Over the past two months, 15 foreigners have been detained in Bali for importing marijuana banned in Indonesia. All tourists came from Thailand. An Australian news outlet on February 18 provided a list with the nationality of the perpetrators, with Russia in the first place, followed by the UK, the US, China, and Brazil.
The marijuana that gets into tourists’ bags to Indonesia from Thailand is mainly dried leaves and flowers, a Balinese customs officer commented on the situation. He recalled that cannabis is not allowed in Indonesia, even if it is in the form of drugs for medical use.
Tourists arrived with the drug, authorities said, having forgotten about it or thinking they were okay because they had acquired it legally. Thailand relaxed its laws last summer, legalizing the sale and use of cannabis for medical purposes without a doctor’s prescription and for the preparation of traditional Thai dishes.
Today, in popular tourist resorts – in Pattaya, Phuket, and Koh Samui – hundreds of kiosks sell drugs with a low content of psychoactive drugs. Among them, many work without a license or offer tourists “weed” for smoking, which is also prohibited in Thailand.
In the Thai media, there are frequent reports of police raids to identify violators in the marijuana trade. In particular, a week ago, police confiscated a cannabis vending machine on the island of Koh Lan, to the beaches of which thousands of guests from Pattaya are delivered daily by ferries.
The interest of the Australian publication in the problem of drug trafficking is connected with the story of Chapelle Corby, who was once sentenced to 20 years in prison for marijuana smuggling in Bali.