Victor, I don't think it's necessarily targeted at Brits, I think it's just a case of a bureaucracy gone wild and falling all over themselves trying to do the numbers ones bidding.
I honestly believe that Rashid Al Maktoum wants to open Dubai up to tourism to replace oil as an income stream, and I also believe that he has probably given out some sort of vague directive to curtail the use of drugs, and that it is the actual implementation that has simply gone absolutely crazy and lost all perspective wheer you not only get arrested for importing the stuff which would be understandable...
But no, it's enough to get arrested and face 4 years in prison because of naturally occurring hormones like melatonin, or because somebody had some drugs on the soles of their shoes (?!?!?!) which in all fairness has nothing to do with that person, all that shows is that that person walked somewhere where drugs were used, which in reality is pretty much everywhere, or that you face the threat of 4 years in prison just because of prescription medicine, all of that is just intolerable and cannot be in the interest of Dubai.
But as the place isn't a democracy with checks and balances I'd assume that Maktoum either isn't aware of what's going on or, being accustomed to yes sayers like every good dictator, can't see the consequences or the proper context.
That said the USA is allegedly a democracy with checks and balances yet that still doesn't prevent them having the highest proportion of its citizens of any western country incarcerated in usually pretty barbaric prisons:
"U.S. Prison Population Sets Record
Associated Press
Friday, December 1, 2006; Page A03
A record 7 million people -- one in every 32 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows.
"Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails," Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that supports criminal justice reform, said in a statement.
From 1995 to 2003, inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth."
Continued:
U.S. Prison Population Sets Record - washingtonpost.com
Also see:
US Has the Most Prisoners in the World
"The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.
The biggest joke or rather largest tragedy is that these examples of Big Brother Police States clearly demonstrate the counterproductive nature of such insanity.
The war on drugs in the US hasn't worked any better than the previous war against alcohol during the prohibition.
The only effect it had was making organized crime rich, while criminalizing otherwise innocent citizens, courtesy of having wasted enormous amounts of said taxpayers money.
This place is AWESOME !
