British woman admits Thai cannabis smuggling into Heathrow

10 hours ago, jacko45k said:

....... I never had my bag checked leaving Thailand that I knew of, but I believe that has now started.

For a number of years now passengers flying between UTH and BKK on Thai (Thai Smile) have had to wait after check in and watch via a big monitor to see their check in bags go either red or green down a conveyor. Green goto departures, Red goto security.

4 hours ago, vangrop said:

Let's be realistic, these detectors are operated by human beings. They see thousands of suitcases pass through every day. Coffee breaks, trips to the restroom, fiddling with cell phones, chatting, dozing off, and so on mean that these checks are far from infallible.

They still should've caught it, though. There's no excuses of any kind! If this had been a bomb instead of weed, it would've been a massive problem!

4 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

She was being investigated by the UK police the time who were working together with the Thai police as reported in the OP.

The article doesn't say anything about the UK police working with the Thai police in the article. All it says is that she was investigated at the time by the UK police. Having said that, it would explain why the suitcases went through.

8 hours ago, pacovl46 said:

Every suitcase goes through x-ray! They should have definitely caught that, unless someone turned a blind eye or didn't pay attention.

Her arrest at LHR was less than a week after the Thai Airways flight attendant was caught with heroin at Melbourne airport. I recall it was maybe ten days after that event when BKK outbound checked baggage screening was ramped up to stem this surge in smuggling and use of mules.

7 hours ago, orchidfan said:

She appears to have suffered a stroke with the left side of her face characteristically 'drooped'.

Sad and brutal looking woman.

She has one of those non symmetrical faces, the left hand side is one face , and the right hand is from a completely different face, its a classic form of ugliness Brutal is the right word she got 18 months probation from battery, Anyway we don't look at the mantlepiece whilst stoking the fire , and something tells me she probably bangs like a <deleted> house door, and is as dirty as a dogs arse

6 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

I think that would be illegal. Why does critical thinking seem to be non-existent today?

The member didn't say it had to be sold in the UK. The authorities could sell it to The Netherlands, for example.

My god this thread is hilarious, 90% of the posts are ppl taking the opportunity to blag Thailand as thou it was the country doing the smuggling, and another 5% don't have anything to say other than the looks of the lady.

The remaining 5% are actually talking about the actual topic.

Just to set the records straight, most the time outgoing baggage screening is for dangerous goods (explosives, chemicals batteries ect) not so much for green leafy matter - hense why ppl can take their precious thai food products home with them and not have their bags searched on the outbound flight.

The only one at fault in all this is the lady - who deserves everything she gets by the court system.

Edited Saturday at 03:10 PM1 day by CNZBoi

5 hours ago, pacovl46 said:

Are you sure about that?

I thought a random selection, or where there's reason for suspicion of a particular traveller.

I understand that all luggage might be scanned for explosives of course - this from USA https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/factsheets/technology

Yes, I am sure! ! As soon as you check your luggage in it goes through x-ray.

OK - I'm quite surprised, especially with the volume of luggage at a place like BKK.

@vangrop commented on it a couple of posts up.

Edited Saturday at 06:11 PM1 day by VBF

22 hours ago, jacko45k said:

There is good money in a suitcase of weed to be sold in Europe

Apparently not this load though. 51 kilo at 12k pounds total. Thats only 500k baht approx. Breaks down to 10k thb per kilo. 235pounds a kilo at street level. I think its supposed to be 12k gbp per kilo at sreet level. Which makes sense. Maybe there is a mistake or im wrong about something but....

At those prices my guess would be outdoor grown flower. Can be had for 3.5 to 4k baht per kilo. For something that would sell back in UK.

Then we talking decent money. 4.5k thb per kilo...is then sold in UK for 534k thb per kilo.

27 million baht. 600 k plus gbp.

Hello !!!

In Thailand you could smuggle an elephant through the airport without ease

Pressures and co-erced, my fundament. Vape shop owner?? Euphemism for weed shop!

Wow, that's a lot of flower and must of had a strong odor. Poor soul, did she come that way or maybe has had a stroke?

On 8/8/2026 at 3:13 PM, NanLaew said:

Her arrest at LHR was less than a week after the Thai Airways flight attendant was caught with heroin at Melbourne airport. I recall it was maybe ten days after that event when BKK outbound checked baggage screening was ramped up to stem this surge in smuggling and use of mules.

It very much seems like they have someone on the inside, how else would that go through otherwise?

On 8/8/2026 at 8:09 PM, VBF said:

OK - I'm quite surprised, especially with the volume of luggage at a place like BKK.

@vangrop commented on it a couple of posts up.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, I mean, you’d like your flights to preferably be free of explosives, don’t you? 😜

12 minutes ago, pacovl46 said:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, I mean, you’d like your flights to preferably be free of explosives, don’t you? 😜

I absolutely agree with you there, but look at my post above where I already mentioned that scanning for explosives is different from "general" scanning.

To quote myself "I understand that all luggage might be scanned for explosives of course - this from USA https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/factsheets/technology "

Personally, I really couldn't care less if a few numpties have smuggled drugs, or illicit booze, cigarettes etc aboard. If they get caught, serves them right, but explosives are obviously a whole different matter. These days, even power banks are rightly banned in hold luggage - they could potentially cause a fire that creates a major disaster and I'm sure I don't need to post those widely discussed rules .

47 minutes ago, pacovl46 said:

On 8/8/2026 at 8:13 PM, NanLaew said:

Her arrest at LHR was less than a week after the Thai Airways flight attendant was caught with heroin at Melbourne airport. I recall it was maybe ten days after that event when BKK outbound checked baggage screening was ramped up to stem this surge in smuggling and use of mules.

It very much seems like they have someone on the inside, how else would that go through otherwise?

If you are referencing the flight attendant at Melbourne, the heroin was concealed in 12 tote bags inside her checked baggage. It is unlikely that flight crew baggage bypasses security screening. It also seems unlikely that any single checked bag can be easily identified and removed from scanning 'by someone on the inside' once it goes into the baggage handling system with thousands of other bags. It is more likely that any previous baggage scanning was either random, not properly supervised or the equipment not properly configured for detecting narcotics. I believe that may not be the case now.

On 8/8/2026 at 6:33 AM, unblocktheplanet said:

Thai govt has obviously gone overboard because it thinks about its reputation with the well-heeled. I got news: a lot of the well-heeled smoke da kine these days rather than drink.

This woman is a Brit. It is unlikely they'll just have a laugh like the Thai woman going to Japan.

But, fer Crikey's, it's just smoking dope, dope that's been used to get high for millennia, that grows anywhere on fertile ground! Get over it!

Why was she bringing in 51 kg of it then? Don't we have fertile ground in the UK?

On 8/8/2026 at 4:09 PM, CNZBoi said:

My god this thread is hilarious, 90% of the posts are ppl taking the opportunity to blag Thailand as thou it was the country doing the smuggling, and another 5% don't have anything to say other than the looks of the lady.

The remaining 5% are actually talking about the actual topic.

Just to set the records straight, most the time outgoing baggage screening is for dangerous goods (explosives, chemicals batteries ect) not so much for green leafy matter - hense why ppl can take their precious thai food products home with them and not have their bags searched on the outbound flight.

The only one at fault in all this is the lady - who deserves everything she gets by the court system.

I can see how small amounts could get through, when mixed in with the normal items in a case, but this seems to have been nothing but cannabis, which I would have thought would look suspicious when scanned.

On 8/8/2026 at 11:07 AM, bdenner said:

For a number of years now passengers flying between UTH and BKK on Thai (Thai Smile) have had to wait after check in and watch via a big monitor to see their check in bags go either red or green down a conveyor. Green goto departures, Red goto security.

I went through Udon airport to BKK for the first time last month and I didn't see that but I may have missed it. They've had the same thing in Khon Kaen since the airport was rebuilt. Most people don't seem to notice it, I certainly didn't at first.

1 hour ago, pacovl46 said:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, I mean, you’d like your flights to preferably be free of explosives, don’t you? 😜

I often wonder what happened to all the mileage points of the passengers who got that once-in-a-lifetime view of New York.

On 8/8/2026 at 5:11 AM, riverhigh said:

"Defence lawyer Alexander Shanks said Durban would submit a basis of plea arguing she had been pressured and coerced into taking part, and was naive and immature."

You gotta be putting me on! The woman is 45 years old. This is certainly not her first rodeo.

It's possible she was pressured, it does happen, but it may well take a lot to get that story believed. The defence lawyer is just doing his job, and that's an obvious route to take in a case like this. If that's what she has told him then it would be difficult, if not impossible to avoid using that defence given his professional responsibilities. Even if it doesn't get her off it's still a possible mitigating circumstance to use if she eventually pleads guilty.

"Honey, do you smell smoke?"

"Been a long time since the airlines allowed smoking. Great Scott, somebody's smoking some killer weed!"

Fire in the hold!

On 8/8/2026 at 9:04 AM, KhunHeineken said:

With Britain's early prisoner release scheme, she's be out next week. 🙂

I don't know the sentencing guidelines for this but it's possible she may get a non custodial sentence if there aren't enough prison places, which seems to be the reason for the early release scheme. Previous governments have done this before and probably not willingly. It's not exactly a vote winner.

There is already an argument for using fewer custodial sentences.

3 hours ago, kimamey said:

I don't know the sentencing guidelines for this but it's possible she may get a non custodial sentence if there aren't enough prison places, which seems to be the reason for the early release scheme. Previous governments have done this before and probably not willingly. It's not exactly a vote winner.

There is already an argument for using fewer custodial sentences.

A non-custodial sentence would set a precedent, and give the green light for many others to try to smuggle drugs into the UK.

If the UK judicial system is unable to have the punishment fit the crime, the crime rate is going to explode.

It's going to get a lot worse.

On 8/8/2026 at 10:09 PM, CNZBoi said:

My god this thread is hilarious, 90% of the posts are ppl taking the opportunity to blag Thailand as thou it was the country doing the smuggling, and another 5% don't have anything to say other than the looks of the lady.

The remaining 5% are actually talking about the actual topic.

Yeah we were all having fun until the self appointed adult turned up,

1 hour ago, KhunHeineken said:

A non-custodial sentence would set a precedent, and give the green light for many others to try to smuggle drugs into the UK.

If the UK judicial system is unable to have the punishment fit the crime, the crime rate is going to explode.

It's going to get a lot worse.

I would say that a non custodial sentence is quite appropriate for a victimless crime like smuggling weed, Especially if it prevents the release of Rapists Murderers and Pedos from the overloaded prisons.

Crime may well increase but at least there will be plenty of Drugs I might even resume taking regular trips back