So, some folks in Indonesia are pushing for an Australian guy to get an eight-month stint in rehab instead of a super harsh sentence, like the big house, because he got caught with a bit of meth on the party island of Bali. This all went down after they first thought he might be dealing the stuff, which could've gotten him in really deep trouble with the death penalty on the table.
This 49-year-old dude, Troy Andrew Smith, is from a place called Port Lincoln in South Australia, and he's got a job as an accountant. One day in April, the cops raided his hotel room in Legian, which is right by the happening Kuta Beach, and found a tiny bit of crystal meth hidden in a toothpaste tube. They also found a bit more meth and some smoking gear in his desk.
Under the strict drug laws in Indonesia, Troy could've been looking at 12 long years behind bars if they decided to throw the book at him. But here's the twist: the cops figured out that he'd actually been buying the stuff from someone back in Australia and had it shipped over in a suspicious-looking parcel.
When the trial kicked off a couple of weeks ago, Troy owned up to ordering the drugs. He said he'd been using meth every day since 2020 to deal with feeling down and anxious. He sounded pretty sorry about the whole thing and even said sorry in court.
The good news for him is that they changed the charge from drug trafficking to just using drugs after some experts took a look at him and said he was more of a user than a seller. That's a big deal because it means he's not facing such a heavy punishment anymore.
At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, the main prosecutor, Isa Ulinnuha, told the Denpasar District Court that even though Troy broke the anti-drug rules and didn't help the government's war on drugs, he's really sorry and it was just for his own use. So, they're suggesting rehab instead of locking him up for ages.
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