Thailand’s Pot Boosters Battle Bid to Delegalize Cannabis

[webfact]

Chokwan Chopaka of the People's Network for Cannabis Legislation in Thailand hands out free samples at a rally in Bangkok, Nov. 22, 2022.

 

by Zsombor Peter

 

BANGKOK — Five months after Thailand became the first country in Asia to legalize cannabis, boosters of the hot-button herb are fighting to keep it that way amid mounting calls to re-list the plant as a narcotic.

 

Cannabis sellers, growers and smokers rallied outside the national government’s headquarters in the capital, Bangkok, Tuesday to discourage authorities from placing the plant back on the country’s controlled narcotics list, with stiff penalties for possession and distribution.

 

“There is a very high chance that cannabis may end up being illegal again, so it’s quite a very high stake right now,” said Chokwan Chopaka of the People's Network for Cannabis Legislation in Thailand, which organized the event.

 

The government’s Narcotics Control Board was meeting Tuesday to discuss concerns about the reported spike in the recreational use of cannabis among adolescents since the plant was legalized in June.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters Monday that the board would not, and actually could not, re-list cannabis, as some feared.

 

But threats to the plant’s legal status remain.

 

Full story: https://www.voanews.com/a/thailand-s-pot-boosters-battle-bid-to-delegalize-cannabis/6845200.html

 

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[daveAustin]

1 hour ago, webfact said:

Cannabis sellers, growers and smokers rallied outside the national government’s headquarters in the capital, Bangkok, Tuesday to discourage authorities from placing the plant back on the country’s controlled narcotics list, with stiff penalties for possession and distribution.

That’ll do the trick! ????

[Rhys]

As the say follow the money

 

[SiSePuede419]

Name one person in the entire history of the world who has overdosed on ganja 

 

Just one.

 

Hell, I used to live in a college town where multiple students would die from alcohol overdose every year.

 

And alcohol is 100% legal. ????

 

Legality <> Safety. ✅

[Inala]

It would be a backflip of epic proportions! And any criminal prosecutions occurring after the re-criminalization would lack credibility.

[JimboB4]

What’s the point of this article? They already met and it’s already known that it will never be re-listed. These are always so over exaggerated. We might be in danger of having to verify our ages before buying but there really is no threat to legal cannabis.   

[Robert Tyrrell]

Good Morning,

 

Thailand you truly embarrass

yourselves !!! 
You’ve got more problems with Alcohol, No Helmet wearing on motorcycles and more then 2 passengers on them as well , Multiple people riding in the back of open pickup trucks, Rarely charging people with vehicular homicide when they drive drunk and kill people !! 
Truly an embarrassment yet you scream and whine about Weed absolutely nuts !! 

[jacko45k]

1 minute ago, Robert Tyrrell said:

Good Morning,

 

Thailand you truly embarrass

yourselves !!! 
You’ve got more problems with Alcohol, No Helmet wearing on motorcycles and more then 2 passengers on them as well , Multiple people riding in the back of open pickup trucks, Rarely charging people with vehicular homicide when they drive drunk and kill people !! 
Truly an embarrassment yet you scream and whine about Weed absolutely nuts !! 

Perhaps they foresee similar problems with weed which have yet to come about. 

All the other stuff is 'other issues', where laws and restrictions are in place, but nor enforced.... 

To bring them up is really diversion, used when we have no argument for the topic itself. 

[nobodysfriend]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

amid mounting calls to re-list the plant as a narcotic.

Won't happen ... just the buds will become a ' controlled herb '

How , ever , the Police will be able to enforce this , is unknown ...

 

3 hours ago, webfact said:

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters Monday that the board would not, and actually could not, re-list cannabis, as some feared.

Some were against the legalization because of hypocritical reasons or the fear that they could not profit enough from it , but many are pro - legalization . Time for demonstrations .

What about all the stalls selling it ? Some invested a lot and now they fear losing it ... What about the inmates they let go ...? Catch them again and put them back in prison ?

All that was not well ' thought through ' by the government .

 

I guess , everything will just continue as it is now , only the stalls selling the buds will need to bribe the RTP ...

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by nobodysfriend

[nikmar]

19 minutes ago, nobodysfriend said:

All that was not well ' thought through ' by the government .

i have doubts about this. It was initially de-criminalized for health and an extra ingredient for traditional Thai cooking. Anutin promised it was not for recreational use and only plant material with less than 0.2% THC would be legal. As we can see it has all turned out differently with high strength flowers mostly being sold to tourist and local pot heads. 

I think Anutin knew exactly what he was doing - all about the money - i wonder how much he is making from this. I dont believe for a minute he is doing this "for the people".

for the record - Im enjoying a few tokes with the wife on saturday nights, especially the sativa strains. I still despise anutin though!! 

[ezzra]

There was an issue reported in the national papers of a big surge of the numbers patients who used pot and now seeking medical help and overloading the health and the emergency systems...

[kentrot]

I suspect that YABA is far more dangerous .

And yet it's use has not been stopped even though illegal.

Maybe the focus should be on that more dangerous substance.

 

https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs5/5048/index.htm 

Edited November 24, 2022 by kentrot

[Dogmatix]

1 hour ago, JimboB4 said:

What’s the point of this article? They already met and it’s already known that it will never be re-listed. These are always so over exaggerated. We might be in danger of having to verify our ages before buying but there really is no threat to legal cannabis.   

The article points out that the Administrative Court has the power to overturn government decrees and that it has received a petition to overturn the decree that decriminalized cannabis.
 

The court has this power because government decrees that have the force of law, unlike acts of parliament, are signed by individual ministers or their staff without parliamentary scrutiny or public consultation.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Dogmatix

[Archie Baker]

1 hour ago, SiSePuede419 said:

Name one person in the entire history of the world who has overdosed on ganja 

 

Just one.

 

Hell, I used to live in a college town where multiple students would die from alcohol overdose every year.

 

And alcohol is 100% legal. ????

 

Legality <> Safety. ✅

Name one place in the world where guns are legal where someone hasnt shot and killed someone? 

 

Cannabis is the start of the trail to much worse things, for some. It's also breaking the law so it sets a mind set of what is allowable in life. 

 

Alcohol is as bad but it is big business and always has been as is smoking tobacco so not a good comparison. Why don't you compare cannabis to crystal meths or amphetamines.  

[JBChiangRai]

When I was a magistrate I gave up counting the number of cannabis related crimes I saw, Grievous Bodily Harm, Serious Bodily Harm, Theft, some sparked by suicide and my colleagues tell me drug driving is now massively more prevalent than drink driving.

 

The violence seems to stem from cannabis induced mental illness.

[Smokey and the Bandit]

3 hours ago, SiSePuede419 said:

Name one person in the entire history of the world who has overdosed on ganja 

 

Just one.

 

Hell, I used to live in a college town where multiple students would die from alcohol overdose every year.

 

And alcohol is 100% legal. ????

 

Legality <> Safety. ✅

Cigarettes are 100% legal and they kill 8 million people per year!!

1.2 million die from second hand smoke!

 

 

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco

Edited November 24, 2022 by Smokey and the Bandit

[stoner]

1 hour ago, Archie Baker said:

Name one place in the world where guns are legal where someone hasnt shot and killed someone? 

 

Cannabis is the start of the trail to much worse things, for some. It's also breaking the law so it sets a mind set of what is allowable in life. 

 

Alcohol is as bad but it is big business and always has been as is smoking tobacco so not a good comparison. Why don't you compare cannabis to crystal meths or amphetamines.  

the old cannabis is a gateway drug approach eh ? good grief you didn't start well with that. 

 

smoking cannabis is illegal in thailand ? i think you may need another covid booster.

 

then you go on asking people to compare cannabis to meth (which is an amphetamine by the way) for real ?

 

not sure what crystal meths is though. 

 

your clear bias and lack of education on this entire subject is on full display here for all to see. 

 

thank you. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by stoner

[redwood1]

4 hours ago, SiSePuede419 said:

Name one person in the entire history of the world who has overdosed on ganja 

 

Just one.

 

Hell, I used to live in a college town where multiple students would die from alcohol overdose every year.

 

And alcohol is 100% legal. ????

 

Legality <> Safety. ✅

This is a very tired argument......
 

Sure weed may not kill people on the spot.....

 

But for many people weed chips away at their motivation,and their involvement with life bit by bit, day by day, year by year....Until their life pretty much revolves around smoking weed... 

 

Saying this.....Some people seem to have almost no negative effects from weed..

 

Basically for some people, weed steals their life and for others it does not.. 

[Emdog]

"delegalize"

That's a new term to me & I'm no spring chicken...

 

[hotchilli]

No-one is going to overturn Anutins baby.. 

[Dogmatix]

4 hours ago, nikmar said:

i have doubts about this. It was initially de-criminalized for health and an extra ingredient for traditional Thai cooking. Anutin promised it was not for recreational use and only plant material with less than 0.2% THC would be legal. As we can see it has all turned out differently with high strength flowers mostly being sold to tourist and local pot heads. 

I think Anutin knew exactly what he was doing - all about the money - i wonder how much he is making from this. I dont believe for a minute he is doing this "for the people".

for the record - Im enjoying a few tokes with the wife on saturday nights, especially the sativa strains. I still despise anutin though!! 

Of course it was not done for medical reasons. They had already legalised medical use with prescription from a licensed Thai herbal practitioner and the GPO was already producing THC and CBD oil for the purpose.  This legislation is still effective for use of THC extracts with over 0.2% THC. Smoking was also legal in controlled medical and research environments. They could have widened that up a bit perhaps requiring prescriptions to buy buds from dispensaries, the way California started, or just left it as it was. 

 

It was not for the people either.  Anutin's associates are well versed in the technology of cannabis culture and knew full well that the Isaan Thai peasants in his support bases in Buriram and Srisaket would not do well with the plant, lacking the knowiedge and technology to cultivate and cure them for maximum yield.  As it is most of the million seedlings distributed to farmers shrivelled and died in a short space of time. 

 

It is all about the MONEY. Huge amounts have already been made from local plantations and imports from North America, marked up at least 100% over North American retail prices, for which the Customs Department has presumably been ordered to look the other way and pick up the brown paper envelopes. The scope of investment in illegal plantations in Laos by Thai politicians and politically connected gangsters is unknown but probably huge.  Medical applications are limited and of questionable efficacy with a few notable exceptions, e.g. certain types of epilepsy and terminal cancer. The main money making opportunity is in recreational use. 

 

Having said all that, I am in favour of legalisation for Thailand which could work wonders for tourism  and provide income for a lot of Thais, even if Thai farmers are sadly excluded. Despite his often idiotic and crass remarks Anutin is not a fool and knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that legalisation would have had zero chance, if he had been open about legalising it for the main purpose of recreational use. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Dogmatix

[wimpy]

5 hours ago, JimboB4 said:

What’s the point of this article? They already met and it’s already known that it will never be re-listed. These are always so over exaggerated. We might be in danger of having to verify our ages before buying but there really is no threat to legal cannabis.   

You clicked on it (as did I). That is the point.

[TingTonger]

Why We not have these problems in The West , they love their Fairy  Tale Dramas 

Edited November 24, 2022 by TingTonger

[TingTonger]

7 hours ago, Robert Tyrrell said:

Good Morning,

 

Thailand you truly embarrass

yourselves !!! 
You’ve got more problems with Alcohol, No Helmet wearing on motorcycles and more then 2 passengers on them as well , Multiple people riding in the back of open pickup trucks, Rarely charging people with vehicular homicide when they drive drunk and kill people !! 
Truly an embarrassment yet you scream and whine about Weed absolutely nuts !! 

How about literally Tons of Yabba being caught Daily <deleted> 

[TingTonger]

7 hours ago, jacko45k said:

Perhaps they foresee similar problems with weed which have yet to come about. 

All the other stuff is 'other issues', where laws and restrictions are in place, but nor enforced.... 

To bring them up is really diversion, used when we have no argument for the topic itself. 

Similar , Yabba has been a scourge here for Decades , at least pot is natural and basically harmless 

[TingTonger]

7 hours ago, nikmar said:

i have doubts about this. It was initially de-criminalized for health and an extra ingredient for traditional Thai cooking. Anutin promised it was not for recreational use and only plant material with less than 0.2% THC would be legal. As we can see it has all turned out differently with high strength flowers mostly being sold to tourist and local pot heads. 

I think Anutin knew exactly what he was doing - all about the money - i wonder how much he is making from this. I dont believe for a minute he is doing this "for the people".

for the record - Im enjoying a few tokes with the wife on saturday nights, especially the sativa strains. I still despise anutin though!! 

Oh ok Pothead 

[TingTonger]

5 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

When I was a magistrate I gave up counting the number of cannabis related crimes I saw, Grievous Bodily Harm, Serious Bodily Harm, Theft, some sparked by suicide and my colleagues tell me drug driving is now massively more prevalent than drink driving.

 

The violence seems to stem from cannabis induced mental illness.

Have another drink , Boomer and stop watching Reefer madness 

[stoner]

3 hours ago, Dogmatix said:

marked up at least 100%

close...you're only off by a couple hundred percent. 

[redwood1]

48 minutes ago, TingTonger said:

Have another drink , Boomer and stop watching Reefer madness 

Some people just can't seem to understand weed affects people very very differently......For some people like me it's horrible....It makes me lazy and stupid and their a plenty like me....

Edited November 24, 2022 by redwood1