The penalties for smuggling have always varied according to the laws, customs, taxes and bans of the aggrieved jurisdiction in which you were caught; the value and nature of the contraband; and how you can or should be made to pay, your life, blood, time and money being the usual punishments on that menu. Victoria Police went public in 2009 to say about 100 mainly western Melbourne couriers, some of whom had been regularly returning from Vietnam couriering drugs, heroin predominantly, would be well advised to stop - they were known and faced certain arrest and a likely death penalty. Victoria Police painted these drug smugglers as often-as-not as victims. Hitting legitimate business problems or legal gambling ones put them in the hands of loan sharks who pushed them on to drug smugglers.