Daniel Jacob Cluett was charged with three counts of importing substances into Canada after border officials found cocaine and MDMA in his luggage.

Cluett immediately told the border official that he did not know the drugs were in his bag and that he had thought he had lost them on a beach days beforehand.

He also said that if he had wanted to smuggle drugs into Canada, he would have “shoved them up my ass” — which, he later admitted, was how he had smuggled those same drugs into Mexico.

Cluett was acquitted in British Columbia Supreme Court this month.

“Mr Cluett’s admission of using and being addicted to illegal drugs and transporting them to Mexico on this occasion was a key component to his defence that he did not know that the drugs were in his luggage,” Justice Andrew Majawa noted.

“This evidence of drug use and transport cannot be used to conclude that because Mr Cluett was prepared to use drugs and to smuggle them into Mexico that he was the sort of person to more likely knowingly import illegal drugs into Canada.”

The judge said he was “left with a reasonable doubt as to whether Mr Cluett had an intention to import the relatively small amounts of controlled substances that were found in his luggage”.

The “relatively small” amount of drugs involved were 8.6 grams of cocaine, 0.05 grams of methamphetamine and 13.5 grams of MDMA.