Opium And Ganja Sweets Bust

[hagler]

Oh yes let the howling and whinging begin but hopefully the people concerned do indeed get the death penalty or at minimum a long ,long, long time in a dark dank prison cell where they can rot away and ponder their crimes. The article is talking SERIOUS amounts of drugs.

"The count of the medium that Kanya briquette total 13 kg of opium, the raw approximately 5 kb and found candy, chocolate with a mixture of opium, the raw and cannabis amounting to 100 balls, total weight about 1.5 kg"

Bye bye bozos.

[AmeriThai]

Bob may be a nice guy but why does he deserve any less than a person who is not a nice guy.

People dealing in heavy drugs in the quantity Bob was may seem like a nice guy but have little concern for what they do to others. Just as long as they don't have to see it they think it is OK to make heavy drugs available to any one including children.

Ask your selves would you say it was OK to supply opium to your kids would you say he is a nice guy if it was in your back yard.

I have to kind of agree. If it was just the ganja, it might've been seen as a different matter. But it's the quantity of opium that makes it quite unacceptable. To be fair though, as far as I can tell, there was no indication he was supplying opium as candy or in any other form to kids.

He must've surely understood the risks though even with ganja.

Edited February 12, 2011 by AmeriThai

[fcgprg]

No matter how nice you all say he is .He is a drug dealer and should be delt with as any other dealer would .I would say he is a idiot .Drug dealing in Thailand a real good move i dont think so

[bully]

PS. One of the friends mentioned that there were was more camcorders at the scene than in the making of a porn movie

How many camcorders is that then?

Is that important to know ???????

[Loaded]

Bob's a nice guy. Selling opium and the large amount they found could lead to the prosecutor requesting a death sentence. Bob really doesn't deserve this.

Bob may be a nice guy but why does he deserve any less than a person who is not a nice guy.

People dealing in heavy drugs in the quantity Bob was may seem like a nice guy but have little concern for what they do to others. Just as long as they don't have to see it they think it is OK to make heavy drugs available to any one including children.

Ask your selves would you say it was OK to supply opium to your kids would you say he is a nice guy if it was in your back yard.

You are accusing him of selling drugs to children. Is this true, or did you just make it up?

[Ulysses G.]

Until very recently, one could buy both tincture of opium and codeine over-the-counter in Thailand. Should opium be classified as a "hard drug" like speed and heroin?

[nikster]

I suppose you would class the person that gave my teenage daughter a "laced" joint at a party. harmless? You really have a warped view of life. I trust that they slot this dipstick for a considerable time, and then deport him!

Your fault - you need to educate your kids about drugs. Or they'll do it themselves. I think the USA and Europe, most teenagers smoke weed, or at least that's the way it seems like to me. Somehow, a lot of them still manage to grow up into capable persons.

If you think you can control the substances your son/daughter takes by stopping people who are selling it you're just setting yourself up for failure. If nothing else, the empirical evidence is overwhelming.

I do have 2 sons, they're too young now, but I'll make sure they know all about illegal substances long before they take them, or are offered them at a party. If you take away the mystery and forbidden factor, drugs are WAYYY less interesting. At least that's how it worked for me when I grew up. I had all that information already when I was 10, people around me smoked cigarettes like there was no tomorrow - I got so disgusted with it as a kid that I never smoked cigarettes, and was never much interested in getting high either. Tried it a few times but just wasn't for me.

[CMX]

Until very recently, one could buy both tincture of opium and codeine over-the-counter in Thailand. Should opium be classified as a "hard drug" like speed and heroin?

Well, while the debate as to dangers of drugs is interesting, the question that pertains is how Thai laws deal with the matter. And there's the old saw, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."

Many of us might be willing to be less concerned with marijuana, but if Thai law punishes its possession harshly - particularly in kilo amounts - that's what we must accept as reality, accused too.

(To my mind, innocence regarding ganja selling charges might be indicated by the absence of brownie making paraphernalia.)

Edited February 12, 2011 by CMX

[elektrified]

It didn't take long for the 'hang 'em high' posters to show up.

Bob is a nice, friendly person. Was he perhaps foolish? Yes. Did he use poor judgment? Yes he did. Did he make a mistake? Yes he did. In fact he has no doubt made the biggest mistake of his life. Does he deserve (as one poster suggested) "...to get the death penalty or at minimum a long ,long, long time in a dark dank prison cell where they can rot away and ponder their crimes."??? I assume, when the poster says 'they', he means Bob along with his Thai girlfriend/wife? Who are you to judge??? I would suggest that he/they do not deserve such a fate. But don't worry, this is not a minor crime. They are in a lot of trouble.

From what I understand of the allegations, there is none that alleges that any drugs were being offered to children.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

There is a healthy under the counter market in the tourist areas for ganja. Mostly underpaid Thai workers who move a little product discretely for extra income. It's fairly hush hush but much more common than most people would think.

My two questions would be.

How did this guy think he was going to not arouse some competitive jealously at some point?

and

Does he have a really good lawyer? Because the big O brings the big trouble.

In case people weren't aware yet the US DEA has really stepped up coordination efforts in Thailand. On my trip back from VTE yesterday I was surprised to see the DEA basically setup shop and running customs on the friendship bridge.. Also have heard they have been coordinating helicopter eradication efforts on large growing operations in the mountains.

I would not be surprised if some of those resources landed this guy in the crosshairs.

[Maejo Man]

Bob's a nice guy. Selling opium and the large amount they found could lead to the prosecutor requesting a death sentence. Bob really doesn't deserve this.

Of course he deserves it, the same as any other idiot that sells drugs. Nice guy or not. "Please your honour don't send him to jail, he's really a nice person" I can imagine that working in court.

[Loaded]

Bob's a nice guy. Selling opium and the large amount they found could lead to the prosecutor requesting a death sentence. Bob really doesn't deserve this.

Of course he deserves it, the same as any other idiot that sells drugs. Nice guy or not. "Please your honour don't send him to jail, he's really a nice person" I can imagine that working in court.

You admitted your daughter smoked a joint. So, death to drug dealers but sympathy for drug users, is it? What about if your daughter passed the joint to someone else. Technically she would be a dealer. And why don't you feel you are in any part responsible for your daughter's behaviour?

[Rasseru]

I think it is wrong for any state or government to outlaw the use of drugs by adults or the sale to them of any. Pencil me in as a libertarian, on that issue anyway. In that sense, I don't think Bob 'deserves' any punishment at all. But, if he was doing what it being reported, he was knowingly taking the risk of getting caught for doing it. Now that he has, it does not behoove him or anyone else to complain too much about it.

[uptheos]

After we have rounded up all the self righteous people in CM, who persistently buy prescription only tranquillizers, sleeping pills and a particular pain killer illegally across the counter, we can then have a public hanging as requested for Bob and his wife and a public flogging for the pharmacist's and buyers that they help. We could even have a stoning for taking lesser drugs like booze. There could be music, lanterns, food stalls etc....in fact a great family day out.

There's nothing as good as advancing society.

[mamborobert]

Bob's a nice guy, Bob's a good person ..........Bob's a drug trafficker.

And to say drug trafficking/dealing is a a victimless crime is not thinking the issue through. Drug taking can lead to drug dependency and addiction, and that leads to robberies, assaults, domestic violence and assorted other crimes to fund a habit.

When your granny gets aussaulted and robbed of her pension cheque, our wife bashed and purse robbed, or your gold chain gets pulled off, or a tourist gets attacked by an drugged elephant handler.....how much do you want to absolve the Bobs of this world, let alone their Thai eqivalent yabba dealers.

There is always a cause before and effect. Bobs of this world are a cause....for very bad effects.

Would people be so sympathetic and understanding if it was an unknown Thai.? or would this page be filled with condemnation of the Thai, praise for the BIB, bring back Thaksin, rise of drugs in the village comments.

[keo]

Bob may be a nice guy but why does he deserve any less than a person who is not a nice guy.

People dealing in heavy drugs in the quantity Bob was may seem like a nice guy but have little concern for what they do to others. Just as long as they don't have to see it they think it is OK to make heavy drugs available to any one including children.

Ask your selves would you say it was OK to supply opium to your kids would you say he is a nice guy if it was in your back yard.

Would you consider marijuana, a heavy drug? And let's not confuse opium with heroin. They may be derived from the same plant, but they are quite different drugs.

Incidentally, I couldn't find any mention of opium in the first Thai article posted. Haven't read the second one yet.

The laws are archaic, but hopefully once California changes that, the rest of the world will follow suit. Hemp used to be one of the biggest cash crops in the USA, and not for smoking. It has a myriad of other productive uses.

http://www.documentarywire.com/the-business-behind-getting-high/

For all you screaming parents, concerned about these unscrupulous drug dealers pushing drugs on your kids, give me a break!

Anyway, let's hope Bob has some friends in high places, a lot of money in the bank, and he gets off with a deporting.

[uptheos]

Drug taking can lead to drug dependency and addiction, and that leads to robberies, assaults, domestic violence and assorted other crimes to fund a habit.

I agree, almost as bad as drinking booze. (Let's add the road deaths to your list above)

Edited February 12, 2011 by uptheos

[keo]

In case people weren't aware yet the US DEA has really stepped up coordination efforts in Thailand. On my trip back from VTE yesterday I was surprised to see the DEA basically setup shop and running customs on the friendship bridge.. Also have heard they have been coordinating helicopter eradication efforts on large growing operations in the mountains.

I would not be surprised if some of those resources landed this guy in the crosshairs.

I think you could be right. Good old Team American saving the motherf@cking day yeah.

Bob's a nice guy, Bob's a good person ..........Bob's a drug trafficker.

And to say drug trafficking/dealing is a a victimless crime is not thinking the issue through. Drug taking can lead to drug dependency and addiction, and that leads to robberies, assaults, domestic violence and assorted other crimes to fund a habit.

When your granny gets aussaulted and robbed of her pension cheque, our wife bashed and purse robbed, or your gold chain gets pulled off, or a tourist gets attacked by an drugged elephant handler.....how much do you want to absolve the Bobs of this world, let alone their Thai eqivalent yabba dealers.

There is always a cause before and effect. Bobs of this world are a cause....for very bad effects.

Ever considered a career in politics?

[Mestizo]

I think it is wrong for any state or government to outlaw the use of drugs by adults or the sale to them of any. Pencil me in as a libertarian, on that issue anyway. In that sense, I don't think Bob 'deserves' any punishment at all. But, if he was doing what it being reported, he was knowingly taking the risk of getting caught for doing it. Now that he has, it does not behoove him or anyone else to complain too much about it.

Thanks. My thoughts exactly.

But philosophical discussions aside, does anybody know where Bob is being held? Anybody know if he needs anything, for example books to pass the time, etc? Bob was a genuinely nice guy who seemed to have plenty of friends. Any of his friends attempting to arrange a "legal defense fund" to help him out?

-Mestizo

[Paagai]

I'm just curious; why immigration for a drugs bust? Assuming someone "grassed him up" why not to the regular BIB? Has he made some enemy who wanted him to have a quick exit from the country through a one way door? Also, the articles mention his Thai wife, presumably immigration can't do much with her Just seems strange.

I don't know him or have an opinion about his activities. BTW, was the misspelling of Spanky's as Spunkys in one of the articles deliberate?

[PlanetX]

I heard a rumor that DEA agents are also running around the jamaican bars asking people if they know where to score

There was no way he wouldnt get caught

Edited February 12, 2011 by PlanetX

[Loaded]

Funny, though, how the US can't find the opium fields in Afghanistan despite occupying the country with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Record yields since the Taleban were deposed.

"...Opium production in Afghanistan has been on the rise since U.S. occupation started in 2001. Based on UNODC data, there has been more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004–2007) than in any one year during Taliban rule..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan

Edited February 12, 2011 by Loaded

[Rasseru]

Funny, though, how the US can't find the opium fields in Afghanistan despite occupying the country with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. . . . .

They can find them just fine, Loaded. They just can't do anything about them is all.

[zippydedodah]

according to the thai wife, no opium mentioned, at all, in the 2 thai articles posted here. Solely marijuana.

Despite my personal thoughts and feelings on the matter - and i liked bob, his wife and his burgers too - and having been a substance abuse counselor for many years in SFO bay area,

he knew what the penalties are and... if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

In my more youthful days, i had to pay for my own bad judgement... and we live by the laws of the country where we reside... not by the laws back in California.

[jayjay0]

Bob may be a nice guy but why does he deserve any less than a person who is not a nice guy.

People dealing in heavy drugs in the quantity Bob was may seem like a nice guy but have little concern for what they do to others. Just as long as they don't have to see it they think it is OK to make heavy drugs available to any one including children.

Ask your selves would you say it was OK to supply opium to your kids would you say he is a nice guy if it was in your back yard.

I have to kind of agree. If it was just the ganja, it might've been seen as a different matter. But it's the quantity of opium that makes it quite unacceptable. To be fair though, as far as I can tell, there was no indication he was supplying opium as candy or in any other form to kids.

He must've surely understood the risks though even with ganja.

What you say is true there is no evidence. How ever any one dealing in that amount has to know that some of it is going to wind up in the hands of children. As I said people like him have no concern for others as long as they don't have to see the results.

[jayjay0]

Bob's a nice guy. Selling opium and the large amount they found could lead to the prosecutor requesting a death sentence. Bob really doesn't deserve this.

Bob may be a nice guy but why does he deserve any less than a person who is not a nice guy.

People dealing in heavy drugs in the quantity Bob was may seem like a nice guy but have little concern for what they do to others. Just as long as they don't have to see it they think it is OK to make heavy drugs available to any one including children.

Ask your selves would you say it was OK to supply opium to your kids would you say he is a nice guy if it was in your back yard.

You are accusing him of selling drugs to children. Is this true, or did you just make it up?

Reread my post I said he made it available I did not say he was the one doing the selling.

[MagnumForce]

Unfortunately for Bob, he has the wrong colour skin. Why haven't the police gone after some of those rasta Thai guys (to mention just a few well-knowns) in the reggae area on Rajwithie Road and in other well-known establishments around town? What about the numerous 'sponsored' yabba dealers?

There is no excuse for Bob. Yes, he is a nice guy but whatever our thoughts might be on so-called archaic drug laws, they do exist in this country and for one of us to knowingly break those laws is just asking for the kind of trouble that Bob now has. We all are well aware of the fact that to have any thing to do with drugs here is very, very dangerous. How this escaped Bob baffles me. Greed perhaps? It's not like he was providing drugs for health reasons after all.

I will miss the food from Spankys. It was very tasty. I hope that he and his wife are able to endure what they are about to face and come out of it relatively unscathed.

Lastly, whoever is responsible for tipping of the police must be a real diamond. From what I gather, he never sold to anyone but adults from farangland, probably a lot of whom exist on TV. I'm quite sure that they were well able to make an educated assessment of the pros and cons of buying such a product from Bob. It's not at all like he was hanging out at schools getting kids hooked on special brownies.

We can speculate on the many possibilities such as a loose-lipped farang, a nasty Thai gf of afforementioned farang, a jealous Thai neighbour or a competitor in the 'baking' business. Karma finds a way of evening things out.

In any case, the message is clear. Say NO to drugs here in Thailand!

[MegaRanter]

I guess because he is not located on soi nana in BKK, we should cut him some slack? Or may be because he is of the wrong color from the stereotype drug dealer and only sold to adult from farang land, we should nt hang him high?

hypocrisy at best, he is not different from the Iranians with 'ice' or the Nigerian peddling crack. He is a scumbag for short.

[femi fan]

Bob's a nice guy. Selling opium and the large amount they found could lead to the prosecutor requesting a death sentence. Bob really doesn't deserve this.

Of course he deserves it, the same as any other idiot that sells drugs. Nice guy or not. "Please your honour don't send him to jail, he's really a nice person" I can imagine that working in court.

What about the drugs they sell in all the shops in thailand and around the world? You know, the ones they tell you on the packet that it kills you. They sell something that they tell you will kill you. Yep, legal.

[orang37]

Sawasdee Khrup, TV CM Friends,

In no position to "judge" the characters or life of Khun Bob, or his wife, whom we never knew: but feel "sorry" for him, and his wife, for the serious trouble they are in ... we do. Did he and/or she made profound errors of judgement that placed themseleves in "mortal danger" ? ioho: yes.

Like Khun Rasseru feel strongly that ganja should be de-criminalized, for adults, even though we, personally, don't use it, and, even back in the hey-daze of the American counter-culture of the sixties when our current meat-package was in Berkeley and San Francisco (too literary and serious to ever really be part of the "hippie" scene), where it was in such widespread use, didn't like the smoke, but did enjoy a rare use of brownies, usually out in nature hiking some trail up Mt. Tamalpias with friends, ending a day's heavy hiking with some glorious view of sunset over Stinson Beach, with no fog being able to see out to the end of the Bolinas spit ... where in 1984 one of our most favorite unique American literary voices, Richard Brautigan, an alcoholic, blew himself away, at age 49, with a .44 magnum.

We do believe that regular, heavy, daily, use of ganja over many years can lead to profound pathological changes in the brain and body; but, we believe this to be also true of the "culturally sanctioned" depressive, inhibition-reducing, drug, alcohol, the culturally modal use of tobacco, and equally true of psychedelics, yaa baa (amphetamines), ecstasy, chronic television watching, chronic internet addiction, or computer gaming, or spending a life working for the "man" from eight to five in an unhappy marriage under the shadow of a balloon mortgage.

But, do we speak from some "moral high-ground" here: as if we, in our own addiction to creative writing and chronic reading washed down with soy milk, are Orangs of a different color: nope. I and I in de same leaky boat wid you, brothers and sisters, and everybody else in de Ark, onesome, twosome, manysome: all humanity headed helter-skelter toward mortality by hook, by crook, by craw, or by paw, or by hands, or feet. Our Ark swept along on history's cross-currents within cross-currents, punctuated by maelstrom, vortex, and waterspout, many of which we are only dimly aware of ... until ... St. Elmo's Fire suddenly illuminates what we believed was the main-mast of our ship of life in blue-static fire, perhaps for the first time making us aware that it's a stage prop, and that our anchor is made of styrofoam spray-painted and patinated to look like weathered iron.

You have to wonder about the opium in this bust: do we really know with absolute certainty that there was that significant a quantity of it in the shop ? A result of living in Thailand a while is a tendency (cynicism ?) that the first question that comes to mind reading "news" is: "what don't we really know about this." ?

With empathy for the fate and future of Khun Bob and Wife, and family, and in sorrow for the lives of several farangs, not engaged in any technically illegal activity, we've seen destroyed here over our eleven years here for reasons best not discussed fully on TV, but reasons whose essence boils down to "greed."

~o:37;

Edited February 12, 2011 by orang37