PHUKET: Foreigners arrested anywhere in Thailand for even minor drug offences are now to be transported to Bangkok before deportation so their photographs and details can be added to a new blacklist, Phuketwan has learned.

All drugs criminals will undergo the Bangkok departure experience, along with those convicted of other crimes warranting deportation.

On Monday, a Frenchman is to become the first person to go to Bangkok rather than be deported on a flight straight from Phuket.

The new regulations covering the foreigners' blacklist were approved on May 16 and passed on to Immigration officers on Phuket on May 20, the Deputy Superintendent of Phuket Immigration, Colonel Yingyos Kern-Amnui, confirmed today.

''People who go through the process can expect to be on the blacklist for five years or 10 years, depending on the seriousness of their crime,'' the colonel said.

The Frenchman is believed to be the first person from Phuket to be treated in this fashion in what appears to be a serious attempt to remove foreign drug-takers and criminals from Thailand.

He was arrested for possession of a small amount of ya ice methamphetamine in Patong, on Phuket's west coast, in April.

The Frenchman was granted bail after spending four days in jail.

When the man appeared in Phuket Provincial Court, the judge ruled that four days in jail was an appropriate term for his crime, and ordered him to be of good behavior for two years.

Normally, a deportation for a drugs offence would take place straight from Phuket but the new regulation is now in effect.

The man was offered the choice of paying for his trip to Bangkok and the flight out, or being taken to Bangkok by police truck.

The truck would take him to Ranong with other prisoners, mostly Burmese, to be deported.

He would then have to wait in detention in Ranong until sufficient prisoners had been collected to justify a truck being driven to Bangkok.

The man chose to pay his own fare and will fly out of Phuket on Monday, after the Visakha Bucha Day long weekend.