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A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison. Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes. Dubai International Airport is a major hub for the Middle East and thousands of Britons pass through it every year to holiday in the glamorous beach and shopping haven.
But many of those tourists and business travellers are likely to be unaware of the strict zero-tolerance drugs policy in the UAE.
..Mrs Wolthuizen added: "We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for 'possession' of three poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow. ..
I still contend, these laws are insane and there is no civilized defense for it.
I would tend to agree with you, but you're not trying to deny Dubai its sovereignty are you?
One of the the terribly frustrating things, I know, about sovereign destinations outside the West is that they don't have to be like the West. And many may rail about how inappropriate they are being by not being Western enough (heaven knows, I have done often enough) but perhaps we should all accept that it's up to them to define their standards, isn't it?
Or else we're just a bunch of wannabe neo-colonialists, aren't we?
Actually Japan is pretty damn strict about personal drug possession too and in places like Malaysia and the Philippines (as mentioned higher up in this thread) if you have seven ounces of cannabis in your pocket (and quite possibly less), the state will kill you.
Which makes Dubai seem lenient by comparison (if, nevertheless, ridiculously over the top by our standards).
I would tend to agree with you, but you're not trying to deny Dubai its sovereignty are you?
Not at all. They are welcome to enforce their laws. But they have to be resonable. I have no problem with them going after people bringing usable amounts of illegal narocotics into their country. That makes sense to me. But the dude with the speck on his shoe, or somebody who takes a aspirin with codeine in it 2 days before they arrive in Dubai .... that is a different matter. Like I said, they are enforing their laws on other territories at that point, that is wrong, uncivilized and unfair.
This whole thing is going to backfire gloriously. They are trying to make Dubai a tourist destination and a transportion hub between the Western Nations and Asia, the Middle East and Africa. So they soon must realize they are not the morality police for the entire international traveling public.
