Australian Jailed For Life In Thailand

[newtronbom]

It's disappointing that someone hauling smack out of the Kingdom gets life, but farang murderers here often get a only few years and serial pedophiles are frequently released so the police can extort them again and again.

Well said and quite to the point! I can not see the "justice" in it at all. Willing buyers, as to helpless victims. Just does not make any sense at all. Quite out of proportion, to my outlook on it.Thank you for standing up for the truth of the matter.

[newtronbom]

Well done Thailand!! It would be better though if he got death sentence. There is always a risk that the Australian authorities will "claim him back". Besides that, this guy will be a cost burden for Thailand, he will need food, shower, use of electricity, etc etc for a LIFETIME. That ends up with a lot of money. Just kill him. (He is dealing with a lethal drug that kills others, so why be soft and give him only the lifr sentence...)

Alcohol kills many more people mate. Are you going to stop going to the pub? The death rate for using heroin, is far lower than the death rate attributed to booze. Won't even go into the traffic fatalities. You should open your eyes.

[warlord]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

Quite right, thai prisons are notoriously harsh and shoud scare even the hardest of men, and the welfare system is the envy of many thai people that we sometimes take for granted

[sokal]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

The payoff, if invested correctly would have resulted in him being able to retire in Thailand. I agree with you but atleast this guy was going for a decent payoff. 500,000 is allot of cake!

[chiangdan]

It's disappointing that someone hauling smack out of the Kingdom gets life, but farang murderers here often get a only few years and serial pedophiles are frequently released so the police can extort them again and again.

Well said and quite to the point! I can not see the "justice" in it at all. Willing buyers, as to helpless victims. Just does not make any sense at all. Quite out of proportion, to my outlook on it.Thank you for standing up for the truth of the matter.

You sound to me as tho you are a herion addict and pusher throwing all your support behind this illeagle activity. Chanting for the rights of criminals to do as they please to whom they want when they want.

[chiangdan]

I just hope that he lives to be 100 so that the punishment is a long slow death for the vermon. He knew what he was getting into so now he has reaped his reward. I know that all the other criminals and low lifes in the world will come out and say his punishment is to hard but theses types allways stick together.

[sokal]

They should be RFI tagging him and his belongings then following him home. Sometimes wonder if most mules get caught because they are competition to the established and protected operations... Perhaps they really don't want to know where he got it. The other day they stopped a truck because it carried drugs, a witness reported it, but no mention about money, no source, No who paid whom, when or where, just two guys and truck full of drugs. Its a miracle.

Death just for being a stupid bum is a bit over the top, save it for the Noriaga types.

A long sentence anywhere is not a small thing, someplace's are just worse then others, none are better.

Heroine is easy to get in Burma. The guy might have just purchased a large quantity with his own cash with the intention of export. You know, buy low, sell high ?

[rubik101]

All Australian airports are patrolled by drug detecting dogs and they rarely miss! Chances are he would have done 15-20 yrs in jail there so his choice was definitely a poor one, either end of the trip!

[sedeflonga]

life probably doesn't mean life. he will probably get 15 years and then get released and then be at the age where he can easily get a pretty young thai girlfriend pretending to love him not for his passport. not too bad a deal then.

...if he survives Prison.

[Will27]

All Australian airports are patrolled by drug detecting dogs and they rarely miss! Chances are he would have done 15-20 yrs in jail there so his choice was definitely a poor one, either end of the trip!

Yes but the dogs don't work 24hrs a day and therefore

don't patrol every flight.

I ain't that hard to get through Australian airports.

The majority of those caught are either dumb or

there has been a tip off.

Regards

Will

[sedeflonga]

MAYBE IF HE WERE A SHE

BILL CLINTON WOULD RIDE TO THE RESCUE

HAHAHA, thats a farce too.

[PatinBKk]

Muppet.....

[jesselv]

The more I hear of the goings on in Thailand the less of a paradise it seems. Life in prison for drug smuggling?

That's a little over the top to say the least. It's testament to a primitive culture with third world mentality.

One can imagine a situation were a farang is set up by a member of Thai law enforcement who took a dislike

to you. Thailand seems more and more like a place to stay away from as a tourist, let alone as a retirement

destination.

[somchaiq]

Australian jailed for life in Thailand

Andrew Hood pleaded guilty to the crime.

(Reuters: Sukree Sukplang, file photo)

BANGKOK: -- An Australian man who confessed to trying to smuggle three kilograms of heroin out of Thailand has been sentenced to life in jail.

Police arrested Andrew Hood, 37, in early December last year as he tried to leave Bangkok airport for Sydney.

During Hood's trial earlier this month, two police officers gave evidence and showed photographs of a number of packages taped to his stomach and legs.

The packages contained heroin worth about $500,000.

When he was first detained, Hood told reporters he attempted to smuggle the drugs for the money.

Hood's feet were chained as he stood in the court as the verdict was read.

The judge told him he was due a death sentence, but his confession meant he was given a jail term instead.

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

Thai authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the 34-year-old Australian who was with Hood at the time he was arrested, but who escaped.

-- abc.net.au 2009-08-05

Why Disappointed? He got what he asked for. Smuggling Drugs is a very bad crime and he is lucky that they did not shoot him instead of arresting.

Anyway they may send him back to an Australian Prison in a few years.

[tropo]

. There is always a risk that the Australian authorities will "claim him back". Besides that, this guy will be a cost burden for Thailand, he will need food, shower, use of electricity, etc etc for a LIFETIME. That ends up with a lot of money. Just kill him. (He is dealing with a lethal drug that kills others, so why be soft and give him only the lifr sentence...)

He will be back in Australia within the next 2 to 5 years anyway via the prisoner exchange program. He won't be in for life when he does return.

[tropo]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

The payoff, if invested correctly would have resulted in him being able to retire in Thailand. I agree with you but atleast this guy was going for a decent payoff. 500,000 is allot of cake!

You should read the thread before making dumb comments.

This guy was only a mule and at best was going to receive "several thousand" dollars. He didn't buy the heroin or intend to sell it.

Street price in Australia for 3kg heroin is more like 3 million dollars.

[Lucifer]

No Farrang is going to do life in a Thai prison. 3-5 years in Bangkok Hilton, then 2-4 years in a Farrang-land prison.

Basic rule-of-thumb.

[webfact]

No Farrang is going to do life in a Thai prison. 3-5 years in Bangkok Hilton, then 2-4 years in a Farrang-land prison.

Basic rule-of-thumb.

I doubt that...

according to the seriousness of his offense he is not eligible before at least 8y has been served!

Some offenders have served more than that before an exchange took place!

Correct me if I am wrong

[oshoshitzu]

Hooray for the guy who escaped the clutches of these Thai cop maniacs with their idiotic war on drugs.

----------------

We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works

By Hodding Carter III.

There is clearly no point in beating a dead horse, whether you are a politician or a columnist, but sometimes you have to do it just the same, if only for the record. So, for the record, here's another attempt to argue that a majority of the American people and their elected representatives can be and are wrong about the way they have chosen to wage the "war against drugs." Prohibition can't work, won't work and has never worked, but it can and does have monumentally costly effects on the criminal justice system and on the integrity of government at every level.

Experience should be the best teacher, and my experience with prohibition is a little more recent than most Americans for whom the "noble experiment" ended with repeal in 1933. In my home state of Mississippi, it lasted for an additional 33 years, and for all those years it was a truism that the drinkers had their liquor, the preachers had their prohibition and the sheriffs made the money. Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

But as a first-rate series in the New York Times made clear early last year, Mississippi's prohibition-era corruption (and Chicago's before that) was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the U.S. today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, big drug money is purchasing major breakdowns in law enforcement. Sheriffs, other policemen and now judges are being bought up by the gross. But that money, with the net profits for the drug traffickers estimated at anywhere from $40 billion to $100 billion a year, is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments. The latter becomes an increasingly likely outcome in a number of cities and states in this country as well. Cicero, Ill., during Prohibition is an instructive case in point.

The money to be made from an illegal product that has about 23 million current users in this country also explains why its sale is so attractive on the mean streets of America's big cities. A street salesman can gross about $2,500 a day in Washington, which puts him in the pay category of a local television anchor, and this in a neighborhood of dead-end job chances.

Since the courts and jails are already swamped beyond capacity by the arrests that are routinely made (44,000 drug dealers and users over a two-year period in Washington alone, for instance) and since those arrests barely skim the top of the pond, arguing that stricter enforcement is the answer begs a larger question: Who is going to pay the billions of dollars required to build the prisons, hire the judges, train the policemen and employ the prosecutors needed for the load already on hand, let alone the huge one yet to come if we ever get serious about arresting dealers and users?

Much is made of the cost of drug addiction, and it should be, but the current breakdown in the criminal justice system is not one of them. That breakdown is the result of prohibition, not addiction. Drug addiction, after all, does not come close to the far vaster problems of alcohol and tobacco addiction (as former Surgeon General Koop correctly noted, tobacco is at least as addictive as heroin). Hard drugs are estimated to kill 4,000 people a year directly and several tens of thousands a year indirectly. Alcohol kills at least 100,000 a year, addicts millions more and costs the marketplace billions of dollars. Tobacco kills over 300,000 a year, addicts tens of millions and fouls the atmosphere as well. But neither alcohol nor tobacco threaten to subvert our system of law and order, because they are treated as personal and societal problems rather than as criminal ones.

Indeed, every argument that is made for prohibiting the use of currently illegal drugs can be made even more convincingly about tobacco and alcohol. The effects on the unborn? Staggeringly direct. The effects on adolescents? Alcoholism is the addiction of choice for young Americans on a ratio of about 100 to one. Lethal effect? Tobacco's murderous results are not a matter of debate anywhere outside the Tobacco Institute.

Which leaves the lingering and legitimate fear that legalization might produce a surge in use. It probably would, although not nearly as dramatic a one as opponents usually estimate. The fact is that personal use of marijuana, whatever the local laws may say, has been virtually decriminalized for some time now, but there has been a stabilization or slight decline in use, rather than an increase, for several years. Heroin addiction has held steady at about 500,000 people for some time, though the street price of heroin is far lower now than it used to be. Use of cocaine in its old form also seems to have stopped climbing and begun to drop off among young and old alike, though there is an abundantly available supply.

That leaves crack cocaine, stalker of the inner city and terror of the suburbs. Instant and addictive in effect, easy to use and relatively cheap to buy, it is a personality-destroying substance that is a clear menace to its users. But it is hard to imagine it being any more accessible under legalization than it is in most cities today under prohibition, while the financial incentives for promoting its use would virtually disappear with legalization.

Proponents of legalization should not try to fuzz the issue, nonetheless. Addiction levels might increase, at least temporarily, if legal sanctions were removed. That happened after the repeal of Prohibition, or so at least some studies have suggested. But while that would be a personal disaster for the addicts and their families, and would involve larger costs to society as a whole, those costs would be minuscule compared with the costs of continued prohibition.

The young Capones of today own the inner cities and the wholesalers behind these young retailers are rapidly buying up the larger system which is supposed to control them. Prohibition gave us the Mafia and organized crime on a scale that has been with us ever since. The new prohibition is writing a new chapter on that old text. hel_l-bent on learning nothing from history, we are witnessing its repetition, predictably enough, as tragedy.

---

Reprinted with permission of Wall Street Journal Jul 13, 1989. Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

They seem to be comparing apples with oranges here.

Alcohol and Heroin are totally different. Heroine is VERY VERY addictive and absolutely ruins peoples lives, guaranteed. There is no such thing as a "casual heroine user" or "social user", like a social drinker or whatever.

So I cant see any real alternative. Making Heroine legal (cheap and easily accessible) isnt going to make it easier for people to kick their habit. I for one am a cigarette smoker and I would WELCOME any law that made cigarettes illegal. I have tried so many times to give up, but I find I myself going to the local shop to buy a pack. If they weren't easily available, I would have given up by now.

People usually get addicted to heroin because they have deep rooted emotional issues and the drug takes their pain away. However the drug itself does not help them in any way in the long run. Heroin addiction is a reflection of our modern society and the problems people have, usually from childhood, breakdowns of the family, rape, abuse, poverty and all the other issues that give people emotional and psychological problems. Also many people are "born" with psychological problems - for example you can find physical differences in the brains of bi-polar people to healthy people.

I think in many cases its unkind to label people as "bad" "scum" etc because of their heroin addiction. But yes the drug does ruin people and turn otherwise good people into killers, muggers. People who could kill their own grandmother and then have a shot and feel OK again.

Heroin is not very very addictive and does not ruin peoples' lives, guaranteed. Pharmaceutical heroin causes far less harm to the body than alcohol. The problem with heroin is its legal status.

[webfact]

Hooray for the guy who escaped the clutches of these Thai cop maniacs with their idiotic war on drugs.

----------------

We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works

By Hodding Carter III.

There is clearly no point in beating a dead horse, whether you are a politician or a columnist, but sometimes you have to do it just the same, if only for the record. So, for the record, here's another attempt to argue that a majority of the American people and their elected representatives can be and are wrong about the way they have chosen to wage the "war against drugs." Prohibition can't work, won't work and has never worked, but it can and does have monumentally costly effects on the criminal justice system and on the integrity of government at every level.

Experience should be the best teacher, and my experience with prohibition is a little more recent than most Americans for whom the "noble experiment" ended with repeal in 1933. In my home state of Mississippi, it lasted for an additional 33 years, and for all those years it was a truism that the drinkers had their liquor, the preachers had their prohibition and the sheriffs made the money. Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

But as a first-rate series in the New York Times made clear early last year, Mississippi's prohibition-era corruption (and Chicago's before that) was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the U.S. today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, big drug money is purchasing major breakdowns in law enforcement. Sheriffs, other policemen and now judges are being bought up by the gross. But that money, with the net profits for the drug traffickers estimated at anywhere from $40 billion to $100 billion a year, is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments. The latter becomes an increasingly likely outcome in a number of cities and states in this country as well. Cicero, Ill., during Prohibition is an instructive case in point.

The money to be made from an illegal product that has about 23 million current users in this country also explains why its sale is so attractive on the mean streets of America's big cities. A street salesman can gross about $2,500 a day in Washington, which puts him in the pay category of a local television anchor, and this in a neighborhood of dead-end job chances.

Since the courts and jails are already swamped beyond capacity by the arrests that are routinely made (44,000 drug dealers and users over a two-year period in Washington alone, for instance) and since those arrests barely skim the top of the pond, arguing that stricter enforcement is the answer begs a larger question: Who is going to pay the billions of dollars required to build the prisons, hire the judges, train the policemen and employ the prosecutors needed for the load already on hand, let alone the huge one yet to come if we ever get serious about arresting dealers and users?

Much is made of the cost of drug addiction, and it should be, but the current breakdown in the criminal justice system is not one of them. That breakdown is the result of prohibition, not addiction. Drug addiction, after all, does not come close to the far vaster problems of alcohol and tobacco addiction (as former Surgeon General Koop correctly noted, tobacco is at least as addictive as heroin). Hard drugs are estimated to kill 4,000 people a year directly and several tens of thousands a year indirectly. Alcohol kills at least 100,000 a year, addicts millions more and costs the marketplace billions of dollars. Tobacco kills over 300,000 a year, addicts tens of millions and fouls the atmosphere as well. But neither alcohol nor tobacco threaten to subvert our system of law and order, because they are treated as personal and societal problems rather than as criminal ones.

Indeed, every argument that is made for prohibiting the use of currently illegal drugs can be made even more convincingly about tobacco and alcohol. The effects on the unborn? Staggeringly direct. The effects on adolescents? Alcoholism is the addiction of choice for young Americans on a ratio of about 100 to one. Lethal effect? Tobacco's murderous results are not a matter of debate anywhere outside the Tobacco Institute.

Which leaves the lingering and legitimate fear that legalization might produce a surge in use. It probably would, although not nearly as dramatic a one as opponents usually estimate. The fact is that personal use of marijuana, whatever the local laws may say, has been virtually decriminalized for some time now, but there has been a stabilization or slight decline in use, rather than an increase, for several years. Heroin addiction has held steady at about 500,000 people for some time, though the street price of heroin is far lower now than it used to be. Use of cocaine in its old form also seems to have stopped climbing and begun to drop off among young and old alike, though there is an abundantly available supply.

That leaves crack cocaine, stalker of the inner city and terror of the suburbs. Instant and addictive in effect, easy to use and relatively cheap to buy, it is a personality-destroying substance that is a clear menace to its users. But it is hard to imagine it being any more accessible under legalization than it is in most cities today under prohibition, while the financial incentives for promoting its use would virtually disappear with legalization.

Proponents of legalization should not try to fuzz the issue, nonetheless. Addiction levels might increase, at least temporarily, if legal sanctions were removed. That happened after the repeal of Prohibition, or so at least some studies have suggested. But while that would be a personal disaster for the addicts and their families, and would involve larger costs to society as a whole, those costs would be minuscule compared with the costs of continued prohibition.

The young Capones of today own the inner cities and the wholesalers behind these young retailers are rapidly buying up the larger system which is supposed to control them. Prohibition gave us the Mafia and organized crime on a scale that has been with us ever since. The new prohibition is writing a new chapter on that old text. hel_l-bent on learning nothing from history, we are witnessing its repetition, predictably enough, as tragedy.

---

Reprinted with permission of Wall Street Journal Jul 13, 1989. Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

They seem to be comparing apples with oranges here.

Alcohol and Heroin are totally different. Heroine is VERY VERY addictive and absolutely ruins peoples lives, guaranteed. There is no such thing as a "casual heroine user" or "social user", like a social drinker or whatever.

So I cant see any real alternative. Making Heroine legal (cheap and easily accessible) isnt going to make it easier for people to kick their habit. I for one am a cigarette smoker and I would WELCOME any law that made cigarettes illegal. I have tried so many times to give up, but I find I myself going to the local shop to buy a pack. If they weren't easily available, I would have given up by now.

People usually get addicted to heroin because they have deep rooted emotional issues and the drug takes their pain away. However the drug itself does not help them in any way in the long run. Heroin addiction is a reflection of our modern society and the problems people have, usually from childhood, breakdowns of the family, rape, abuse, poverty and all the other issues that give people emotional and psychological problems. Also many people are "born" with psychological problems - for example you can find physical differences in the brains of bi-polar people to healthy people.

I think in many cases its unkind to label people as "bad" "scum" etc because of their heroin addiction. But yes the drug does ruin people and turn otherwise good people into killers, muggers. People who could kill their own grandmother and then have a shot and feel OK again.

Heroin is not very very addictive and does not ruin peoples' lives, guaranteed. Pharmaceutical heroin causes far less harm to the body than alcohol. The problem with heroin is its legal status.

Take off the pink glasses, come out of your shell, and look around!

Edited August 6, 2009 by webfact

[rickyhhh]

A death sentence possible for carrying heroin ?

That is madness compared to the sentences for other crimes

which take lives directly like murder and arson.

Except for selling to a minor, drugs should be legal with the personal consequences

of use the responsibility of the user just as it is for alcohol & tobacco.

But the politicians do not want to give up their gravy train;

arrests, prosecution, prisons, parole monitoring, and graft/payoffs.

Very discouraging thinking about how it is right now.

Hopefully, the future will be more enlightened.

TOTAL DROSS

He was carrying 3 KILO of heroin wrapped around his body and he must have knew what the penalties are for this serious offense.Stop trying to make pathetic excuses for a guy who was trying to sell the drugs and make 500,000 aus dollars.Nobody gives a flying fxxk about

other offenses.we are tlaking about 3k of heroin whch any drug filled idiot will know how serious this will be.

like me, i guess there are lots of guys here enjoy a drink, so lets look at another scenario..... lets say drink and tobacco are made illegal, just like drugs... so next weekend you fancy a drink or a ciggy and you hear on the grapevine that there's a guy (read as drug dealer) down the road can supply you. So you go and buy a few beer and a bottle of spirits and some ciggies(now you're a druggie) ..... next thing the drug dealer is caught, sent to jail, and someone else takes his place as supplier, now the price goes up and keeps rising.... some druggies can't afford the prices, so they turn to mugging, theft etc to fund their habit. A drinks/tobacco mule then gets caught... "he was carrying 3 cases of spirits/cigs and he must have known what the penalties are for this serious offence. Stop trying to make pathetic excuses for a guy who was trying to sell the drug (drink) and make xxxx dollars. he deserves the death penalty!!... scum!!!

so the governments make drink/tobacco illegal

they lose all the taxes which pay for a good police force, hospitals roads etc

they criminalise the drink/tobacco producers... vineyards, brewers, distilleries/tobacco farms, cigarette factories, nations like cuba

they criminalise the suppliers... bars, licenced restraurants, off licences

they criminalise the users... you, me and plenty of others

they cause the price of drink/tobacco to rocket... the lower class of drinkers/smokers turn to crime to fund their habit, crimes rise steeply, drink/tobacco dealers hang about the streets, illegal drink dens open up in the neighbourhoods, protection rackets flourish, police are bribed and corrupted.

who's to blame????

oh no, not the governments with their drive to stamp out drinking/tobacco

after all..... drink and tobacco are evil... dangerous drugs, those involved deserve severe punishment, life in thai jails, the death penalty.

love to see the day when the afgan farmers can have a ligit. government market for their poppies, same for heroin factories, the governments can control its distribution and taxation. the users can buy a shot of heroin/coke for the weekend, of course some will look a bit wasted... just like heavy drinkers and smokers.

I suppose the taliban would be out of business

I suppose noreiga

the drug mafias would be out of business

no need for drug mules

the drug dealers would be off the street

there would be dramatic drop in crime...... who mugs for a beer or a pack of cigs?

increased tax revenues for police, and public services.

of course that would be a bad thing...... i'd rather have our drugs crime ridden streets

[tropo]

No Farrang is going to do life in a Thai prison. 3-5 years in Bangkok Hilton, then 2-4 years in a Farrang-land prison.

Basic rule-of-thumb.

I doubt that...

according to the seriousness of his offense he is not eligible before at least 8y has been served!

Some offenders have served more than that before an exchange took place!

Correct me if I am wrong

Considering the Australian - Thailand prisoner exchange program has only been going since 2002 it is impossible to give reliable figures.

[rickyhhh]

So I cant see any real alternative. Making Heroine legal (cheap and easily accessible) isnt going to make it easier for people to kick their habit. I for one am a cigarette smoker and I would WELCOME any law that made cigarettes illegal. I have tried so many times to give up, but I find I myself going to the local shop to buy a pack. If they weren't easily available, I would have given up by now.

Sorry, but if cigarettes were made illegal they would be easily available, and you'd find yourself going to the local dealer to buy a pack. Cigarettes are just as addictive as heroin, probably more so, took me over five years to get off them, after twentyfive years off them i still remember the pleasure they gave me.

Dad smoked 60 woodbines a day, he died from cigarette induced cancer younger than my current age.

but i still wouldn't make them illegal.

[borovik]

No Farrang is going to do life in a Thai prison. 3-5 years in Bangkok Hilton, then 2-4 years in a Farrang-land prison.

Basic rule-of-thumb.

You dont know and you make a point.Its half true what you say,if not gross bullshit.You have comp - you can check on BangKwang

website.Your basic rule of thumb is your misconseption.Americans have to sit here 8yrs before they qualify for transfer- not 3-5.

Every country - different rules.British after transfer - must sit half of remaining original number,which is - very long.Swedish can go home

quite early,but they keep them inside in home for ages!(behind PolarCircle all day in cells).Many countries do not have transfers,they sit here

and they do not like it!

My point is:somebody read your post and then he is looking for "job" because he doesnt see much danger.3+2=5 not a big deal?what about

100?Death was awarded to two farangs recently,what will you do with them?8 yrs in Bankwang is equal to life in UK(quite bad jails there).

[Grey11]

I just hope that he lives to be 100 so that the punishment is a long slow death for the vermon. He knew what he was getting into so now he has reaped his reward. I know that all the other criminals and low lifes in the world will come out and say his punishment is to hard but theses types allways stick together.

I am neither a criminal or a "low life" whatever the hel_l that means and I say his punishment was far to stiff. I don't even know anyone else who posts on Thai Visa so I am absolutely not "sticking together." Think just maybe the Thai criminal justice system might just try to find the drug dealer that sold him the drugs?! I doubt it. They got their publicity nailing a farang and that's all they wanted.

[neil324]

Hooray for the guy who escaped the clutches of these Thai cop maniacs with their idiotic war on drugs.

----------------

We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works

By Hodding Carter III.

There is clearly no point in beating a dead horse, whether you are a politician or a columnist, but sometimes you have to do it just the same, if only for the record. So, for the record, here's another attempt to argue that a majority of the American people and their elected representatives can be and are wrong about the way they have chosen to wage the "war against drugs." Prohibition can't work, won't work and has never worked, but it can and does have monumentally costly effects on the criminal justice system and on the integrity of government at every level.

Experience should be the best teacher, and my experience with prohibition is a little more recent than most Americans for whom the "noble experiment" ended with repeal in 1933. In my home state of Mississippi, it lasted for an additional 33 years, and for all those years it was a truism that the drinkers had their liquor, the preachers had their prohibition and the sheriffs made the money. Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

But as a first-rate series in the New York Times made clear early last year, Mississippi's prohibition-era corruption (and Chicago's before that) was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the U.S. today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, big drug money is purchasing major breakdowns in law enforcement. Sheriffs, other policemen and now judges are being bought up by the gross. But that money, with the net profits for the drug traffickers estimated at anywhere from $40 billion to $100 billion a year, is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments. The latter becomes an increasingly likely outcome in a number of cities and states in this country as well. Cicero, Ill., during Prohibition is an instructive case in point.

The money to be made from an illegal product that has about 23 million current users in this country also explains why its sale is so attractive on the mean streets of America's big cities. A street salesman can gross about $2,500 a day in Washington, which puts him in the pay category of a local television anchor, and this in a neighborhood of dead-end job chances.

Since the courts and jails are already swamped beyond capacity by the arrests that are routinely made (44,000 drug dealers and users over a two-year period in Washington alone, for instance) and since those arrests barely skim the top of the pond, arguing that stricter enforcement is the answer begs a larger question: Who is going to pay the billions of dollars required to build the prisons, hire the judges, train the policemen and employ the prosecutors needed for the load already on hand, let alone the huge one yet to come if we ever get serious about arresting dealers and users?

Much is made of the cost of drug addiction, and it should be, but the current breakdown in the criminal justice system is not one of them. That breakdown is the result of prohibition, not addiction. Drug addiction, after all, does not come close to the far vaster problems of alcohol and tobacco addiction (as former Surgeon General Koop correctly noted, tobacco is at least as addictive as heroin). Hard drugs are estimated to kill 4,000 people a year directly and several tens of thousands a year indirectly. Alcohol kills at least 100,000 a year, addicts millions more and costs the marketplace billions of dollars. Tobacco kills over 300,000 a year, addicts tens of millions and fouls the atmosphere as well. But neither alcohol nor tobacco threaten to subvert our system of law and order, because they are treated as personal and societal problems rather than as criminal ones.

Indeed, every argument that is made for prohibiting the use of currently illegal drugs can be made even more convincingly about tobacco and alcohol. The effects on the unborn? Staggeringly direct. The effects on adolescents? Alcoholism is the addiction of choice for young Americans on a ratio of about 100 to one. Lethal effect? Tobacco's murderous results are not a matter of debate anywhere outside the Tobacco Institute.

Which leaves the lingering and legitimate fear that legalization might produce a surge in use. It probably would, although not nearly as dramatic a one as opponents usually estimate. The fact is that personal use of marijuana, whatever the local laws may say, has been virtually decriminalized for some time now, but there has been a stabilization or slight decline in use, rather than an increase, for several years. Heroin addiction has held steady at about 500,000 people for some time, though the street price of heroin is far lower now than it used to be. Use of cocaine in its old form also seems to have stopped climbing and begun to drop off among young and old alike, though there is an abundantly available supply.

That leaves crack cocaine, stalker of the inner city and terror of the suburbs. Instant and addictive in effect, easy to use and relatively cheap to buy, it is a personality-destroying substance that is a clear menace to its users. But it is hard to imagine it being any more accessible under legalization than it is in most cities today under prohibition, while the financial incentives for promoting its use would virtually disappear with legalization.

Proponents of legalization should not try to fuzz the issue, nonetheless. Addiction levels might increase, at least temporarily, if legal sanctions were removed. That happened after the repeal of Prohibition, or so at least some studies have suggested. But while that would be a personal disaster for the addicts and their families, and would involve larger costs to society as a whole, those costs would be minuscule compared with the costs of continued prohibition.

The young Capones of today own the inner cities and the wholesalers behind these young retailers are rapidly buying up the larger system which is supposed to control them. Prohibition gave us the Mafia and organized crime on a scale that has been with us ever since. The new prohibition is writing a new chapter on that old text. hel_l-bent on learning nothing from history, we are witnessing its repetition, predictably enough, as tragedy.

---

Reprinted with permission of Wall Street Journal Jul 13, 1989. Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

They seem to be comparing apples with oranges here.

Alcohol and Heroin are totally different. Heroine is VERY VERY addictive and absolutely ruins peoples lives, guaranteed. There is no such thing as a "casual heroine user" or "social user", like a social drinker or whatever.

So I cant see any real alternative. Making Heroine legal (cheap and easily accessible) isnt going to make it easier for people to kick their habit. I for one am a cigarette smoker and I would WELCOME any law that made cigarettes illegal. I have tried so many times to give up, but I find I myself going to the local shop to buy a pack. If they weren't easily available, I would have given up by now.

People usually get addicted to heroin because they have deep rooted emotional issues and the drug takes their pain away. However the drug itself does not help them in any way in the long run. Heroin addiction is a reflection of our modern society and the problems people have, usually from childhood, breakdowns of the family, rape, abuse, poverty and all the other issues that give people emotional and psychological problems. Also many people are "born" with psychological problems - for example you can find physical differences in the brains of bi-polar people to healthy people.

I think in many cases its unkind to label people as "bad" "scum" etc because of their heroin addiction. But yes the drug does ruin people and turn otherwise good people into killers, muggers. People who could kill their own grandmother and then have a shot and feel OK again.

Heroin is not very very addictive and does not ruin peoples' lives, guaranteed. Pharmaceutical heroin causes far less harm to the body than alcohol. The problem with heroin is its legal status.

Your having a laugh surely, heroin is highly addictive and users are constantly thieving to feed the habit.

[Patsycat]

I am not saying that it was a pity he didn't get home, all I was saying is - Yes, this guy is in prison for what he did.

And shall be for probably along time.

So, why aren't you, know it all armchair detectives who know everyone and anybody, and drugs and hookers and the underside of Thailand. Why aren't you out snooping around in your neighbourhoods to find the next poor mule and catch him before he gets on that plane to Bangkok Hilton.

And then perhaps you can find the supplier and the whole World will be alright...

[sokal]

The more I hear of the goings on in Thailand the less of a paradise it seems. Life in prison for drug smuggling?

That's a little over the top to say the least. It's testament to a primitive culture with third world mentality.

One can imagine a situation were a farang is set up by a member of Thai law enforcement who took a dislike

to you. Thailand seems more and more like a place to stay away from as a tourist, let alone as a retirement

destination.

I would feel safer with rules like this. So you prefer the Aussy or Canadian style ? Murderers get 10 years plus time served, maybe out a year early for good behavior.

The US and China still kill more people. hel_l, Thailand is one of the only places where jail means jail, not a paid holiday with a free education and free use of a gym.

[tropo]

No Farrang is going to do life in a Thai prison. 3-5 years in Bangkok Hilton, then 2-4 years in a Farrang-land prison.

Basic rule-of-thumb.

You dont know and you make a point.Its half true what you say,if not gross bullshit.You have comp - you can check on BangKwang

website.Your basic rule of thumb is your misconseption.Americans have to sit here 8yrs before they qualify for transfer- not 3-5.

Every country - different rules.British after transfer - must sit half of remaining original number,which is - very long.Swedish can go home

quite early,but they keep them inside in home for ages!(behind PolarCircle all day in cells).Many countries do not have transfers,they sit here

and they do not like it!

My point is:somebody read your post and then he is looking for "job" because he doesnt see much danger.3+2=5 not a big deal?what about

100?Death was awarded to two farangs recently,what will you do with them?8 yrs in Bankwang is equal to life in UK(quite bad jails there).

There is absolutely no sense in babbling on about what happens in other countries. Here we are only concerned about a specific arrangement between Australia and Thailand. The person who first mentioned this prisoner release arrangement mentioned that it may take 2 - 5 years for an exchange to happen.

Right now that's the only estimate we have.

[dynabob]

MAY THEY PASS QUICKLY