Seems like it’s a good time to be a British female smuggling drugs into the UK. First we had those two girls from Birmingham who got let off after smuggling 35kg of cannabis into the country, and now we have this young lady from London who’s received a slap on the wrist for smuggling 22.5kg of the drug into England.

Daniella KanKam-Adu, 19, from Queens Road, London, was offered £250 in return for smuggling £225,000 worth of cannabis from Canada to Newcastle Airport in March this year.

Daniella said she believed her luggage contained vapes, but Border Force instead found 22.5 kilos of cannabis, worth around £67,500 wholesale and with a street value of £225,000.

Prosecuting, Kevin Wardlaw told Newcastle Crown Court:

‘When asked to open one [item of her luggage] she said she didn’t have the key. She became aware the locks would be forced.

‘Her attitude changed, she became obstructive, making comments to the officer. The officer was not being racist, it was just a random check.’

Daniella pleaded guilty to fraudulent evasion on the prohibition on the importation of cannabis, with prosecutors later accepting that a friend suggested she could make money by bringing vapes back to the UK and avoid paying tax.

She was told she would be paid £250 to bring the “vapes” into the UK and went to Toronto with tickets given to her and followed instructions.

Daniella had told the court she needed the money to pay for a deposit on a house. £250? That is one cheap deposit, to be fair.

Her lawyer also explained how Daniella had a difficult childhood and spent time in a care home. He added that before the offence, she discovered she was pregnant and didn’t want her child to experience the same childhood she had.

I guess the judge felt bad for her because in the end, Daniella was sentenced to 12 months suspended for 18 months, which means if she stays out of trouble for that period, she’ll have gotten away with it.

In fairness though, she did spend 3 months on remand waiting for her trial, during which she suffered a miscarriage. That must have been a brutal experience, so it’s probably unfair to say that she’s got away completely scot-free, even if you’d expect a much harsher punishment for smuggling that amount of cannabis into the UK.

Would the courts be so lenient with a British male who committed the exact same crime?

Meanwhile, over in Georgia, fellow British teenager Bella May Culley is facing 20 years – life in prison for smuggling 14kg of cannabis from Thailand. They’re so much harsher on this sort of thing abroad, aren’t they?