking start to his holiday in Thailand. On Thursday night, at Phuket International Airport, an Immigration Officer discovered a plastic bag of white powder. It was lying between the pages as she attempted to stamp the holidaymaker's passport. Man, wow. Quoting further: "Despite the man's shock and surprise, officers arrested him after the substance was confirmed as 0.42 g of cocaine."
I mean I don't know how this happened to this person but again, on a personal I really hope in a certain way they don't exactly throw the book at this guy. One, this isn't like a drug trafficking thing. It is 0.42 percent of a gram of cocaine, "0.42 grams of cocaine” according to the article. Again, not a 'foreigner behaving badly' just quite honestly somebody who was careless it looks to me like and talk about compelling. Again this is an allegation until there is a final adjudication or a pleading of guilty. I mean that is pretty compelling evident when the cocaine is literally in your passport and it is found by an Immigration Officer just trying to stamp you into the country, again, not trying to laugh as I am sure this has been a harrowing experience for this person and again it's not born of in my mind malicious, if true, it's not born of malice or forethought, it looks to me like it's born of carelessness and again what people do in their private lives doesn't really bother me particularly. I am not, I do think things like methamphetamine should be illegal I mean that is terrible, cocaine sort of sits along a gray area line for me. It is not something I am particularly interested in; I don't particularly think it should be legal but at the same time I really hope that they don't throw the book at this person because this doesn't look like somebody who is an intentional bad actor, more just a person who made a really careless decision and it has resulted in a very harrowing experience for that person.