From Court to Cannabis: The Jarred Shaw Saga

^{Filed Under: Caged for Candy}

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Jarred Shaw used to make headlines for basketball. Now he’s making them for allegedly shipping weed candy into a country where that can get you shot.

The 34-year-old was arrested in Indonesia after customs flagged a candy shipment from Thailand. Inside his apartment, cops found nearly 900 grams of THC-laced gummies. According to reports, Shaw screamed for help and struggled with officers as they took him down. The raid was filmed and posted online like a trophy.

Authorities charged him with drug smuggling. In Indonesia, the penalty is life imprisonment or execution by firing squad. They made him pose in an orange shirt at a press conference like a game show loser waiting to die. That’s not a process, that’s humiliation.

He says the candy was for himself and maybe his teammates. Doesn’t matter. In a place where cannabis is treated like meth, your intent is irrelevant. If you’re holding, you’re fucked.

Let’s be clear. Shaw didn’t get caught with bricks. He didn’t have oil drums of THC. He got busted for a bag of weed candy you can buy in a vending machine in L.A., and now he might be put to death.

That is fucking insane. Nobody should be executed for cannabis. Ever. This is not justice. It’s legal brutality. It’s state violence dressed up as public policy.

Indonesia doesn’t mess around. Over 500 people sit on death row there, and most of them are drug cases. Foreigners included. The last executions happened in 2016. The pause hasn’t stopped judges from sentencing people to die.

And Shaw’s not famous enough to become a headline campaign. There won’t be a hashtag rescue mission or a book deal on the other side. This is what happens when American cannabis culture collides with the real world. In the U.S., you can spark a blunt outside a brunch spot. In Jakarta, the same herb can get you a bullet to the chest.

It’s legal here. It’s lethal there.

This isn’t rare. Americans keep getting nailed for weed overseas and acting shocked when the consequences aren’t “reasonable.” What’s unreasonable is thinking your green card is a shield. It isn’t. Once you leave the country, you play by their rules. And some of those rules were written to break you.

Want a reminder that even bottom-shelf weed here can be a death sentence somewhere else? Go read, You’re Not in Cali Anymore on our blog. The apathy we show toward quality is the same ignorance that people carry on planes. And sometimes that ignorance gets people killed.

Jarred Shaw might be one of them.

Cannabis is normalized in America. It’s monetized. Celebrated. In parts of the world, it is still treated like poison. And if you don’t know the difference, you might pay for it in blood.

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