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?

Having 14 kilos of drugs in your bag is not a silly mistake. I feel sorry that she has been so monumentally stupid. Do all the people saying she's a child and her brain isn't fully formed do you think all the teenagers currently in British prisons should be afforded the same leniency you are advocating here? I imagine you don't think foreigners and young men breaking British laws deserve the same levels of sympathy.

I'm not sure about the low IQ - she'd apparently just completed an access course to become a student nurse so I'd have thought she'd be of at least average intelligence.

I do, as I have teenagers and if that happened it would be my first nightmare. Feel for her parents. She is young and naive, no that’s no defence, but I do have some sympathy for her.

You don’t think she has any responsibility for her actions ??

Haha there’s stupid then there’s trafficking drugs stupid.

Exactly that. She made stupid, illegal and dangerous choices, but her ultimate stupidity was chronicling all that on social media, including her with a big pile of cash. How effing thick can you be?

But actually, it’s more than stupidity, it’s social media’s affect on young brains. You choose your avatar, you pout and duck-face, you take those stupid selfies and pose like a model - not for a joke, but because social media has made you think you’re the star of your own blockbuster movie. Reality is pushed into the background.

Do I feel sorry for her? A smidgeon, I suppose, because of her age, but, if found guilty, she needs punishment to make her understand what she did was wrong, and to give her some humility. I was struck by the difference in her social media pics and her in the court room. That’s the real her - the court room version - and she’d do well to remember that.

If she’s found guilty, I think she should serve some prison time in Georgia to knock the lesson in, then be transferred back to the U.K. to serve more time. Personally, I’d make lecturing other young people about stupid choices and the unreality of social media and danger of vanity and arrogance a condition of her release.

She definitely won’t be middle class.

It’s more likely she’s seen the money this has provided her as a way of getting out, and getting access to better “stuff.”

I know some lassies like her: young and daft.
she gives the impression of being someone very low in intelligence.

yeah; I do feel a bit sorry for her: a year in jail is probably enough: but she’ll be made an example of .
while the real baddies are getting away with it

I suppose a small amount of sympathy in that she’s young and apparently easily swayed, That’s as far as it goes though, I don’t think anyone could claim not to know the potential consequences of smuggling drugs and this was hardly a little tiny bit but several kilos, she will now have to suffer the consequences, whether she was incredibly naive , plain stupid or knew exactly what she was doing.

Nah.

She’s young, naive, and all the things mentioned but drug smuggling is illegal and she knew that.

Where are you getting all the info about her IQ and mental health status?!

And as for looking scared in court - well yes. We all would.

She hasn't been tricked here - she sold her passport details, got a taste for easy money, and decided she liked the high life and tried to fly kilos of drugs for a bigger pay cheque.

Huh?? Stupid things like agreeing to smuggle drugs??

Sure, we all did stupid things… but 99.999% of us managed to stay within the law 👍🏻

I have zero sympathy for this girl.

There’s a helluva lot of UK kids get caught up in the drugs trade in the UK alone, and there’s the frequent stabbings to prove it. It would be lovely if all the adults on here who regularly justify their drug use, thought for a second about what they are complicit in.

No sympathy whatsoever. She's a complete idiot. Was hoping for a champagne lifestyle based on others' misery and fucked up.

Money, glamour.

This! Zero sympathy whatsoever so don’t want her costing the UK taxpayer anything.

Nope. No sympathy for greedy idiots.

Nope, stupid games stupid prizes etc.

Well. Quite. It's the "young white woman" syndrome.

Zero sympathy.

Why would the UK taxpayer want her back?

In what way is she "uneducated"? She knew what she was doing was criminal. It wasn't a couple of spliffs for her own use.

Any sympathies I have are for the families who's lives are ruined by addicts.

I do. I have 18 and 19 yr olds. They think they know everything but they're just kids.

Weve never explicitly had a "you know not to smuggle drugs" conversation until now, I just assumed they knew that's a bad decision. But we've spelled it out to them now.

My son was horrified by how long this girl might be in prison. He didn't realise the penalties could be so severe. And he was really upset that her family haven't been allowed to see her.

I think he honestly thought that the foreign office or her parents or a lawyer would just arrive and take her home minus the drugs and that would be that.

You can't have it both ways.

Either you're an adult at 18, and you live with the legal consequences of that, or you're a child until 25 and you live with the societal consequences of that.

If you want 24 year olds to be treated as children they should be under parental supervision - no travelling alone, no going away to Uni, no living alone, no drinking, etc., etc.

Otherwise you're creating an age group without adult responsibility but with adult freedom.

It's like the 'Schrödinger's Teenager' paradox I've seen mooted on here before, with parents who think their kids should be free to shag who they want when they want in the parents' house because "they're all growed up now, awww..." but still treat them as little kids and have to get involved when it comes to issues with an employer, etc.

Great idea 👍