Any sympathy for the British drug mule in Georgia?

[mids2019]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14723481/drug-mule-suspect-company-director-Chinese-retailers-Amazon.html

I was reading about this girl and actually do have a little symapthy. She is obviously vain, stupid, misguidedly ambitious but I don't know whether she is real player in the drug trade and has probably been groomed into carrying drugs by men promising her the earth.

The penalties for drug smuggling are understandably harsh on Georgia but should the UK try and get her to serve a sentence in the UK?

Exactly, @PhilippaGeorgiou . That was my point. I chose to visit Brunei, therefore I obeyed their laws, which are clear enough. I think most people understand that about foreign travel. It's not about whether you agree with a country's laws or not.

I'm going.
She was not doing a nursing course. That would be University for three years. She had been at her local college, wanting to be a nurse. She's been out of the UK since last May, so not taking it seriously. Probably complete bollocks anyway, reporters have to fill columns.
You know like that gangster shot by the cop who "was an aspiring architect." Just a passing comment picked up by the reporter from his mum, I bet.
Imagine her getting up at 5 am for a twelve hour shift? Hardly.

Not quite international drug smuggling, though.

DS is off to Thailand soon. I hope I have drummed into him what the dangers are. I've backpacked around there and I remember checking my backpack many times. I've seen Bangkok Hilton and Midnight Express.

There have been many stories of British people who get caught drug smuggling abroad. I have little sympathy for people who knowingly do this.

However - many many many British people go to Thailand, Indonesia etc and manage to have an amazing time and come back safely.

Some Big Boys made her do it? Really?

I don't care if she's just done a BTEC in health & social care, she's the last person anybody would want with keys to the drugs cabinet.

NeverDropYourMooncup

OK maybe a nursing career is gone but I do think people do really stupid things for love.

I used to do drugs when I was younger. I knew the penalty for getting caught, I also knew smuggling drugs into a country was the most stupid thing you could do.

It's all glamorous and good until they get caught. Then off come the fake nails, stupid pout, barely there clothes. Out come the glasses, hair in plaits and teenage clothes and the sob stories.

They do. What has that got to do with this case?

Sure, and they have to deal with the consequences of said decisions.

Such is life.

She likely did it for the money.

Like she did when she sold her identity.

She's a drug smuggler engaging in a deeply harmful trade.

She's also stupid enough to post pictures of herself smoking drugs, and as for the oh please totally objectify me menfolk in my itsy bitsy bikini picture, well it makes me want to vomit.

She wanted the lavish lifestyle without the work. She deserves what she gets.

I've certainly done some really stupid things for love, but none involved smuggling kilos of drugs, even at 18. It seems to be the same for most of the population, otherwise we'd have very big prisons with few people on the outside.

It may be true that the brain is not fully mature until the age of 25, but this doesn’t mean that there is no maturity whatsoever at age 24 years, 11 months and 29 days, and it magically arrives in a lump as soon as the person turns 25!

Maturity and sense develop during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. At 25 years old, I was a fully qualified nurse, with a post basic qualification in Theatre nursing, trusted to hold the Dangerous Drug cupboard keys, and to scrub for major surgery. The women I qualified with were running wards, caring for very sick patients. We qualified at about the age of 21 and were expected to take on some very serious responsibilities - no-one was saying we were too immature to be trusted!

No

Quite! Like many others, I was a qualified teacher at 22, and by 25 had been working in an inner city comprehensive school for 3 years. I think most of us 18-25 manage our impulse control and don't go drug trafficking, even when our brains weren't "mature" and we were "only just" adults.

Exactly she broke the law's of another country and will be dealt with accordingly.
If she was serious about becoming a nurse she wouldn't have done this because surely she would have known any conviction for drugs would have barred her from the off.

If being human, or being someone's child, were a defence, there wouldn't be much point in having a criminal justice system anywhere in the world.

Does Georgia have the death sentence?

No it doesn't

Exactly. It’s like people are just throwing out random cliches at this point

“She’s human” “someone’s child” “ people do daft things for love” and “we all make mistakes” blah blah

none of this addresses the fact she’s guilt of a very serious crime that she likely did out of greed and a desire for a quick buck.

If I had to guess, she'll do a couple of years of her sentence in Georgia (and I profoundly hope that she isn't pregnant to inflict this on a baby) and then be shipped back here where she'll do a vastly decreased sentence.

I'd hope she'll be a warning to the "poor, naive, daft, silly" ones who come after her but sadly, I don't think there is that long a memory.

ETA if she ever had any ambition to, she'll never be a nurse now. Thank God. Would you trust her with the keys to a cupboard containing diamorphine?

exacrly, people can say they wanted to be anything without actually taking steps towards achieving it . They’ve chosen to go with nurse because it sounds good and she may have mentioned it once at age 16 or something.

And if she was actually serious about that wel good thing she was caught before she did pursue it - this isn’t the type of person we need there as she’s shown herself to be very deceptive.

I read somewhere that female drugs smugglers get pregnant on purpose hoping they get a lighter sentence if caught. It's all very calculated, so they're not all the innocent, naive teens they pretend to be.

It appears Georgia had liberal laws on drugs and then reversed them.
https://civil.ge/archives/668417

Usually when a country reverses liberal drug laws it means they've had massive social problems as a result. Look at Holland, for example.

No