E-cigarette banned in Thailand: French woman ends up in jail

A French woman went through hell in a Thai prison in February 2019 because she did not know that electronic cigarettes were banned in the country.

The ban on carrying or using electronic cigarettes in Thailand has been in place for years, but it is such an illogical and surprising law that most travellers don't think to find out about it before they travel.

See : E-cigarettes in Thailand: officially illegal

And this is not the first time that a tourist has found himself in trouble because of this in Thailand, but the story of Cecilia Cornu has interested the French media and it is a good thing to help spread this information widely and make a mark.

In fact on travel forums there is still a lot of debate about this, with some people talking about their troubles with the police, the amount of fines they had to pay, and others proudly telling how they vaped all the way through their journey without any problems.

The misadventure of Cecilia because of her electronic cigarette

It was on the beautiful island of Phuket in February 2019 that this story happened, where a few months earlier a New Zealand tourist has also been through hellHowever, it is quite different.

Cécilia Cornu's testimony was collected by a journalist from Nice-Matin :

"I was on a scooter with my fiancé, my parents and my brother were following us.

"I had my electronic cigarette in my hand.

Four policemen stopped us.

They snatched the vaporizer from my hands and demanded 40,000 baht (the equivalent of 1,132 euros) from us hand to hand, all in gibberish English.

I refused to pay," says Cecilia.

She was then handcuffed and taken to the police station without knowing that her vaporiser was banned.

Then the Thai police put pressure on him to pay.

There are honest policemen in Thailand, but some of them are involved in various traffics and are real mafiosi who act with impunity.

And this law, which is incomprehensible to many, is a godsend for this kind of policeman, as it allows them to ask a lot of money from tourists, a bribe that many travellers prefer to pay rather than end up in Thai prisons which do not have the same reputation as the beaches of Phuket!

Cécile Cornue refused to pay, so she was arrested and her passport was confiscated.

Then she went to trial and was fined 857 baht (23 euros), but was not informed that she would spend days in jail.

4 days in prison for vaping

The day before her return to France, when she goes to collect her passport from the immigration office, she learns that she is being transferred to Bangkok to be deported!

And when she arrived in the Thai capital, she was put in jail.

"I was imprisoned in a room of seventy square metres surrounded by bars, where sixty of us women lived together with twelve fans in a staggering temperature of forty degrees.

She then spent four difficult days and three nights before being able to return to France:

"Food was thrown through slits in the fence like in the dungeons of the Middle Ages.

To drink, it was in old paint cans. I went through hell!

In the end, instead of paying the 1132 euros that the police demanded when she was arrested, she got 23 euros and was fed and housed for 4 days, well not in very good conditions...

So remember this and be sure to warn anyone you know who is planning a trip to Thailand:

Electronic cigarettes are like sardines in oil strictly forbidden in Thailand!

Well, no, sardines in oil are still allowed, but make sure you know before you leave, because laws can change and it's the same everywhere:

No one is supposed to ignore the law!