23Y/O Man to Be Jailed & Caned for Trafficking & Possessing Drugs, Including Cannabis & LSD

Life’s brutal, isn’t it?

When we gets down in the dumps, short escapes can come in the form of anything.

Some rely on parasocial relationships with fictional characters, others sit on their couch and stare at their television until their eyes burn, others exercise, and the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, not all coping mechanisms are healthy.

Or in this case, legal.

Man Gets Jailed And Caned For Drug Use

23-year-old Derek Koh Kai Sheng will spend the next five years and nine months in jail, as well as face five strokes of the cane, the district court judged on Tuesday (29 Jun).

Koh had pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking cannabis, one for the possession of lysergide—also known as LSD—and another for possessing utensils meant for consuming drugs.

Additionally, three other charges were taken into consideration before the sentence.

His “on-and-off” recreational usage of cannabis began when he was just 18, and had been working as a self-employed fish breeder at the time of his arrest in December 2019.

Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) officers raided Koh’s Buangkok Crescent home on 4 December 2019, where they found evidence of his drug usage and a whopping 77.26g of cannabis.

Instead of just keeping it for himself after procuring it from a seller known as “Joe” or “Joey Joe” however, Koh also had plans of reselling one brick of cannabis for $350 to others.

The officers also found a piece of paper in his house with two stamps on it, but it wasn’t just because he’s an avid stamp collector or anything.

Amazingly, the stamps were found to have LSD on it after analysis by the Illicit Drug Laboratory of the Health Sciences Authority (HSA).

One lick of the stamps would get the drug into your system, and Koh admitted that those were for his own consumption, having first tried LSD in September.

He also used the drug utensils to grind the cannabis stems into a fine powder before rolling them into joints and smoking them himself.

Judge Advises Him to Find New Friends

Reasoning that his client was barely 23 and made a promise to never dabble in drugs again, Koh’s defence lawyer sought a lighter sentence for him, who was “completely shell-shocked” in regards to the aftermath of the situation.

“This has been a wake-up call and he is determined to extricate himself from the pits of destruction,” he pleaded.

Koh’s charges also apparently brought about damages to his once close-knit family life after he “sunk into depths of despondency.”

“Derek has vowed not to disappoint them in future,” his lawyer added.

Unfortunately for Koh, District Judge Toh Yung Cheong said he’s seen one too many re-offenders who end up back in front of the same road after getting released from prison because of the company around them.

He added that whenever he asked these young re-offenders the same question as to why they did it again, they would always attribute it to their friends and not themselves.

Advising Koh that he had a long future ahead of him as a young person, District Judge Toh told him, “Please find new friends. Do not go back to the same people again.”

You know you’ve got bad friends when even the law advises you to dump them.

Trafficking cannabis carries a minimum sentence of five years of jail with five strokes of the cane, with it reaching a maximum of 20 years of jail with 15 strokes of the cane.

Don’t do drugs, kids.

Feature Image: Yarygin / Shutterstock.com