Pot industry pushes back against draft law that would put an end to Thailand’s cannabis revolution

[Bday Prang]

2 hours ago, sungod said:

 

I'm not reading anywhere in Thailand that cannabis is having an adverse effect on society, I'm just reading the adverse effects having on a bunch of winging old men on here who are not affected but must have an opinion.

         Indeed something happens inside the heads of some old men,  particularly when they retire and suddenly realise the redundant nature of their remaining life.   It seems to be more common in those who feel they held authoritative positions in the past, retired teachers and retired volunteer magistrates being common examples.  They just can't stop telling others, who they arrogantly consider inferior to themselves ,  what to do and how to live their lives, It us nothing more than a desperate attempt by them to maintain their sense of self worth   And as usual birds of a feather flock together

          There is plenty of room for them to start their own anti- cannabis forum, were they could huff and puff their self righteous views to each other , and virtue signal to their hearts'' content. I can pretty much guarantee that  few proponents of cannabis would waste their time trolling them or interrupting their sanctimonious, alcohol induced, hypocritical  whinging   Perhaps that's the very reason why there is not such a forum already,  well that and the fact that there would only be about half a dozen people  commenting there

            

[Dogmatix]

I have the sense that PT is very concerned about huge claims for compensation from shops and growers.  Therefore they decided not to make it totally illegal which would have resulted in compensation claims.  They might just try to kill the above ground legitimate legal business and get the shops to close down without dealing with any claims.  Politically, if most of the shops have disappeared, they can claim it as a victory, even thought the business will have gone underground and possession is not a crime - only using the stuff in your possession.  If they are going to make possession of up to 5 speed pills a crime that will not be prosecuted, it will be difficult to make possession of cannabis illegal, even if you are not allowed to use the cannabis in your possession.  If you claimed you didn't intend to use it but just liked the look and scent of it - like pot pourri - what could they do?

[Thingamabob]

Cannabis is far less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. 

[Olmate]

11 minutes ago, Dogmatix said:

 

Unlike the case with alcohol, aggression is a fairly unusual effect of cannabis.  Falling asleep is more normal. 

 

I don't condone doping people without their knowledge under any circumstances but I recall an episode where I was an event at the seaside in Thailand and there was a farang guy who was quite drunk and was talking loudly and aggressively about the need to execute all drug dealers.  He was chain smoking cigarettes and unbeknown to myself a Thai girl had put two joints that looked like cigarettes in his cigarette pack when he went for a pee.  He smoked the joints one after the other without noticing any difference because he was so drunk.  Then all of a sudden he started modifying his tone and eventually decided that drug dealers were human beings and should be given a chance to rehabilitate.  Then he passed out in a deck chair. 

"at the seaside in Thailand".. just like in those fairytales! 

[Bday Prang]

15 minutes ago, RobU said:

They will get drunk and have plenty of tokes at the pub and you won't know what hit you, or why

I can guarantee that anybody who writes rubbish like this, has never got drunk and had any tokes of cannabis in their life.     Where are are the recent news reports of this happening here ?   If it had ever happened the media would be all over it like a rash.   There are however no shortage of reports involving aggression where alcohol is or is not involved, 

The assertion that cannabis use  significantly causes violent behaviour is absolute rubbish. even the reefer madness films did not make such an obviously fictional claim

[Jonathan Swift]

8 hours ago, smedly said:

Thailand has enough to deal with regarding alcohol - it does not need another drug rampaging society, excessive use of weed has been shown to cause long term brain damage - many studies have shown this

Quote the studies. Which ones? Copy paste from them the evidence. Let's see it. You don't know what you're talking about. Marijuana is nowhere near the same league as other substances. It has dozens of positive and medicinal benefits. And these points ARE backed up with research, and were that not the case it would not be getting legalized at warp speed throughout the world BASED ON THE RESULTS OF ACTUAL RESEARCH. 

[riclag]

5 hours ago, ignore it said:

Mind altering!

[Jonathan Swift]

5 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Did anybody conduct any studies before cannabis was legalized in Thailand?

What were the expectations?

And now, did anybody follow up and compare the expectations with reality?

Did it all go according to plan? What went wrong? And why did it go wrong?

 

Or was there never any study and some politicians just decided that they can make money by legalizing it?

And now some other politicians want to make it illegal again for whatever personal reasons?

 

Personally I see possible good and bad sides. Decisions should be made based on what is good for Thai society. 

There have been hundreds of studies, which you could easily have found were it not for laziness on your part. Most of your questions could have been addressed online with a little research. Too much actual work though, right? 

[Jonathan Swift]

5 hours ago, Dr Jon said:

Psychosis, schizophrenia, cancer, birth defects... what's not to like?

What's not to like? False and ignorant statements like yours, utterly detached from reality. None of those things have ever been liked to Marijuana. Do you think your comments are taken the least bit seriously? Guess again. 

[NanLaew]

5 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

They should fight these changes with everything they have, the people who have invested a fortune into these stores and cannabis related businesses depend on the government to support them and the last thing they need right now is a flip-flop and a restart of the war on recreational drugs, which is a ridiculous pursuit on the part of any government. They should hire lobbyists, they should pay off senators, they should do whatever they need to do to make sure no changes take place with this law. 

 

Does anyone trust their government anywhere not to flip-flop on policy? The last thing I would ever depend on is "government support".

 

As for lobbyists and paying off senators, I think it's called vested interests buying senators in Thailand.

 

This is a inter-party, factional fisticuffs between a couple of over entitled cliques. Nobody involved really gives a hoot if cannabis-related businesses go to the wall or if the tourist numbers drop (like they ever increased due to pot legalization anyway).

[Gilligan In Drag]

There's also a pretty important consideration that gets ignored and thrown under the bus:

 

The dangers of prohibition.

 

Recreational drug use can  harm some, but so do governments that propagandize their people and render them 

that much more confused and ignorant in that process, or so can driving a car harm people. Supernovas explode with the power to annihilate whole local

star clusters, but also provide the material to form new worlds. Get used to it, Shiva. the god of destruction  is not worshipped

by 100's of millions of people in India for no reason, its a profound and prevasive aspect of life that the polite genteel gardners

of the western world think they can get under control by spraying their gardens with pesticides. When governments embark on drug wars and prohibitions you are effectively spraying your people with pesticides adding something equally as dangerous as rampant drug abuse if not more so

to the whole mix. Its not like no one knew that even 100 years ago either and its often what you read as to why they stopped alcohol prohibition in the west: its doesn't work and and creates more problems than it solves.

 

Prohibition is already a long discredited way to control the harmful effects of mass recreational drug use on society if it ever

is sincerely carried out to protect society, and personally I don't think it is done for that purpose.

 

It is clearly useful as a political tool, social control, and for the profit of entities like colonial and neo-colonial entites and drug companies,

branches of government and criminal elites. It is NEVER done to protect you, lets not be naive, there are no governments

that exist or who have ever existed that were sincerely that interested in their citizen's welfare. It isn't their job, its your job

if you want to live your life fully as a sentient sensible adult human being and if you think the government is able to protect you

from reality even if it wanted to, realities like there are many chemical compounds and plants that change people's behavior in ways that may be dangerous,

then you have been duped into helping them very actively not help you.

 

As we well know from the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States in the 1980's, an illegal drug market

is a great way for rogue actors in government and military to get funding they need to run wars and other projects

without approval, public knowledge and oversight. So in our weak efforts, efforts that seem these days to have completely failed, to have representative

and transparent government that genuinely serves their people throughout the world, drug prohibitions add even more problems to the human problems with running sovereign nations that treat its citizenry with due respect and are corrosive towards those ends of an accountable

government which acts with purpose that is clear to all making for a life that without intervention and stupid nannying

is actually genuinely safer and better for everyone.

 

People wax all snarky-barky on the forum whenever the cannabis legalization in Thailand topic comes up, "Oh, they just wanna

make a bunch of money!" The same can be said for illegalization, just that who makes the money will be different.

If its illegal then who makes the money changes hands those in government and business who are positioned to profit from illegal sales will benefit.

 

making weed illegal is not to save the children and adults of Thailand, if they were interested in that, other more key things would be prioritized

such as banning toxic chemicals, chemicals banned all over the world no less,

but used ubiquitously in food, agriculture. Or working to effectively ensure people have clean air and water.

Or how about protecting people from predatory doctors and pharmacies with malpractice laws.

Or how about instilling in people good basic health and safety awareness, or tryin gto create a system

that does not run on corruption so that laws protecting people from harmful pollutants, food and medication

will be enforced and Thailand can honestly test foods and drugs for harm creating capabilities. Theres plenty

of dangerous chemical compounds galore everytime you step into a shop or market or supermarket. Really, cannabis

and alcohol are scapegoats, even though of course one must be judicious in their use. But that goes without saying

for anything.

 

The health of Thai people is very poor, among the worst in Asia. Anywhere you go in Thailand you are exposed to life shortening levels

of agricultural poisons, a witches brew of compounds in the air from burning refuse and exposed in the cities to clouds of

auto-motive exhausts from easily solvable traffic problems. But there is no will to solve these problems because Thailand like many

countries is hopelessly corrupt and because of that the mentality is theres no immediate gain or opportunity to be gained from

solving those problems. Apparently there is somethingto be had from this cannabis legalization re-criminalization game or it would ne all shrugged off.

 

In addition to providing bad actors with illegal markets and their attendant inflated prices,

With drug prohibitions in place, drugs can be used as a way for government and law enforcement to

falsely imprison, fine and smear who ever they like.

We all know in urban areas everywhere that the police can and do plant drugs

on people who have broken no laws whenever they want to target someone to be taken down or merely fined.

Someone's occasional use of a recreational substance can be a way of completely removing

them from their well earned and capable positions. So, OK go ahead, re-criminalize cannabis

and hand law enforcement another tool to abuse their positions for their own gain and society's loss.

 

And then there's workplace and law enforcement drug testing that prohibition gives you.

And apart from the obviosu it has the unfortunate effect of having normalized the situation whereby

people forefeit their right human right to privacy and bodily autonomy and now your boss or the government or the police can

then have some not insignificant control over your neurochemistry, its not just the big bad

government or law enforcement standing between you and your brain, its your buddy you work with and say good morning to everyday.

Prohibition via drug testing then sets up these subtly corrosive and insidious relationships

like a cancer within the society. People like to recall the old communist regimes where

social empowerment and cohesion was shattered, even down down to the family level

by snitch networks. To me it seems the drug test is another species of this found in the post communist

uni-polar world soon to become multi again.

 

The drug test is also a routine way that law enforcement can arbitrarily extract fines whenever they like and detain who they like.

We are conditioned by the high-techness and scientific glamor of it to carry on in the media and to each other and ourselves

as though testing were actually a legitimate means to control the problem of drug use. Its a gizmo, wow! It must be the answer

to the problem of determining whose on drugs and who isn't. It clearly is not, its very well known drug tests

do not have high enough levels of accuracy and people who do not use drugs can be subject to life ruining

consequences should a law enforcement operative run a money saving or god forbid counterfeit and completely

arbitrary drug test and get a false result.

 

But we now mostly accept drug testing and naively think, and you deny the flakiness of drug tests and assure yorurself well I don't use drugs I have nothing to fear and this will help create a safe world and put the druggies in jail and rehab where they belong and all will be well. Just because you have a piece of technology doesn't mean you have anything legit. It could be anything and you don;t know

how that test actually comes by its results, its all completely opaque to the average person and the agencies and the compaines that make these

tests can hide behind that. They don't even have to make legitmate tests, in most countries such as the United States that even have

supposed consumer standards checks, the outfits are wholly corrupted. Why bother with selling a real test. Just pay some

person with a science degree 2 thousand dollars and presto you have a test that without fail and in 15 minutes tells you whether someone has taken an

illegal drug. Or consider how far you are going to get in Thailand investigating and challenging  whether even a fake test was conducted, all the police have to do

is say, "This is a drug test...and the drug test says you took an illegal drug...you'll have to give up your green papaya shaver manufacturing enterprise to us

because you'll be in for quite awhile." Just ask Americans about that kin dof thing, how now the government routinely seizes all of your assets

and has railroaded many innocent people, ruined them and never returned what was wrongfully seized from them because of a drug charge. there som ehorrific ironies afloat such as in one case traces of cocaine were found on crisp bank notes foun din a safe of one successful balck american business man and his defense attornies presented studies that found that because there is so much illegal drug running done by unmonitored military and government organizations in the United States, there is enough cocaine on every US dollar to incriminate and seize the assets of anyone they choose. So yeah, great, run a drug war and prohibition Thailand.

 

The story of this man who was run in and had yachts and homes and his business empire and assets seized because of a drug test is to be found in the  highly recommended two volume memoirs, Volume 1-Phikal and Volume 2-Tikal of the discoverer of the benefits of MDMA,

and inventor of hundreds of psychoactive compunds the experimental neuro-pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin. Shulgin himself was an eminently thoughtful and articulate and humane advocate for human freedom and potential. He experimented on himself and his friends and chronicalled in voluninous detailed the findings of the beneficial effects of compounds he created at his home laboratory funded by royalties he'd gained earlier in his career working for Dole Pineapple and his salary as a professor and public speaker at UC Berkeley in California. His interest was in psychoactive compounds long before they were in the public eye and concern, and so he got out of working as a chemist in big agriculture as soon as he could. But despite being among the very few given license to investigate and create psychoactive chemicals  by the US government, the DEA decided eventually to go in and tear his lab apart and end his activities by prosecuting him to destroy his work and even ban his book which detailed to the public the effects and methods to synthesize just about anything he found or made himself. The power of a mandate of a drug prohibition gave the DEA, the agency charged with fighting the drug war against the whole world  the overeach to go in and bust up the research. The library of Alexander (Shulgin) has been burned to the ground and decades have now passed in which the befits and nature of the human mind may forever remain obscured.

 

And then there is the way that  drug testing  has opened pandora's box to use flakey technologies  to be able to

predict or even read a person's mind for pre-crime and of course as we know there is much discussion

by governments and law enforcement authorities about how

a pre-crime or a test result saying you were about to commit a crime will be tantamount in the future to

having actually done the crime. To me it would seem that drug testing is a similar operation. Your crime of

having been inebriated and thus a danger to yourself and others is not otherwise apparent. So you have to

take the drug test which in effect says, you are a danger before the fact, its a type of pre-crime indicator in many cases.

 

And also, not to mention, that drug testing, like background checks and monitoring employee

internet activities is used as a shabby substitute for   critical thinking and

evaluative skills, and distracts probably all

companies to some degree from spending time and resources and getting actually competent management

who are foscused on actually able to evaluate employee work and performance and actual behavior on the job.

The society that is on drugs and "on" prohibition, as prohibition is just as capable of creating a deluded nation as a drugs are 

hallucinates as it runs the drug test, the surreptitious background check, the application gathered  look at

an employee's comments and other activities  on internet.

The normalization of superfluous and glamorous high tech tools with limited benefit especially in places

like Thailand where critical and evaluative skills are under developed no doubt lowers the quality of life for everyone.

Indeed ruling institutions and individuals do not want people to have the ability to evaluate performance and behavior

lest their managerial class begin to turn those well honed workplace skills against them. So, you give them the drug that is

drug tests and multi-choice personality investigation quizzes and monitor their twitter posts in lieu. its also no doubt a lot more fun

and inspiring for managers to get to play god and say lets see if Nigel was smoking dope on the weekend and ask him to submit a drug test

rather than going through the monotony of actually looking at what he is doing and having to weigh many considerations

as to whether he's helping the company or organization or govt branch that pays him. You can just save all that headache and hours of boredom

by doing a simple and fun drug test with lots of cool bells and whistles and colors and charts and then be able to proclaim with complete conviction,  "Ah ha! He uses drugs! And he talks a load of crap that i don't appreciate on facebook! I knew he was on drugs! He's out of here! I don't care that he is the star developer!"

 

How much does it matter if your star developer tests positive for cocaine and marijuana, especially if you never ran

a test you'd never have known. Just the act of running a test for drugs is an admission that there is no obvious problem

with your employee's performance in the first place.

 

So thanks to drug prohibition its now acceptable for management to go through the

motions of monitoring the effectiveness of their employees, its essentially a ritual substituting for

real discernment: is the employee an asset in his actual behavior and real contributions. I have never

worked under any Thai manager, and I have worked under many, who could evaluate the quality of anyone's

work or understand the value or liability to the work environment of employees in their charge. They look at

anything but, they understand almost everything but is this work he's doing good or not.
 

Yet the discussion here on the threads and in media and by the government ignores the dire price to be

paid by society as a whole for a drug war or prohibition. They seem blithely unaware despite the precedent

despite the semi-detente in the west regarding recreational cannabis.

 

The end of alcohol prohibition in the United States left us with that conclusion, that was nearly a century ago

yet as soon as alcohol prohibition ended JD Anslinger picked up the reigns and fired the fuel of hysteria against cannabis.

But as that all begin sto end Thailand not only makes a false move to undo it but it decides to say no actually screw all that.

It really seems to doubly affirm their commitment to harming their population to using prohibition for political gain and enriching themselves

and their overlords.

 

 

[Robert Tyrrell]

Good Afternoon,

 

why would you want to squash a 1.8 Billion Thai Baht annually in government revenue !!?? 

Alcohol kills far more then cannabis will ever !! 
No problem with underage drinking in Thailand, Thai Youth underage going to village shops buying beer 🍺 and whiskey 🥃For there parents and drinking and driving and killing people.

Not to mention trying to stop a booming industry that’s providing Thais with jobs and opportunities for farmers, Especially during a global economic downturn. 
Common Sense Thailand 🇹🇭 !!!! 

[Mark17AA]

8 hours ago, smedly said:

Thailand has enough to deal with regarding alcohol - it does not need another drug rampaging society, excessive use of weed has been shown to cause long term brain damage - many studies have shown this

Thailand and Brain in the same paragragh... not possible.

[fondue zoo]

 

I'm gettin' the munchies just reading all our armchair nonsense.

 

 

[Bday Prang]

42 minutes ago, Gilligan In Drag said:

There's also a pretty important consideration that gets ignored and thrown under the bus:

 

The dangers of prohibition.

 

Recreational drug use can  harm some, but so do governments that propagandize their people and render them 

that much more confused and ignorant in that process, or so can driving a car harm people. Supernovas explode with the power to annihilate whole local

star clusters, but also provide the material to form new worlds. Get used to it, Shiva. the god of destruction  is not worshipped

by 100's of millions of people in India for no reason, its a profound and prevasive aspect of life that the polite genteel gardners

of the western world think they can get under control by spraying their gardens with pesticides. When governments embark on drug wars and prohibitions you are effectively spraying your people with pesticides adding something equally as dangerous as rampant drug abuse if not more so

to the whole mix. Its not like no one knew that even 100 years ago either and its often what you read as to why they stopped alcohol prohibition in the west: its doesn't work and and creates more problems than it solves.

 

Prohibition is already a long discredited way to control the harmful effects of mass recreational drug use on society if it ever

is sincerely carried out to protect society, and personally I don't think it is done for that purpose.

 

It is clearly useful as a political tool, social control, and for the profit of entities like colonial and neo-colonial entites and drug companies,

branches of government and criminal elites. It is NEVER done to protect you, lets not be naive, there are no governments

that exist or who have ever existed that were sincerely that interested in their citizen's welfare. It isn't their job, its your job

if you want to live your life fully as a sentient sensible adult human being and if you think the government is able to protect you

from reality even if it wanted to, realities like there are many chemical compounds and plants that change people's behavior in ways that may be dangerous,

then you have been duped into helping them very actively not help you.

 

As we well know from the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States in the 1980's, an illegal drug market

is a great way for rogue actors in government and military to get funding they need to run wars and other projects

without approval, public knowledge and oversight. So in our weak efforts, efforts that seem these days to have completely failed, to have representative

and transparent government that genuinely serves their people throughout the world, drug prohibitions add even more problems to the human problems with running sovereign nations that treat its citizenry with due respect and are corrosive towards those ends of an accountable

government which acts with purpose that is clear to all making for a life that without intervention and stupid nannying

is actually genuinely safer and better for everyone.

 

People wax all snarky-barky on the forum whenever the cannabis legalization in Thailand topic comes up, "Oh, they just wanna

make a bunch of money!" The same can be said for illegalization, just that who makes the money will be different.

If its illegal then who makes the money changes hands those in government and business who are positioned to profit from illegal sales will benefit.

 

making weed illegal is not to save the children and adults of Thailand, if they were interested in that, other more key things would be prioritized

such as banning toxic chemicals, chemicals banned all over the world no less,

but used ubiquitously in food, agriculture. Or working to effectively ensure people have clean air and water.

Or how about protecting people from predatory doctors and pharmacies with malpractice laws.

Or how about instilling in people good basic health and safety awareness, or tryin gto create a system

that does not run on corruption so that laws protecting people from harmful pollutants, food and medication

will be enforced and Thailand can honestly test foods and drugs for harm creating capabilities. Theres plenty

of dangerous chemical compounds galore everytime you step into a shop or market or supermarket. Really, cannabis

and alcohol are scapegoats, even though of course one must be judicious in their use. But that goes without saying

for anything.

 

The health of Thai people is very poor, among the worst in Asia. Anywhere you go in Thailand you are exposed to life shortening levels

of agricultural poisons, a witches brew of compounds in the air from burning refuse and exposed in the cities to clouds of

auto-motive exhausts from easily solvable traffic problems. But there is no will to solve these problems because Thailand like many

countries is hopelessly corrupt and because of that the mentality is theres no immediate gain or opportunity to be gained from

solving those problems. Apparently there is somethingto be had from this cannabis legalization re-criminalization game or it would ne all shrugged off.

 

In addition to providing bad actors with illegal markets and their attendant inflated prices,

With drug prohibitions in place, drugs can be used as a way for government and law enforcement to

falsely imprison, fine and smear who ever they like.

We all know in urban areas everywhere that the police can and do plant drugs

on people who have broken no laws whenever they want to target someone to be taken down or merely fined.

Someone's occasional use of a recreational substance can be a way of completely removing

them from their well earned and capable positions. So, OK go ahead, re-criminalize cannabis

and hand law enforcement another tool to abuse their positions for their own gain and society's loss.

 

And then there's workplace and law enforcement drug testing that prohibition gives you.

And apart from the obviosu it has the unfortunate effect of having normalized the situation whereby

people forefeit their right human right to privacy and bodily autonomy and now your boss or the government or the police can

then have some not insignificant control over your neurochemistry, its not just the big bad

government or law enforcement standing between you and your brain, its your buddy you work with and say good morning to everyday.

Prohibition via drug testing then sets up these subtly corrosive and insidious relationships

like a cancer within the society. People like to recall the old communist regimes where

social empowerment and cohesion was shattered, even down down to the family level

by snitch networks. To me it seems the drug test is another species of this found in the post communist

uni-polar world soon to become multi again.

 

The drug test is also a routine way that law enforcement can arbitrarily extract fines whenever they like and detain who they like.

We are conditioned by the high-techness and scientific glamor of it to carry on in the media and to each other and ourselves

as though testing were actually a legitimate means to control the problem of drug use. Its a gizmo, wow! It must be the answer

to the problem of determining whose on drugs and who isn't. It clearly is not, its very well known drug tests

do not have high enough levels of accuracy and people who do not use drugs can be subject to life ruining

consequences should a law enforcement operative run a money saving or god forbid counterfeit and completely

arbitrary drug test and get a false result.

 

But we now mostly accept drug testing and naively think, and you deny the flakiness of drug tests and assure yorurself well I don't use drugs I have nothing to fear and this will help create a safe world and put the druggies in jail and rehab where they belong and all will be well. Just because you have a piece of technology doesn't mean you have anything legit. It could be anything and you don;t know

how that test actually comes by its results, its all completely opaque to the average person and the agencies and the compaines that make these

tests can hide behind that. They don't even have to make legitmate tests, in most countries such as the United States that even have

supposed consumer standards checks, the outfits are wholly corrupted. Why bother with selling a real test. Just pay some

person with a science degree 2 thousand dollars and presto you have a test that without fail and in 15 minutes tells you whether someone has taken an

illegal drug. Or consider how far you are going to get in Thailand investigating and challenging  whether even a fake test was conducted, all the police have to do

is say, "This is a drug test...and the drug test says you took an illegal drug...you'll have to give up your green papaya shaver manufacturing enterprise to us

because you'll be in for quite awhile." Just ask Americans about that kin dof thing, how now the government routinely seizes all of your assets

and has railroaded many innocent people, ruined them and never returned what was wrongfully seized from them because of a drug charge. there som ehorrific ironies afloat such as in one case traces of cocaine were found on crisp bank notes foun din a safe of one successful balck american business man and his defense attornies presented studies that found that because there is so much illegal drug running done by unmonitored military and government organizations in the United States, there is enough cocaine on every US dollar to incriminate and seize the assets of anyone they choose. So yeah, great, run a drug war and prohibition Thailand.

 

The story of this man who was run in and had yachts and homes and his business empire and assets seized because of a drug test is to be found in the  highly recommended two volume memoirs, Volume 1-Phikal and Volume 2-Tikal of the discoverer of the benefits of MDMA,

and inventor of hundreds of psychoactive compunds the experimental neuro-pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin. Shulgin himself was an eminently thoughtful and articulate and humane advocate for human freedom and potential. He experimented on himself and his friends and chronicalled in voluninous detailed the findings of the beneficial effects of compounds he created at his home laboratory funded by royalties he'd gained earlier in his career working for Dole Pineapple and his salary as a professor and public speaker at UC Berkeley in California. His interest was in psychoactive compounds long before they were in the public eye and concern, and so he got out of working as a chemist in big agriculture as soon as he could. But despite being among the very few given license to investigate and create psychoactive chemicals  by the US government, the DEA decided eventually to go in and tear his lab apart and end his activities by prosecuting him to destroy his work and even ban his book which detailed to the public the effects and methods to synthesize just about anything he found or made himself. The power of a mandate of a drug prohibition gave the DEA, the agency charged with fighting the drug war against the whole world  the overeach to go in and bust up the research. The library of Alexander (Shulgin) has been burned to the ground and decades have now passed in which the befits and nature of the human mind may forever remain obscured.

 

And then there is the way that  drug testing  has opened pandora's box to use flakey technologies  to be able to

predict or even read a person's mind for pre-crime and of course as we know there is much discussion

by governments and law enforcement authorities about how

a pre-crime or a test result saying you were about to commit a crime will be tantamount in the future to

having actually done the crime. To me it would seem that drug testing is a similar operation. Your crime of

having been inebriated and thus a danger to yourself and others is not otherwise apparent. So you have to

take the drug test which in effect says, you are a danger before the fact, its a type of pre-crime indicator in many cases.

 

And also, not to mention, that drug testing, like background checks and monitoring employee

internet activities is used as a shabby substitute for   critical thinking and

evaluative skills, and distracts probably all

companies to some degree from spending time and resources and getting actually competent management

who are foscused on actually able to evaluate employee work and performance and actual behavior on the job.

The society that is on drugs and "on" prohibition, as prohibition is just as capable of creating a deluded nation as a drugs are 

hallucinates as it runs the drug test, the surreptitious background check, the application gathered  look at

an employee's comments and other activities  on internet.

The normalization of superfluous and glamorous high tech tools with limited benefit especially in places

like Thailand where critical and evaluative skills are under developed no doubt lowers the quality of life for everyone.

Indeed ruling institutions and individuals do not want people to have the ability to evaluate performance and behavior

lest their managerial class begin to turn those well honed workplace skills against them. So, you give them the drug that is

drug tests and multi-choice personality investigation quizzes and monitor their twitter posts in lieu. its also no doubt a lot more fun

and inspiring for managers to get to play god and say lets see if Nigel was smoking dope on the weekend and ask him to submit a drug test

rather than going through the monotony of actually looking at what he is doing and having to weigh many considerations

as to whether he's helping the company or organization or govt branch that pays him. You can just save all that headache and hours of boredom

by doing a simple and fun drug test with lots of cool bells and whistles and colors and charts and then be able to proclaim with complete conviction,  "Ah ha! He uses drugs! And he talks a load of crap that i don't appreciate on facebook! I knew he was on drugs! He's out of here! I don't care that he is the star developer!"

 

How much does it matter if your star developer tests positive for cocaine and marijuana, especially if you never ran

a test you'd never have known. Just the act of running a test for drugs is an admission that there is no obvious problem

with your employee's performance in the first place.

 

So thanks to drug prohibition its now acceptable for management to go through the

motions of monitoring the effectiveness of their employees, its essentially a ritual substituting for

real discernment: is the employee an asset in his actual behavior and real contributions. I have never

worked under any Thai manager, and I have worked under many, who could evaluate the quality of anyone's

work or understand the value or liability to the work environment of employees in their charge. They look at

anything but, they understand almost everything but is this work he's doing good or not.
 

Yet the discussion here on the threads and in media and by the government ignores the dire price to be

paid by society as a whole for a drug war or prohibition. They seem blithely unaware despite the precedent

despite the semi-detente in the west regarding recreational cannabis.

 

The end of alcohol prohibition in the United States left us with that conclusion, that was nearly a century ago

yet as soon as alcohol prohibition ended JD Anslinger picked up the reigns and fired the fuel of hysteria against cannabis.

But as that all begin sto end Thailand not only makes a false move to undo it but it decides to say no actually screw all that.

It really seems to doubly affirm their commitment to harming their population to using prohibition for political gain and enriching themselves

and their overlords.

 

 

Nice comment and I totally agree,,   Ps what are you smoking and can you get me some  

[Bday Prang]

30 minutes ago, Robert Tyrrell said:

Good Afternoon,

 

why would you want to squash a 1.8 Billion Thai Baht annually in government revenue !!?? 

Alcohol kills far more then cannabis will ever !! 
No problem with underage drinking in Thailand, Thai Youth underage going to village shops buying beer 🍺 and whiskey 🥃For there parents and drinking and driving and killing people.

Not to mention trying to stop a booming industry that’s providing Thais with jobs and opportunities for farmers, Especially during a global economic downturn. 
Common Sense Thailand 🇹🇭 !!!! 

And its not like making it illegal again  will ever stop those who want to smoke it from doing so,  That much has already been proved beyond all doubt, has nobody in favour of recriminalization  noticed that ?

[jonclark]

9 hours ago, smedly said:

Thailand has enough to deal with regarding alcohol - it does not need another drug rampaging society, excessive use of weed has been shown to cause long term brain damage - many studies have shown this

To be fair - excessive use of anything can cause damage of one sort or another. That's not a reason to ban it is it - Sugar, Salt, Fat - all if used excessively can cause a range of chronic, acute and potentially fatal damages to the body's organs - Would you consider banning those, even when supported by a vast library of medical studies that show how destructive excessive use can be of those substances? 

 

If people want to smoke weed and kill themselves, let them get on with it. Let society profit from the taxes imposed on the sale of weed and move on. 

 

[Bobthegimp]

1 hour ago, RobU said:

Did you actually read my post? Documented fact that cannabis causes Paranoia combine that with alcohol and you have big trouble including domestic violence and murder for no reason whatsoever 

 

It doesn't "cause" paranoia in non susceptible people but it multiplies it in paranoid schizophrenics.  Marijuana use in schizophrenic teens has terrible outcomes.  The dopers seem to hate this old documentary but I found it illuminating. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAYvaWO8rg4

 

[Bday Prang]

14 minutes ago, Bobthegimp said:

 

It doesn't "cause" paranoia in non susceptible people but it multiplies it in paranoid schizophrenics.  Marijuana use in schizophrenic teens has terrible outcomes.  The dopers seem to hate this old documentary but I found it illuminating. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAYvaWO8rg4

 

So restricting its use to non teens as at present  is of no use ,  but banning its use by everybody will solve the problem  with a few schizo teens ? 

I found the documentary laughable to be honest, a few "experts" and concerned parents reading from a script

[bamnutsak]

9 hours ago, lexxy said:

 

No word, insight or consideration for the benefits of medical marijuana?  - many studies have shown this.

 

 

 

 

At this time, medical cannabis is limited as a treatment to six conditions, per the Department of Traditional Medicine (DTAM), within the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).

 

DMS’s guidance for the use of cannabinoids product.

Medical cannabis benefits for six conditions include: neuropathic pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, intractable epilepsy, spasticity from multiple sclerosis, AIDS-related cachexia, and palliative care conditions

 

May be beneficial for conditions including generalized anxiety disorder, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer disease, and demyelinating disease

Might be beneficial for cancer treatment, but more information and research are needed

 

 

 

To expand the medical cannabis treatment program the Minister has a lot of work to do.

 

 

And to restrict or eliminate recreational use, Cannabis flower (any production, sale, possession, use) will have to be re-criminalized.

[Olmate]

2 minutes ago, Bday Prang said:

So restricting its use to non teens as at present  is of no use ,  but banning its use by everybody will solve the problem  with a few schizo teens ? 

No 'schizo teens' in your area then? 

[sungod]

1 hour ago, RobU said:

Did you actually read my post? Documented fact that cannabis causes Paranoia combine that with alcohol and you have big trouble including domestic violence and murder for no reason whatsoever 

Clueless.......

[Bday Prang]

1 minute ago, Olmate said:

No 'schizo teens' in your area then? 

Dunno and don't care , I avoid teens like the plague

[Bobthegimp]

1 minute ago, Bday Prang said:

So restricting its use to non teens as at present  is of no use ,  but banning its use by everybody will solve the problem  with a few schizo teens ? 

 

I don't care what you or anyone else puts into their body. Fill your boots. 

 

If an addict tries to steal my property to support that habit there will be unpleasant consequences.  That's where my personal line is drawn.  Experience has taught me that drug addicts don't file assault complaints, so feel free to deal with them as you see fit without the fear of legal ramifications. 

 

What worries me is that you lot will start your pro doper s h it over here like you did back home and bring down the wrath of the Thai populace on us non dopers who live here in peace and wish to continue doing so.  

[NanLaew]

20 minutes ago, Bobthegimp said:

1 hour ago, RobU said:

Did you actually read my post? Documented fact that cannabis causes Paranoia combine that with alcohol and you have big trouble including domestic violence and murder for no reason whatsoever 

 

It doesn't "cause" paranoia in non susceptible people but it multiplies it in paranoid schizophrenics.  Marijuana use in schizophrenic teens has terrible outcomes. 

 

Precisely the same reason why in the US, guns in themselves don't cause people to 'go postal' unless they're paranoid schizophrenics already.

[Olmate]

4 minutes ago, Bday Prang said:

Dunno and don't care , I avoid teens like the plague

Dont care has just been made to care! Stiff luck you.

[Bday Prang]

2 minutes ago, Bobthegimp said:

 

I don't care what you or anyone else puts into their body. Fill your boots. 

 

If an addict tries to steal my property to support that habit there will be unpleasant consequences.  That's where my personal line is drawn.  Experience has taught me that drug addicts don't file assault complaints, so feel free to deal with them as you see fit without the fear of legal ramifications. 

 

What worries me is that you lot will start your pro doper s h it over here like you did back home and bring down the wrath of the Thai populace on us non dopers who live here in peace and wish to continue doing so.  

 You should live in accordance with your opening sentence, as what people choose to put in their bodies is really none of your business.  But as a self professed vigilante and hard man    how many cannabis  "addicts"  have you  subjected to your summary justice "Mr Mccall"  and what pro doper $hit to you think I am responsible for starting back home (in the UK)

Time for your afternoon nap I think

[Bday Prang]

9 minutes ago, Olmate said:

Dont care has just been made to care! Stiff luck you.

again in English please

[Gilligan In Drag]

1 hour ago, Bday Prang said:

Nice comment and I totally agree,,   Ps what are you smoking and can you get me some  

Haha! Strictly Lao and Honduran  sativa! Get yourself a couple seeds from Angus who sells very reasonably priced amazing landrace and heirlooms from all over the world and probably about 15-20 different Thai, Burmese and Lao lineages, The Real Seed Company and Quick Seeds are run by him. Thailand will be stupid about all of this and illegalize pot but they wil carry on not making a fuss about it in Laos.

[Bday Prang]

1 minute ago, Gilligan In Drag said:

Haha! Strictly Lao and Honduran  sativa! Get yourself a couple seeds from Angus who sells very reasonably priced amazing landrace and heirlooms from all over the world and probably about 15-20 different Thai, Burmese and Lao lineages, The Real Seed Company and Quick Seeds are run by him. Thailand will be stupid about all of this and illegalize pot but they wil carry on not making a fuss about it in Laos.

Nice one,    I think many will also quietly continue here as they have done for centuries,  My brother in law , a police inspector, confirmed a long time ago that he considered   "Lao" to be the best