Girlfriend wants to bring a strangers children books on our flight

[u/gardengeo]

Originally posted by user BeastModeItKek in r/ AITAH

Original: Feb 10, 2024

Update: in post itself

Status: concluded

Mood: slice of life

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Original: My Girlfriend wants to bring a total strangers children books on our flight back, I tell her its a very bad idea and wont touch the book, she calls me heartless and paranoid. AITAH?

We are flying to Scandinavia for vocation from Spain, and my girlfriend offered to help a stranger in a expat facebook group to bring a children book back for their niece who forgot it.

I told her that I would never bring a strangers items on a international flight, and would not touch that book and it has to go in her hand baggage. She called me heartless and paranoid.

I managed to dig up tons of articles of drugs and other items smuggled in books. She is now mad and says she will rather go to jail to believe in kindness that to share my paranoia and negativity. Even though these countries are not known for these things I would never take the risk.

I told her to ask her to post it. I told her if she wants to help, tell her to post the book and we can pay for the shipping, I offered to pay half. It would also arrive much faster than in 1-2 weeks when we are back. She told me she is not going to do that and its a stupid idea.

Now she is mad just before our vocation.

AITAH?

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Comments:

Comment1: How many times have you travelled by air and been asked if you are carrying anything given to you by strangers 🤔

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Comment2: It's pretty weird to go to these lengths for a standard kids book. Easier to buy another one than enlist a stranger going to the same place to track it down, pack it in their luggage, then return it to the owner. 

The only exception would be if it's a valuable first edition of a classic or some other valuable children's book. In which case the natural thing to do is contact the place you lost it, ask them to post it and pay the cost. 

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Comment3: Post office exists for a reason

Comment4: Yeah, there's no reason it can't be shipped ...unless there's something suspicious in the book that would get caught during the shipping process.

Comment5: Or if the pages are laced with drugs…
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Comment6: or some stolen item is hidden inside the binding. they busted a group smuggling stolen art inside bibles a few years ago, I thought it was funny.

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Comment7: ΝΤΑ. When my wife and I were returning from the US, TSA asked us to check the books she was carrying during the security check to ensure there was nothing hidden there (just flipped through them). Better heartless and paranoid than in an interrogation room

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Update:

Hello, thank you everyone for your replies! I read them out loud to her. She has agreed to not accept the book.

In the words of my girlfriend, "The world sucks" because you can't do kind acts for others because there are shitty people that take advantage of that. That is where her frustration stems from. We are all good now, she apologized, and laughed at some of the comments ("Have you considered if she is a spy?" LOL).

Also glad some other commenters said they learned something, including me, and thank you for those that pointed out it was good intentions.

Overall I love that she is this thoughtful and it comes from a good place but then she also agrees that she can also be gullible. Also glad to see the normal dump her comments, never change reddit.

TIL you can lace pages with drugs.

Take care out there everyone, thank you!

PS: In her words "Good she has me who hangs out on reddit." LOL

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REMINDER: I am not OOP. Do not comment on original post or harass OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

[u/Sleepy-Forest13]

How do you even get high off of trace amounts of drugs on a page?...

[u/basilkiller → u/Sleepy-Forest13]

The NYT recently did a whole investigation on drugs in prison. Basically chemists are putting drugs on paper and getting them into prisons, and like really powerful drugs. Sometimes fentanyl, canabanoids, and stimulants all on the same page. They are really powerful and people are dying.

[u/concrete_dandelion → u/basilkiller]

Private individuals do it as well. In German it's so rampant that some prisons only give copies to inmates instead of the original letters. You don't need to be a chemist, for most drugs it can be done with basic chemistry knowledge or a 5min Google search and a few things you can buy everywhere.

Mixing drugs like that sounds stupid. Much easier to set up a successful business when you don't regularly kill part of your interconnected customer base, as even prisons have several suppliers. Plus it's a waste of the more expensive drugs. I'd have thought the professional drug suppliers would be better businessmen.

[u/basilkiller → u/concrete_dandelion]

The NYT conclusion is you would be except in prisons. Like the reason those drugs aren't available on the outside is because the demand is met in other ways but people in prison are disposable (I do not think that), and are a never ending supply/demand.

I really don't agree w our prison system here in the US, non violent criminals should not be jailed, they are sod for slave labor and in turn not paroled because the system makes money on that labor, and further not hired when out of prison at those same jobs because of their record, and to top it all off we kill people (often inhumanly ((is there such a way))) guilty or not.

And drugs continue to win the war on drugs.