The arrest of UK national George Wilson, 23, for possession of 9.1 kg of “ice” in a Bangkok hotel room has sparked especially heated debate. Crystal meth in a person’s possession, unlike cannabis, is subject to strict laws. In June 2024 a new regulation was announced that possessing more than one pill, or 20 milligrams, will result in prosecution making it much harder to prove the drug was intended for personal use rather than trafficking. According to Thailand Bail, criminal defense lawyers in Thailand, the previous rule was more than five such pills.
If Mr Wilson is found guilty, he will not be executed. Although Thai law technically allows death by injection on a gurney for serious trafficking offences, there has been only a handful of executions in Thailand in the last 12 years for murder and none for drugs possession. No foreigner has been executed in Thailand in the last 50 years and he was a Japanese national in unrelated circumstances.
A person accused of meth possession here can put forward in court a number of defences, such as challenging the evidence or the police procedures and emphasizing mitigating factors such as lack of a criminal history. In recent years, Thai courts have taken note of the existence of Thai mules, often naive foreigners receiving modest cash rewards for transporting drugs to another country for resale. Such defences, of course, do not excuse criminal behaviour and the most common penalty is a Thai jail sentence of between 5 and 20 years. A life sentence is possible.
The UK and Thailand have an extradition treaty, but this does not facilitate an easy transfer. Any agreement has to be ratified by the British government as well as by the Thai attorney general. The offence in question must have double-criminality, that is behaviour illegal in both countries, and not be “political” in nature. The interplay of diplomacy, national legislation and human rights is complex and usually takes years to complete. Once in UK, a felon’s case is considered by the courts there. But extradition is a future long shot.
Prisoners Abroad, a British charity, believes that the Thai delisting of cannabis as a narcotic in 2022 has been partly responsible for the surge in arrests worldwide for possession of pot. However, Mr Wilson’s case concerns crystal meth, a drug with severe penalties for possession and trafficking. Thailand’s narcotics control board believes that as many as 1.5 million Thais used methamphetamines in 2024. Most of it is believed smuggled from synthetic drugs production in the Golden Triangle where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet. “Ice” is classified here as a category one narcotic. That’s the same group as heroin.
