Thousands of British nationals are charged with drug smuggling abroad every year. The UK charity Prisoners Abroad reports a rise in the number of British people imprisoned abroad for drug offences in 2024-25, compared to the previous year, especially women under 34.
Two recent examples making headlines are Bella May Culley, an 18-year-old woman from County Durham, and Charlotte May Lee, a 21-year-old from south London. Culley was arrested in Georgia with 14 kilos of cannabis. Lee was arrested in Sri Lanka, with 46 kilos of synthetic cannabis (she has denied knowing it was in her bag and has yet to be charged).
If they are convicted, Culley and May face very long sentences. Reports suggest that Culley could receive up to 20 years or life imprisonment in Georgia. In Sri Lanka, May faces a sentence of up to 25 years.
And another three young Britons face the death penalty after being charged with smuggling nearly a kilo of cocaine into Indonesia. All of these cases are ongoing and the suspects have not been found guilty of any crime.
Why would people take the risk of such harsh punishments?
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For my book Drug Mules: Women in the International Cocaine Trade, I spent over a year visiting prisons in Ecuador to speak to people convicted of drug trafficking. I spoke to drug mules as well as people who recruited and managed them to understand how the business works. I spoke to people from the UK, Europe, the US, southeast Asia and Africa.
My research sheds light on how drug mules end up carrying such massive quantities, and why harsh punishments are an ineffective deterrent.
Who becomes a drug mule?
The abiding stereotype of the drug mule is someone who is motivated by poverty, often a woman from a drug-producing country. In fact, like most areas of crime, the majority of people arrested for smuggling drugs worldwide are men.
People’s motivations for trafficking drugs are extremely varied. In my research, I came across people motivated by grinding poverty, debts or a chance to make a change in their lives. The sums they were promised ranged from £5,000 to £10,000.
Some people didn’t expect to get paid at all, however. They became involved through debt (theirs or a family member’s), and carrying drugs was offered as a way to repay the debt. In rare cases, people became involved through threats and coercion.
There are, broadly, two kinds of people arrested at international borders with drugs. The first is carrying drugs that they have bought (and packed) themselves, and probably only a small quantity which they might use or sell for a modest profit. They probably also bought their own tickets to travel.
One trafficker I interviewed recalled that he carried only a few hundred grams of cocaine in a talc bottle. If caught, they can face custody, depending on the type and amount of drugs.
The second kind is carrying drugs that someone else has paid for – they are drug mules. The person paying for the drugs (we could call them the investor) decides what is smuggled, where to and how it will be concealed – not the mule.
Investors are, of course, motivated by profit: five kilos will be more profitable than just the one. And so, mules tend to carry much larger amounts than those carrying their own drugs.
Drug mules typically do not know what they are carrying, or how much. When people working as drug mules receive the drugs, they arrive ready to evade customs. In some cases, more professional groups might pay a specialist to conceal the drugs more effectively.
Traffickers have been known to evade detection by concealing cocaine in clear plastic products.
Many people working as drug mules are misled about where they are travelling to, or may not know they are carrying drugs.
Long sentences
Understanding more about the role of drug mules sheds light on the harsh sentences that people accused of drug importation – like Culley and May – are facing. Possible sentences are very long, not only because Sri Lanka and Georgia have extremely tough drug laws, but also because of the large quantities of drugs involved.
When it comes to sentencing people for drug offences, the quantity of the drug (or, in some countries the monetary value) has long been taken as a proxy for harm. As I have argued in my research, this is a disproportionate and unfair punishment.
The key UN treaty on narcotic drugs requires countries to criminalise and punish activities relating to illegal drugs. The convention labels drug addiction as “evil”, paving the way for very harsh punishments for those who sell or transport drugs.
Drug trafficking can even be punished by death in some countries – over 600 people were executed globally in 2024. In many cases, people were executed even though they were in possession of relatively small quantities of an illegal drug – often less than 100g.
Each nation makes its own laws, but broadly speaking, more drugs means more punishment. This seems logical and proportionate, unless the person being charged with drug trafficking hasn’t made those decisions. And, as my research found, drug mules tend to be carrying larger quantities, paid for by investors or even groups of investors.
The job of the drug mule is characterised by exploitation rather than choice. If they don’t choose where they travel to, or what they are carrying, then deterrent sentences will simply fail to deter. They only serve to punish those who are most powerless and most exploited in the international drug trade.
Jennifer Fleetwood has previously receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
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