One passenger who arrived in Japan’s Narita airport left with a little present from customs in their luggage – just over five ounces of weed! Before any friends start making travel plans, I should point out that this was a mistake, not some sort of bizarre lottery. The story is that a customs official placed the cannabis (no one seems to know what strain it was) in a member of the public’s suitcase; normally this is done with dummy suitcases, to check that the sniffer dogs were capable of detecting narcotics.
Unfortunately, the dog on patrol did not notice the marijuana, and as the drug had been wrongly placed in a ‘live’ suitcase, rather than the normal airport’s own property, it left the airport.
Some sources have placed the value of the drugs at £5000, though this seems as though the press are doing their normal no-clue guesstimate, as this would mean each Oz was worth £1000. This would mean an eighth cost £125 – not even premium bud comes anywhere near that value, unless Japan has a truly horrendous mark up on their grass.
[edit]
Wow, turns out that price may not have been so unrealistic – IF they sold it in teenths, rather than bulk…
May 28th, 2008 9:14 am
Wow, I’m glad this graph isn’t accurate for Australia in 2008. If it were it would mean the average price for 7g (i.e. 1/4 oz) would be nearly double the current market at Au$190 instead of Au$100. This still works out more expensive than the UK but only just, not over 5 times as demonstrated above… Allegedly 🙂
p.s. What’s with the cute puppy dog picture? Is this an ferocious drug detector in training?
May 28th, 2008 1:50 pm
Indeed, it is a generic picture of a dog looking sad, in an attempt to convey just how the sniffer dog might feel if it understood what had gone wrong.
I’m glad that your friends are not finding the price so high over there. I’m not sure how accurate the graph can really be, especially as people aren’t known for selling in individual grams in many countries (Amsterdam excluded). In this case, you would have to try and find a standard weight that was sold everywhere, to ensure that bulk discounts weren’t erroneously applied in some cases. Also the quality comes into account as well – I’m assuming the South African cheap stuff is just bush weed?
May 28th, 2008 3:14 pm
That’s my long lost puppy who ran off with my dope !
May 28th, 2008 3:55 pm
{{Note to non-UK readers, dope is almost exclusively used as a term for _weed_ in Britain, rather than any Class A’s…}}