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Within a day of Bella May Culley being arrested at a Georgian airport for allegedly trying to smuggle 14kg of cannabis, the same fate met another Briton 3,000 miles away.
As Charlotte May Lee stepped off her flight at Bandaranaike International airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka last Monday, the 21-year-old former cabin attendant was arrested for an alleged attempt to bring in £1.2m worth of a synthetic cannabis strain known as kush in her two suitcases.
Both young women had flown alone from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. A potential link between the two cases looks likely to form part of the investigations being carried out by the Georgian and Sri Lankan authorities.
The charges facing the women, as suspected mules for organised crime gangs, could hardly be any more serious.
If found guilty, Lee, from south London, could face a 25-year sentence, while anything from 20 years in jail to life imprisonment would be on the cards for 18-year-old Culley, from County Durham, according to prosecutors.
It is, however, the context that will perhaps be most alarming for any parent whose children may be talking of finding adventure in south-east Asia. Thailand was the first country in Asia to legalise the use and purchase of cannabis leaves in February 2021 and the whole plant in June 2022.
The Thai authorities were trying to alleviate the overcrowding in their prison system.
The evidence suggests that the result has been an opening of the floodgates for the international drug smugglers, who regard naive young travellers as easy prey.
Last summer, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) issued a warning of hefty prison sentences for those coming with cannabis from Thailand, the US and Canada, where the laws on possession have been softened to various degrees in recent years.
The reason for alarm was what the NCA described as a “dramatic” increase in the amount of cannabis being detected and seized at UK airports. Almost 27 tonnes was discovered in 2024 compared with just five tonnes in the previous year. That was up from 2 tonnes in 2022.
Of the 750 smugglers arrested at airports in 2024, the NCA said that 460 had arrived from Thailand. Those being picked up were often young people lured into a false sense that a softening in the laws of their country of departure could be taken as a signal.
“I think it goes on a lot more than people think,” said Darrell Jones, who became the first full-time drug expert witness officer within the Metropolitan police in 2016. “What with legislation coming in certain countries around the world and society in general being desensitised to a certain extent by cannabis use, and with the ability for people to travel so easily, with a focus on easy money.
“Those sorts of groups of people get involved in this sort of consumption of cannabis legally in those countries and before they know it, they’re talking to some people who are offering them probably a significant amount of cash. And they think it’s a great idea at the time, and especially if they’re running out of money.”
In the case of Lee, it is known that she had flown out to Thailand in April to celebrate her 21st birthday courtesy of her older sister, who was meeting her from Australia, where she lives.
She had previously enjoyed a summer contract as a cabin attendant for Tui but she had been training as a beauty therapist specialising in eyelashes. Lee had the travel bug – her social media profiles were full of photographs of white sandy beaches and parties abroad. But money was tight. Photographs published by the Sri Lanka customs narcotics control unit in Colombo suggest that the drugs allegedly in Lee’s luggage were in large vacuum packed bags, indicating a high level of professionalism.
The drugs found in the luggage of Culley, who has claimed in her only court appearance in Tbilisi that she is pregnant, were also allegedly discovered in hermetically sealed packages.
Her family said she had initially gone abroad at Easter with a friend on a backpacking adventure after finishing an access course at Middlesbrough college. She wanted to be a nurse.
Her grandfather, William Culley, said that her first port of call had been the Philippines to “see somebody, a lad there, who she used to go out with a couple of years ago, who was working out there”.
She had then gone on to Bangkok on 3 May, according to her mother, Lyanne Culley, but had not called last Saturday as arranged, causing alarm.
Culley’s social media profiles suggested that a boyfriend was in tow. She was photographed riding on the back of motorcycles and lounging on sunny beaches in the company of a male figure who was never clearly pictured or named.
One TikTok was captioned: “Don’t care if we on the run baby as long as I’m next to u.”
Another video showing her relaxing, had the caption: ‘Blonde or brunette? Erm, how about we get up to criminal activities side by side like Bonnie n Clyde making heavy figures and fcking on balconies all over the world.”
Culley is now reportedly being held in Tbilisi prison No 5, Georgia’s only female prison.
“I really didn’t want her to go to Thailand,” her mother was reported as saying. “I begged her to come home. I don’t trust some of the boys over there. But she wanted to meet up with some friends she made over there on a previous trip. I don’t know who any of them are.”
Giorgi Lekishvili, a former prosecutor who is now a defence lawyer at Lawyers.ge, said that there would be a preliminary hearing by 1 July but that Culley faced nine months in jail before the case even got to trial.
Culley has been utterly shaken by events, her lawyer has said, and is yet to see her father, Niel Culley, 49, who has travelled from his home in Vietnam to be with her.
“When I explained to her that what she was accused of was an especially severe crime then she was concerned and visibly shaken,” said Ia Todua, a defence lawyer provided to Culley by the Georgian authorities. “My impression was that she ended up in Georgia without even knowing what she was doing. She looked like she didn’t expect it to have such severe consequences.”
