Cannabis Gut-Smugglers: Reasons and Risks

Drug muling's a dirty way to earn money. Every year thousands of people around the world get locked up for it, and for every soul that gets nicked humping drugs across a border there's another ten desperados, outlaws or skint adventure seekers willing to step into their hooves.

Drug muling's a dirty way to earn money. Every year thousands of people around the world get locked up for it, and for every soul that gets nicked humping drugs across a border there's another ten desperados, outlaws or skint adventure seekers willing to step into their hooves.

There's a multitude of different ways to get drugs across borders; the big-timers and the big stashes obviously have to be transported in vehicles of some description but the smaller amounts are often smuggled in peoples stomachs. Most of these gut-smugglers are independents, people trying to make enough wedge to make it through the next few months or pay for their plane ticket - very few of them are career criminals and even fewer of them are rich. SSUK has managed to find a couple of cannabis gut-smugglers willing to talk about the risks they take, the reasons they do it and the scams they face...

Bill, 47, from the UK:

"I started smuggling in my belly about twenty years ago, after my first couple of trips to India. Loads of people around me were doing it and they were living the life I wanted, I was gutted to be going home to work in that bloody factory again. I'd been thinking about it then one day I just thought ‘fuck it, if they can do it and live to tell the tale then so can I'."

About twenty years after his first time, we bumped into Bill a very short distance from some big pot fields. These days he's happily married with a couple of young kids, but times are tough so he packed his bags and headed for 'the mountain'...

"I can do half a key no worries, some people I know can do a whole one (kilo) but they're big guys! This is the first time I've done it in years though - you know how things are, I've got a mortgage, kids to feed and work is drying up badly... If I don't do this then there's gonna be another destitute family on the streets in a couple of months time."

Ben, 38, a traveller, also from the UK:

"I don't need much money to live, I made it through last year on about five grand. Whenever I fly I try and make my money back on tobacco, and when I'm away I buy anything I think I can sell back home; clothes, pipes, bongs, stones, jewellery, but dope's the easiest to get rid of and it's the most profitable. I do a few hundred grams two or three times a year - I love the smoke, my mates love the smoke so me doing this keeps us all happy!"

"Most of the risk is avoided by good wrapping, I always wrap my own and I double wrap it cos it goes through me in about eighteen hours - if any of it comes out before it should then I can take the outer wrap off, rewrap it and swallow it again. I had to start doing that cos I went to catch a plane once but there was a massive delay so I ended up losing a couple of ounces down a plane toilet! Some people take Immodium to keep it all in but that stuff sticks to the dope like cement, it's a right twat to get off, I'd rather just reswallow it."

Being pitched up in the dope Mecca that we are in at the time of writing, we've also been able to find someone who could supply dope ready to swallow:

"These are five gram eggs, some people like four grams, some people like six grams but five is easy - good for counting and good for swallowing. Look..."

Our ‘man' puts a cling-filmed five gram wrap on the floor and stamps on it...

"...See, if car drive over then no problem, no break - we test before, my eggs strong. I have one friend, he works [here] and then goes home every weekend - every weekend he take one kilo in his stomach, he do this for one and half year but now he just start to have blood when it comes out, now he must to stop for six months."

Blood coming out of the business end? That doesn't sound good...

Bill: "Getting it out of the other end can be a nightmare, you always count them in carefully, make a mental note of how many you've swallowed, check your poo's after the first twelve hours but they never all come out at once - the first time freaked me out a bit, I was still five eggs short two days after they started coming out. After about four or five days I was still one short. I thought I must've miscounted or missed it somehow, I didn't want to think it might've disappeared into me forever, and then it popped out - god knows where it was hiding but it always happens like that, you get used to carrying your little bowl around with you and poking through your poo for days at a time, it's fucking disgusting. I never shit blood though."

Ben: "It isn't just getting it out the other end that can be a nightmare. I scored my stash once, went round to check it out first and it was beautiful hash, we did the deal, I got it back to the hotel and opened one to have a celebration smoke but it was different to what I thought I'd bought, very average gear - the bastard must've pulled a bag switch on me cos he disappeared after that, that was an expensive lesson!"

Out of all the things people smuggle in their gut pot has to be one of the most innocuous, but it's still a risk if you don't know what you're doing - maybe you'll get ripped off when you buy it, maybe you'll get caught out by a delayed flight, maybe you'll get nicked at the airport, maybe maybe maybe...

The real point of the issue here is that as long as drugs are ‘illegal' then they will be smuggled, and as long as there are people who're desperate for cash then there will be people who smuggle drugs in their stomachs; whether it's someone like Bill, risking his freedom to keep a roof over his family's heads, or Ben, using his smuggling proceeds to avoid dealing with life's responsibilities, or the guy who risked his health for riches by smuggling a kilo a week for a year and a half... This is but another angle that must be considered in the on-going debate about legalisation.