Why is Dubai using drug laws to harass tourists?

[grude]

http://www.ameinfo.com/147878.html

Keith Andrew Brown, a client of FTI, was recently sentenced to four years in prison after 0.003g of cannabis was found in the tread of his shoe by customs officials in Dubai during transit from Ethiopia to London. FTI said such a tiny amount would not be visible to the naked eye, and would weigh less than a single grain of sugar.

In another case, a Swiss national is currently serving four years after three poppy seeds were found on his clothes by customs officials at Dubai airport. He had bought and eaten a bread roll at Heathrow before flying to UAE, FTI said.

‘What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person,’ Wolthuizen said.
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You can find more info on these cases elsewhere, there was also the case of a British woman arrested in Dubai after she had her blood tested on entering the country and they found trace amounts of codeine in it.

Can someone explain to me just what is going on here? What on earth is the motivation for Dubai to search tourists for microscopic traces of drugs, even to the sickening extent of testing their BODILY FLUIDS! and then putting them in prison for years and years, it makes no sense. Is this political, a message being sent to Britain and other countries, customs official’s bribery scheme gone awry? Where these tourists targeted specifically for some reason?

[Lightnin]

I honestly can’t imagine why they’re doing it, except perhaps to say, “We don’t really need tourism dollars, so what the hell”.

Dubai is a fucked up place- I don’t get why people want to go there. My wife and I are very affectionate towards one another, and I just know that we’d forget where we were and kiss… and one or both of us would end up in jail.

[obbn]

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

[Zerc]

I see that the article linked to is almost four years old. I wonder if it still happening.

[isaiahrobinson]

My personal experience in Dubai is that they’re actually very lenient with Western tourists. It felt like you’d be likely to get away with warnings unless you did something they couldn’t really ignore. But this BBC article backs up what the OP’s saying, and I don’t know more details about it or why they would be so absurdly strict with their drug laws.

[Push_You_Down]

The people arrested didn’t want to pay the bribe?

[whc.03grady]

@grude

Can someone explain to me just what is going on here? What on earth is the motivation for Dubai to search tourists for microscopic traces of drugs, even to the sickening extent of testing their BODILY FLUIDS! and then putting them in prison for years and years, it makes no sense. Is this political, a message being sent to Britain and other countries, customs official’s bribery scheme gone awry? Where these tourists targeted specifically for some reason?

I thought it was obvious enough.

Not to be controversial or offensive or anything, but Dubai is in the UAE, an Islamic country. Further, it is on the Arabian peninsula, the whole of which is taken to be quasi-sacred by many Muslims. All intoxicating drugs are expressly prohibited in the Koran.

I suppose it’d be on par with walking around Jerusalem in shoes wet with bacon grease, or having the wrapper from a Quarter-Pounder in your pocket while visiting a Hindu temple. Some people take religion very seriously–is this such a big surprise?