JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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Eric_USA
It's bad enough that travellers have to worry about smugglers putting drugs in their luggage. Now a customs officer has done this? The passenger was very lucky, things turned out OK but the officer's thoughtless act put this passenger in a lot of danger. What happens when an incident like this collides with zero-tolerance drug laws? An innocent person might have had his life destroyed.
What if the passenger had been caught with these drugs by Japanese police? How would the police know that the drugs were there because of a botched (and illegal) procedure in customs? Even if customs explained the situation, they couldn't identify the passenger, so how could the passenger prove that he was indeed the victim of this incident? At best, he might be exonerated after a very scary experience; at worst, several years in a Japanese prison!
Even worse, what if the passenger had only been in transit (and couldn't check his luggage before getting on his next flight)? If he then landed at his destination in possession of that cannabis, he would have a very hard time explaining to the local authorities why the drugs were there. Even an official explanation from Japan might not be enough.
A reprimand is nowhere near enough punishment. This customs officer should be fired, and maybe even charged with drug trafficking. The use of passenger luggage for drug detection experiments is totally illegal and immoral!!
Posted in: Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita