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?

Absolutely. The more coverage the better.
I like to think my children are better educated than this - god knows we've dinned basic messages about drugs into them enough times - but the thought of life in a prison far away is absolutely terrifying.
Cannabis use is a huge trigger of MH deterioration. It isn't a "safe drug".

You do know the age of criminal responsibility is 10?

Yeah some of us got ourselves a bit drunk and had to have our dad’s come and pick us up at 1am a bit worse of swear …. Slightly different to international drug smuggling.

I admire her for aiming high (no pun intended!) but I think this well exceeds doing something stupid when young!

Let’s not apply double standards. If the circumstances were otherwise identical, but this person was male, nobody would sympathise with them. They would be regarded as a drug smuggler, not an ‘exploited’ girl.

She is an adult. She knew drug smuggling is illegal, but allegedly chose to do it anyway. She will now face the consequences of her choices, and rightly so.

Your 19 year old is VERY naive then

Christ, she's still a bloody child. You don't suddenly turn into fully mature adult on the day you turn 18...

The law says you do. She's not a child, she's a grown woman, old enough to understand the consequences of her actions and has to pay the price for getting caught.

I'm from the generation when the school leaving age was 15. I had mates who were out earning a living at that age (including one in the merchant navy). Age 18 is not a "child".

But not drug trafficking, surely?!

So sympathy from me. She's a fraudster and a drug smuggler. This isn't one lapse in judgement.

Exactly. An adult who was very boastful of her life choices of social media - until she got caught.

"Christ, she's still a bloody child"
In which case, why are 18 year olds allowed to vote, go to university, work full time, get married and join the armed forces?.

There’s a difference between doing a stupid thing and being an international drug smuggler. This is another level of stupidity. I have zero sympathy.

"...they're still children..."

The law disagrees with you. She's an adult.

We do 18 year olds no favours by describing them as children. Yes, of course they will carry on maturing as they get older, but the reason so many of them are unprepared for adult life is because they are given no expectations or responsibilities as teenagers and are treated much younger than their age. It's not that far in the past that most working class 16 year olds would be working full time and they would have been expected to act like an adult at 18. In this case, who knows, it's possible that she has some vulnerabilities which explain her stupid decision.

Oh absolutely. I remember when I was 18 I thought I’d revised everything I needed to for my Biology A-level exam, so I went out with my friends the day before my exam instead of studying. Then got into the exam and realised I’d missed an entire topic. That was pretty stupid.
I didn’t smuggle drugs though.

There's a series Nicole Kidman made at the start of her career called Bangkok Hilton. It should be compulsory viewing for any young person going abroad. However, her character was genuinely innocent unlike most of the greedy wannabe gangsters carrying huge amounts of drugs that they certainly know about.

Maybe think about how many people's lives will be ruined by the drugs she was happy to carry. Not just the drug takers but their families. I just wish this country would be as harsh with drug runners as other countries are.

Drugs ruin lives. Not violent no, but I don't think it's right to downplay it in this way.

Just saying.

No sympathy at all. It doesn't take a genius to know that smuggling drugs is illegal and likely to lead to a long stay in prison.

Jailing the drug mules does nothing to stop the drugs trade. The actual criminals distributing the drugs are just gonna find sometime else - it does nothing to stop the real problem

exactly. On the one hand There had been so much talk recently of 16 year olds getting the vote and lots of people going on about what an amazing idea this is as they are all so grown up at that age and have a detailed understanding of local and world events in order to be a able to cast a vote for the candidate that represents all their views.

on the others hand, 18 - a child who apparently could accidentally fall into drug smuggling and didn’t realise the consequences.

Which bit was the "one stupid mistake"?

The passport fraud with the Chinese criminal gangs?

The international drug smuggling?

Indeed. She travelled via UAE, so she's extremely lucky she wasn't apprehended there.

Stupid things, yes. Drug smuggling, not so much.

I have sympathy for her family and less for her; it seems inconceivable that she didn’t know not to carry a bag through customs for a boyfriend.
She must be well travelled if her dad lives in Vietnam and from social media it seems she knew she was on the wrong side of the law. However it was cannabis not cocaine so spending many years in prison would seem excessive.

She’s 3 years older than Shamima Begum was. Do the people claiming that she is “just a child” feel the same way for Shamima?