People are trying, and failing, to smuggle weed out of Thailand

I think it is only a matter of time before the various people that desperately want cannibus to be illegal take a jab at pointing the finger at this sort of pitfall that comes with the legalization of recreational marijuana use in Thailand.

In the past month several people have been busted trying to smuggle rather large amounts of weed which kind of begs the question of how are they actually getting this much weed while they are in Thailand.

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In the past few days a man managed somehow to make it all the way from Phuket to Manchester airport in the UK with around $140,000 worth of weed in his luggage. The gall of this man to think that something like that wouldn't be intercepted was pretty amazing. The fact that he made it all the way to the exiting of the airport before being flagged is pretty remarkable and kind of makes me wonder what the hell is being done at all of these scanning locations if something that obvious isn't picked up by the various people that are constantly probing your luggage when you travel.

This isn't an isolated incident either. Just in the ones that are reported by a single Thailand-based news outlet talks about several other people from Europe that tried to smuggle $200,000 + of the plant back home for I suppose street sales.

Apparently there are "mule" operations all over Europe that arrange the pickup for individuals in Thailand, pay for it for them, and all they have to do is try to get it back in the country. With this most recent Brit, he was going to get around $15,000 payout upon successful return. His flight and hotel was arranged and paid for by the masterminds.

Now here is something to consider from all of this. The people that are arranging the mules must have some level of success in getting the weed back there or else they wouldn't bother. So this will bode badly for Thailand I think because people who would like to see the plant forever banned are going to use this as a reason for pressuring Thailand into making marijuana illegal again.

I don't even smoke or use weed for the most part, but I am a big advocate of its legalization. The way I look at it if you can buy a bottle of whiskey legally, there is no justification for why you can't buy marijuana. Actually, there is a lot of more compelling reasons why alcohol should be the illegal thing, not weed. Think about it: how many people do you know that smoke that have gotten into fights in public because of it or acted a fool when really stoned? Probably zero. I know a bunch of people that turn into monsters when they are drunk. It just doesn't make sense and I am sure it has everything to do with corporate interests that we even talk about weed being illegal at all.

I have a friend of mine that regularly takes edibles out of the country in his carry on bag and to me that just seems like playing Russian roulette. He brings small amounts of the stuff but I don't think that customs really differentiates between the two. Do you really want to have to go to court or perhaps be facing jail time over something so small? Also, I don't think that weed or weed products are really all that difficult to obtain in almost any country in the world, so what is the endgame here man?

I just think back on what happened to that woman basketball player in Russia who was smuggling a very small amount of the stuff and they locked her up anyway. For me, I think I'll just run the straight and narrow even though I disagree with the laws.