December 07, 2005

Australian arrested in Italy for drug trafficking. Although he was arrested in August, the story has just been released today that Australian citizen Kevin (Fuc Iang) Lay, was arrested for allegedly smuggling cocaine. Of late there have been many reports of Australians being arrested in other countries for drug trafficking. But are the number of offenders on the rise - or is it the media's latest favourite topic?

There is currently a lack of recent information on world trends of illicit drug trafficking - the latest I could find was from the United nations - Office on drugs and crime site. Recent stories include: Bali 9 : Van Tuong Nguyen : Schapelle Corby : Michelle Leslie. With the funeral of Van Tuong Nguyen this week, and his execution last week, there has been much discussion regarding several Asian countries applying the death penalty to cases of drug smuggling, and the strong feeling in Australia that they should abolish it. On the other hand - if you smuggle drugs through Asia you know what the penalty will be. It's no secret - since Barlow and Chambers were hung in Malaysia in 1986, for smuggling heroine - we've known that executions will take place - and no Australian Prime Minister who sticks his nose in will be able to stop it. sorry about all the wikipedia links

posted by gomichild 18 years ago
  • It's just a media thing.
  • Nonesense! It's the Aussie crims returning to type! *runs away*
  • Right now i think it is just tub-thumping by the media - when you are on a good thing etc... Aussies have been caught overseas and for that matter here many times before - it just isn't newsworthy if there is no capital punishment involved! Oh and for an update of the source countries try the CIA factbook
  • aaaaaaagh try again
  • ok or this and now I promise to fade quietly into the background sssshhhhh
  • Dammit I looked all over that site and couldn't find anything later than 2003...cheers fly
  • Media hype. A few suggestions as to why. 1) European heritaged (ok, white) Aussies might not attract as much attention from the drug preventing authorities in the nearer Asian countries. Then of course the ones who are caught would have more media response. Race is possibly an issue, but this is more likely in Asia. 2) Lingerie model Michelle Leslie only had a couple of pills, as I remember, but created her own controversy. Nguyen had a significant amount of heroin, and was executed. The Bali 9 were effectively turned in by the Australian authorities. The media would likely pay much more attention to these than an average Joe Blow with a pill or two who faced a few months in prison. You have Fox News there, right? Young Aussies seem to travel for extended periods, and work in other countries during this time. Carrying drugs is easy money and light work, compared to sitting behind a counter in a ski shop in Whistler, or calling home and asking for more funds from the parents. Some of them will get caught, and appear on the news. Some won't, and you'll never hear about them.
  • Woah! Back up there... Did you say 'lingerie model'? Should I be clicking on the links?
  • [Paging Tracicle - Not a huge deal but if you get around to it can you put some spaces in the post title? Like change "XXX...XXXX..." to "XXX... XXX... " It's too long to fit in the sidebar and is giving all the MoFi pages a horizontal scrollbar... thank you, that is all.]
  • [i'm sorry about my dot fanaticism there btw... little suckers are just so addictive... yes yes they've already paid me out on #mofirc about it]
  • I'm Australian. I have smuggled drugs. Want to make something of it?