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If any one of you buying alcohol from duty free without alcohol license, be careful.. i was returing from a trip in the wee hours n saw a couple being stopped and enquired whether they are residents or visitors.

Apparently they were residents and had just bought 4 bottles of liquor.. So they were asked to produce alcohol license for buying alcohol..

I don't know what happened further..but they were asked to follow the officer inside..

Now till now, I was under the impression tht you could buy alcohol from the duty free w/o license.. or they were very lenient towards it..

but this is worrisome..

Wowzer, never heard of this before. I've never left the airport without at least two bottles of alcohol.

What an arse backwards way of enforcing it anyway. Why not have the staff at the shop just insist on seeing a licence?

Love it how the unofficial rules here change all the time.

Worrisome indeed....

Captain Australia wrote:What an arse backwards way of enforcing it anyway. Why not have the staff at the shop just insist on seeing a licence?

How can they "confiscate" the booze if you are stopped buying the stuff by the shop assistant?

Scratcher

Scratcher wrote:

Captain Australia wrote:What an arse backwards way of enforcing it anyway. Why not have the staff at the shop just insist on seeing a licence?

How can they "confiscate" the booze if you are stopped buying the stuff by the shop assistant?

Scratcher

It is in impulse for the local economy and at the same time they diminish the risk of you getting drunk.

Don't you just love them law enforcers...

Captain Australia wrote:What an arse backwards way of enforcing it anyway. Why not have the staff at the shop just insist on seeing a licence?

Exactly. New way to collect (fine) money?

Just a few minutes ago, a friend who returned to Dubai last night called me. I asked him if he had bought any booze at the DF Shop. He said yes, and he said went thru fine… even though he was holding the Duty Free sac in his hand, in plain view.

He said there were also Gulf Arabs who were buying at the shop and they definitely didn’t have a liquor license.

Was it a random thing? Or perhaps they suspected that guy for something else and used the booze excuse to bring him for further search!!

If visitors and tourists can bring it in, why single out the residents??

It does not make any sense. It would be too time consuming to stop every person and ask them if they were tourists or residents -- plus it would hurt the sales of the DF Shops, something they don't need at these bad times!!!

Yeah, probably just the cops needed one more arrest to get a promotion or something.

It's not really hard to catch people drinking without a license, don't know why they would target the airport. In 5 hours time there will be approximately 300 people drinking there asses off not more than 200 metres from my house. 90% of them will not have a license.

This sounds like some kind of mistake to me, or only half the story. In all my time in Dubai I have never been questioned or heard of anyone being questioned regarding Duty free liquor.

tht is what scares me.. the unpredictability of the law..
i myself have bought alcohol at the DF very often as I travel a lot in n out of dubai..

why not just ask for the license while selling at the DF if they have issues with this..

It had nothing to do with the alcohol. Did you ever notice those little tags that are stuck to your luggage? They are not put there for decoration. Each tag represents something. Their luggage was "flagged" when it went through the screening process.

WHAT? Never had anything apart from the luggage tag or fragile stuck to my case.

Then there was no reason to "tag and flag" your luggage.

Okay but a little 'explanation' might help others.

Bora Bora wrote:It had nothing to do with the alcohol. Did you ever notice those little tags that are stuck to your luggage? They are not put there for decoration. Each tag represents something. Their luggage was "flagged" when it went through the screening process.

What tag? Never had any, nor seen anyone had them.

But be cautious when traveling to India, the officers mark the luggage with chalk/marker if you bring electronics etc including personal digital camera! Don't fall for their "tourist trap"!