Dogmatix

His uncle said he was going into politics to improve the country and his grandfather was once Minister for Foreign Affairs. So he must be innocent. He would be a great choice to sit on the parliamentary committee for promotion of women's rights like Prinn did before he got kicked out due to multiple rape charges.

They should stop taking bribes forthwith but borrowing luxury homes, cars, watches etc from deceased friends is perfectly fine and the practice has been endorsed by a ruling of the NACC.

"Thailand grapples with allowing more Chinese landowners." Most of the land and most of the businesses in Thailand are already owned by Chinese from earlier immigration waves. They also control the bureaucracy and nearly all MPs are Chinese. The new wave of Chinese landowners use Thai proxies and fake Thai ID cards. They don't wait for new laws. The law under discussion is not a new law anyway. It was an amendment to the Land Code in 1999. Compared to existing Chinese ownership of land and ongoing illegal purchases by Chinese, 1 rai of residential land under extremely restrictive conditions will make no difference to the equation whatsoever, if they revive that existing law with new ministerial regulations which is what is proposed but not clearly articulated by the government or media.

This is not a new case. It first came up in 2019 with a smaller amount of 227 million. Perhaps the news should be that it took NACC three years to fire him. I wonder what cases he worked on in that time. https://www.thaipbsworld.com/senior-nacc-official-faulted-for-omitting-227m-baht-from-asset-declaration/ He was on the junta’s National Reform Committee which unsurprisingly led to no reforms prior to joining the NACC. He is obviously very well connected. I wonder who he crossed so he couldn’t sort this all out. Originally his wife was caught by AMLO taking excessive commissions from a PTT subsidiary in Indonesia as a land broker there. I wonder if she’s ever been there. No suggestion that any PTT executives are being prosecuted for approving the commissions.

It seems gender discriminatory (and possibly racially discriminatory) to question fathers travelling with their own children and not mothers. What if the mother couldn't be contacted? Perhaps worth travelling with a letter from the mother giving permission in addition to birth certificate showing you as father. Although that could easily be forged, it might head them off, if the mother can't be contacted. I wonder if same would happen if the child used a farang passport. Would it happen with a Thai born father who didn't look farang? I doubt it. The IO must have profiled you as as the type of farang who, regardless of having gone to enormous trouble to obtain Thai citizenship, abducts his look krung daughter to carry her off to a better life in the West far from drinking and gambling ex-bar girl mother who abuses her. A crime to be stopped at all costs 555.

I have seen quite a few websites now describing their bakery products as being THC or even made with butter made with THC extract which seems illegal, although that is the common recipe for edibles and probably most use it. One website said they used full spectrum cannabis without specifying estimated proportions of THC and CBD. That could imply they just decarb the weed, grind it up and throw it in the mix. If merely heating weed is not considered a form of extraction, then these products might be theoretically legal. I imagine there will be a shake out in the edibles business before long. A few incidents of newbie tourists eating brownies clearly labelled as CBD, eating the whole thing and ending up in psychotic comas could trigger it. At any rate there will no doubt be more clarity at some point as to what constitutes an extract.

They did a good job legalizing cannabis. it is now legal.

You have to do 100 days in the Pathum Thani provincial jail to pay off the maximum overstay fine of THB 20,000 at the rate of THB 200 per day. But, since it costs them money to keep you in there, the amount they recover through this process is actually negative.

The TFDA approval is all well and good but I am not rushing my 1.5 year old boy to get a vaccine. I am not an anti-vaxxer and have been vaccinated and boosted myself. I am just more nervous about the long term effects on youngsters who have their whole lives ahead of them. And children seem less vulnerable to COVID too. He had COVID last month and recovered after 3 days of fever and symptoms. My own symptoms lingered much longer.

Herd immunity from coronaviruses is a myth. It has not happened with the common cold and the immunity you get from COVID infection is unlikely to last more than 1-3 months. Some people are getting repeat infections a month after recovering from the previous infection.

At the end of last month my son came down with a high grade fever which turned out to be COVID. All beds in the Samitivej Sukhumvit COVID ward were full at the time and we were told to call round other hospitals which mainly had no COVID beds available either. Eventually we got him into the COVID ward at Samitivej and he recovered in a three days but his mother got sick looking after him. My son was discharged as soon as his fever went down and symptoms improved to free up a bed for another COVID patient. When I picked them up both were still positive and my wife had only been positive for a day and was presumably highly infectious. I picked them up from the lobby where other non-COVID patients were milling about. There are no special arrangements to get COVID patients in and out without contacting other patients and there are longer any COVID precautions in the lobby. Anyway the hospitals must have realised that the temperature checks didn't keep COVID out. I went down to Hua Hin when my family had COVID to reverse isolate and was informed by our condo manager that there were also no beds available for COVID patients there. Maybe the situation has improved in the hospitals but I doubt it. I have had COVID denyers arguing that there were no COVID wards in Bangkok last month just because they couldn't see them, but I have a hospital bill to prove it.

At least the foreign stoners cannot be considered criminals any more. Should be a high high season for them. 555. No money for the BiB in passing joints to backpackers and then arresting them. Too bad. Passing around yaba pills or fake ecstacy to entrap them will arouse suspicion and most prefer weed anyway.

There is no mention of Russian criminals who are presumably more than welcome.

Interesting. I take the point that it is not easy to ensure that edibles contain only CBD or no more than 0.2% THC. Small producers for cafes etc are unlikely to have the expertise or the properly calibrated measuring equipment to keep THC under 0.2%. It is going to be very hard to police. Cops could just haul away everything and demand bribes, as the owners know that police forensics always come up with the requested results. This could be lucrative for cops but would kill the edibles industry which has developed over the last couple of years and most of the cannabis teas and dishes are very low THC even if not exactly 0.2%. That would cause a backlash from all the small business owners and the people who voted for Bhumjai Thai. Thaksin might try though, if he got into power. Everyone remembers his brutal war on drugs aimed at cutting off his son's supplies.

Where did you find a cooky with 25mg of THC? I thought all edibles were restricted to CBD and not more than 0.2% THC but have seen reports on YouTube of tourists being unexpectedly blasted to the moon with brownies labelled as CBD only. And some cafes reportedly offer a "happier" browny at a higher price. Seems a bit dodgy if tourists are inadvertently getting super stoned while expecting only hoping for CBD buzz to deal with their aches and pains and insomnia. But if people know what they are getting into, fair dinkum. Being on a bad trip in a strange city can't be much fun, paricularly if they are not used to it.

I missed a wedding in New York recently as I couldn't go because I had COVID. I attended online and only about 3 people out of 150 wore masks. A few days after the wedding at least 40 people who were there came down with COVID, including the bride and groom, their parents and the two photographers. As far as Thailand is concerned the situation should be decided on the ability of hospitals to cope with severely ill COVID patients. The current situation is that they can't cope with any more, as all the wards are full in Bangkok and in Hua Hin and probably other tourist resorts. I know because my son was seriously ill with COVID at the end of last month and only got admitted to a private hospital because he had a false negative rapid test at first and kicked him out of the room the next morning when his PCR result test came through. (They told me I would have had to call around other hospitals looking for a room, if he had initially tested positive. Then they were stuck with him and put him and his mother in a converted broom cupboard with a toilet in the middle of the room for a day until someone checked out of the COVID ward. The COVID nurses were fully stretched and hardly did anything. His mother had to give him his medice, feed him and take his temperature and he cried from morning till night. The lack of hospital capacity means that unmasked elderly tourists who might get severe disease will not be able to get hospital treatment promptly, if at all, regardless of whether they have medical insurance or not. Thai friends with hospital connections offered to try to get my son a bed in another hospital when he was in the broom cupboard. Foreign tourists don't have connections here and will be last in the queue. The government is desparate for foreign exchange and doesn't want to admit they are up against capacity constraints in the hospials. But this may be woth bearing in mind when going about unmasked and saying you're done with COVID and moving on with your life etc. Fortunately Omicron is a mild disease for most but there are still some severe cases and deaths. Ask yourself, "Is this my lucky day?"

There'll be a lot more beeping after the Constitutional Court's decision that Prayut is exempt from the 8 year term restriction because it was only intended for Thaksin or his nominees.

She was a pretty girl and still good looking. Nat brightened up many lives by being to prepared to show a leg in front of the camera and <deleted> off my missus 55. Cut her a bit of slack or a bit of firm depending on your feeling.

There is a lot of COVID about and Bangkok COVID wards are full with about 24 hour or more wait lists for a room. It doesn't always go away in 5 days. I have it and am still positive with slight symtoms after 12 days. However, the worst I had was a day with low grade fever at the beginning. Other than that is feels like a mild could. I am fully vaccinated and had a Moderna shot 3 weeks before becoming infected. I also took a course of Paxlovid which may account for the prolonged symptoms, as Paxlovid can cause a rebound effect like Joe Biden got but hopefully keeps symptoms mild. Due the hospital situation, some miitigation measures are necessary. Letting people go about their business after testing negative seems fine and anyone in close contact with someone positve should exercercise caution and wear masks in my opinion. My family got COVID before me and I moved out until they were negative and avoided uncessary contact with others but didn't isolate, as I had to buy food anyway. I didn't get it then but did get it later from another source. But right now it is largely up to individuals to decide and government has very little influence. The only cases that are reported are the ones that need hospital treatment or Thais who get a motorcyclists to take their ID card to a public health clinic to get free supplies of paracetamol, ineffective cold pills that don't contain pseudoephedrine and the official MoPH "anti viral" placebos Favipiravir and Green Chiretta herbal pills for which there is no evidence of efficacy against COVID at all but nice little earners for some and makes people happy that the governemnt gave them a placebo. People who need to earn a living and have no sick pay are obviously going about there business as soon as they feel well enough. This must include all self employed including market vendors, taxi drivers, prositutes etc.

I believe that wil be the case by default. However, it has now been reported that the second reading of the bill outlaws online sales and advertising of cannabis products and paraphanalia, which was not, I think, in the first draft but I could only find a summary of that, not the full version. I am not sure, if vendors will still be able to send products to customers without online websites. It is difficult to stop businesses from having a FB page with a phone number. And it will be impossible to stop overseas retailers like Aliexpress from selling bongs and pipes into Thailand. Anyway the bottom line is that, since the reports of the second reading emphasise the banning of online selling and advertising only, it is clear that there is no wording to ban recreational use per se.

Sounds like the sense of this was lost in translation as it makes no sense.

There are huge vested interests behind this but Anutin is playing to the gallery to head off the backlash from the anti-legalization lobby which includes Thaksin whose party will probably win the next election. Anutin knows he needs to get into the next government or his sponsors’ cannabis businesses will be wrecked. I am sure they want tourists to smoke as much as they can.

Thailand can become a global hub for all night ravers, stoners, magic mushroom eaters, gamblers and whoremongers. The skills and competitive edge are already in place. It just needs a friendly, anything goes, regulatory framework.

"He also said that the cannabis bill would be completely drafted this week and be then proposed to the House of Representatives right away." Actually the Cannabis and Hemp Bill has already been drafted and passed its first reading in the House in June or July. The summary shown on parliament's website indicated that there are no clauses restricting recreational use but most of it is about license fees for vendors. Actually it is very similar to the Cannabis and Hemp Act from the 1930s before Thailand got involved in the US war on drugs and criminalized it. It could be that the Cannabis and Hemp Bill will have some amendments before its second reading but I doubt that there is any plant to restrict recreational use. Everyone knows that the big money is recreational use and there are a lot of vested interests riding on it. However, it is incumbent on Anutin and the government to maintain the fiction that legalisation was done purely to facilitate medicinal use. If that were true, they would set up a system alowing sales only on prescription and for Thai citizens and foreign residents only. But that would have severely resticted potential sales volumes and profits.

It seems likely that there is some sort of a deal between PPRP and PT made by Prawit on the PPRP side that excludes Prayut, who is now seen as a liability. That PPRP MPs, presumably with the blessing of Prawit, should go against Prayut to sabotage his effort to confirm the divide by 500 amendment by not showing up to make quorum doesn't make any sense unless there is an unholy alliance between PPRP and PT. Divide by 100 will eliminate the smaller parties who have supported Prayut completely as they will get no party seats and are unlikely to win constituency seats. It will be a huge advantage to PT which will mop up party list seats. Initially Prayut favoured divide by 100, as he naively believed PPRP was still as popular as PT and would also stand to gain a lot of party list seats. But when the reality of the party's declining popularity, as well as his own, struck home, he launched a rear guard action to go for divide by 500, which was ostensibly agreed to by PPRP but its leadership has worked behind the scenes to sabotage the amendment to 500 and, by proxy, to sabotage Prayut from running for PM again. Most likely PPRP MPs who have failed to show up to make quorum are also hoping to jump ship and join PT as a reward for blowing up the 500 amendment. Many of them were bought over from PT or other parties anyway and have no long term allegiances. Prawit knows that Prayut's time is up and is eager to find a way to retain power at least behind the scenes and a pact with the devil in the form of Thaksin could facilitate that. The article mentioned Move Forward as a wild card but didn't mention anything about BJP and Anutin. I would think that PT would find it easier to do a deal with BJP than PPRP, in the event that it fails to win an absolute majority. Anutin could also perhaps be a compromise PM candidate that the Senate might be more willing to vote for than Thaksin's daughter or another PT nominee, such as Chadchart, if he gives up the Bangkok governorship to take a PT nomination for PM. After an ineffectual response to COVID in 2021, Anutin has redeemed himself with his base by fulfilling his campaign pledge to legalise ganja and his support from his base is probably as strong as ever but BJP support is rather localized to Buriram and contiguous Northeast provinces. So it will never be big enough to be a threat to PT. I am sure PT will do very well under the divide by 100 amendment but whether they get an absolute majority or do a deal with PPRP or BJP remains to be seen. A deal with MFP seems unlikely as, although Thanathorn is not directly opposed to Thaksin, he will not want to compromise his ideals to do a deal with someone who basically has no ideals at all but is in it for power, greed and revenge. Visibly cosying up to Prawit and PPRP will make Thaksin anethema to Thanathorn and his loyal supporters. But as the article points out, PT and MFP will be fighting for votes from the same pool.