Smoking Marijuana in Canada Is Now Legal–But Not for Citizens of South Korea | Hacker News Reader

Smoking Marijuana in Canada Is Now Legal–But Not for Citizens of South Korea

fortune.com

15 pointsthunderbong16 comments

South Korea has really strict anti-drug laws. They can prosecute you for testing positive for cannabis in a drug test. The police can then go through your phone contacts and test all those people too!

Apparently the military dictator in the 70’s had a son who was a drug addict and that’s where it started.

The US is insane in this regard too.

Let’s say you are a tourist from some country, you visit Canada and smoke some weed which is perfectly legal there. You have a valid visa for the US, and when you enter you disclose you smoked weed last week. You can be denied entry for that.

The US is punishing people for doing things that are perfectly legal where they did them - no laws were broken!

The US is so fixated on drugs this is horribly inconsistent with other laws. If you’re an 18 year old Australian and drink yourself into oblivion every day in Australia (perfectly legal), the US doesn’t care at all when you enter, even though that is illegal on the US.

Or you’re in Germany and drive at 200mph on the autobahn (perfectly legal), the US doesn’t care when you enter, even though that is also illegal in the US.

So it’s like drugs are so bad the US will not tolerate a person doing them, even when they are not in the US! Other “crimes” (according to US law) ? Who cares.

I haven’t really thought about his much but in quite a few cases laws are attached to the nationality and not geographically bound. The US has an interesting instance of this where US citizens still have to pay taxes to the US government even if they live and earn money abroad.

What makes your example particularly interesting is that this US law will almost certainly be enforced by the other country. I.e., if they want to avoid invoking the wrath of US sanctions.

> if they want to avoid invoking the wrath of US sanctions

What's even more interesting is they'll (other countries) do this aggressively. If you get caught in the crosshairs, the punishment can often exceed the supposed crime. For the same kind of incident(s) in their own laws, it's more lenient.

What other cases are there. The only cases I know of are of US laws being "applied" overseas. I don't know of any other country that does this/has the power to do this.

Canada's human rights laws are (can be) applied globally. IIRC, several countries have laws related to child pornography and prostitution that apply globally.

Technically, the human rights offences aren't applied by nationality (as parent poster brought up); those laws have universal jurisdiction. Most countries have similar laws; the Rome Statute requires that genocide and crimes against humanity be made universal crimes and prosecuted where possible by signatory states.

Germany is trying Syrians for torture and other crimes committed in Syria for the Junta or other factions

Is this for people who are German residents/citizens, or for crimes against German citizens? I presume they're not trying people in absentia. I do know Germany can't extradite people in most cases, which might have something to do with it.

I know that Norway and Sweden apply their anti-prostitution laws to citizens regardless of if they bought sex in a country where it is legal (like Denmark and Germany). Maybe less controversially, they also demand their citizens obey their own stronger anti-bribery laws abroad - I think lots of countries do that.

Eritrea is the only other country to tax non-residents.

GDPR?

Singapore has a similar law on the books which also affects Permanent Residents: https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/educational-resou...

That applies to Japan, too.

(2018)

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