Most travellers know that possession of cannabis has been decriminalised in Amsterdam, and that you can consume small amounts in coffee shops with impunity, yet most people wouldn’t be so dumb as to try to take some home.
Fewer people might know that the mildly addictive herb Khat (or Qat) that is widely consumed in North Africa and Arabia is also legal in the United Kingdom, yet many people have been arrested taking it from there, to other countries in Europe.
Yet did you know that if you take a common painkiller that contains codeine (which can be bought over the counter all over the world) or certain cold and flu remedies, and then fly through the United Arab Emirates even days later, you can be locked up for a mandatory four years for possession of a banned substance?
The BBC News website is reporting a number of worrying cases where people have fallen foul of the stringent UAE drug laws, which are backed up with very sensitive detection equipment.
Substances – even miniscule amounts – can be found on your person, or even through blood or urine samples! A British man is facing four years in prison for having 0.003g of cannabis stuck the the sole of his shoe – an amount weighing less than a grain of sugar, and invisible to the human eye! Even more bizarrely, a Swiss National is currently serving four years in prison, after three poppy seeds from a bread roll which he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes!
The organisation, Fair Trials Abroad , has a list of pharmaceuticals and medicines which are banned in the UAE. Even if you study this list, and stick to it for weeks before your departure, I would have to say, why bother? With recent studies finding that 99.9% of UK banknotes and 94% of Euro banknotes carry traces of cocaine, then the only safe advice for travellers must be to avoid ALL travel to the UAE, or even changing planes in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, lest you might end up with the mother of all plane delays – four years in the slammer! You have been warned!
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