Monday, June 09, 2014

American busted for Mary Jane

A small night market in Taipei.

TT reports:
The Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday indicted a 37-year-old US man for violating the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例) by growing nearly 300 marijuana plants in a house in Changhua County’s Yuanlin Township (員林).
Please don't be stupid: the judicial system is decades behind here and marijuana is still classified with dangerous hard drugs as a dangerous drug and dealers, even low level dealers, are punished accordingly. Foreigners who come here and sell drugs usually do not operate with police or gang protection. They are freelancers  often working established territories belonging to someone else. Moreover, the police love to bust foreigners -- it enables them to feed all the local foreign tropes --- and locals are happy to sell out foreign dealers to get brownie points with the police. Although I have not heard of many busts, they typically have this same pattern -- the police get a tip-off and only the foreigner gets punished, his local friends, middlemen, and dealers aren't bothered.

Don't sell drugs here, it just ain't worth it.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That Angeline Jolie link has a good blurb, I'll repost here for those who may not click the link:

Others observed that "the psychological quality of the people of the Celestial Empire is so delicate, a tiny bit of teasing and they fall to pieces," and "the Chinese have such fragile self-esteems, they simply cannot abide by any viewpoint other than what the Communist Party gives them."

Some even suggested a boycott of all things Brangelina over the comments, until Taiwanese netizens reminded them, "Don't you guys just watch pirated movies anyway?"

The Chinese then had a better idea: "The best kind of boycott isn't to not watch [their movies], but to watch pirated editions, and share them online!"


btw, here is the trailer to the Luc Besson/SJ movie that was recently filmed in Taipei. lucy