Drug-using Tourists Not Welcome On Samui

[Boater]

KOH Samui District Chief Sakchai Jorphalit is spearheading a campaign to stamp out drug use and peddling on the island. Recently Mr. Sakchai launched the Post Box 188, an address that anybody can write to anonymously about any information related to narcotic drugs on Samui.

The Post Box 188 is a project of the newly launched Operation Center to Fight against Drug, which Sakchai manages. The center will initiate other projects and activities to encourage island resident and tourists to help root out the drug problem.

“Our Operation Center to Fight against Drug has just established the Post Box 188 so that residents and tourists on Koh Samui can send us letters, news, reports, suggestions, proposals related to drug usage on Koh Samui. It is another channel for us to receive information directly from people about the sources of narcotic drugs,” Sakchai said.

Sakchai said people can give information about drug users, drug dealers, drug makers and areas where drug trading takes place or where people use drug without revealing their identities.

Sakchai also urged hotels and resorts to put up notices that state that “drug-using tourists are not welcome on Koh Samui.” He cited a police report claiming that as high as 80 percent of drug users on the island are tourists. This explains, he said, why the drug business on Samui remains lucrative.

“We need quality tourist, not drug-using ones. Let’s make Samui drug-free. Tourists should come here to appreciate Samui’s natural beauty, and not to take drugs,” he said.

Meanwhile, last July 17 police arrested five men for drug possession. Apprehending officers seized five packs of marijuana weighing 1 kilogram from Ornranop Boonjan, 28; Adisit Choomthong, 31; Aphisorn Meesit, 37; Suthad Thongfur, 29; and Phakin Vitha, 29.

Interrogated at the Bophut police station, the suspects said they worked for a jetski rental shop at Chaweng beach.

They said they bought the illegal stuff for their own use and to sell to tourists.

http://news.samuiexpress.net/local-list/51...e-on-samui.html

[MSingh]

But come here, spend fortunes on Alcohol & spreadign STD's, that's fine..

No Joints though..

[happylarry]

So how many of these 80% of tourists that are using drugs did they arrest? Its laughable what these people come out with , isnt it.

And for the record I havent touched any recreational drugs in my life and am dead against them, but still laugh at these so called crackdowns.

Even in non-corrupted countries the police cant stop the trade so what chance over here when any policeman can be bought for so little money.

HL

[ParadiseLost]

Meanwhile, last July 17 police arrested five men for drug possession. Apprehending officers seized five packs of marijuana weighing 1 kilogram from Ornranop Boonjan, 28; Adisit Choomthong, 31; Aphisorn Meesit, 37; Suthad Thongfur, 29; and Phakin Vitha, 29.

Each carrying a 1kg bag?

[teddy_bare]

“We need quality tourist, not drug-using ones.

Obviously never heard of Club 54 and the coke usage by the professional community.

They really want to narrow the customer base.

Maybe the should launch a tourist media campaign in the Vatican City. Oh wait, then they'd get the Pedos

[lazygourmet]

Wrong...

Tourists should be stoned 24/7 to NOT realize what the mistake they made with holidaying in Samui!

[lazygourmet]

Double post...

Sorry!

Edited August 6, 2009 by lazygourmet

[Birdman]

Wrong...

Tourists should be stoned 24/7 to NOT realize what the mistake they made with holidaying in Samui!

Can really not understand such a hate statement! Did your Samui wife cheat on you or what? Samui is a dream destination for many...

[teddy_bare]

Wrong...

Tourists should be stoned 24/7 to NOT realize what the mistake they made with holidaying in Samui!

Can really not understand such a hate statement! Did your Samui wife cheat on you or what? Samui is a dream destination for many...

Maybe that's the problem, his Samui wife DIDN'T leave him and he suffers everyday

[doodee]

But come here, spend fortunes on Alcohol & spreadign STD's, that's fine..

No Joints though..

The cops seem to be the only ones that dont know where the drugs are

[doodee]

But come here, spend fortunes on Alcohol & spreadign STD's, that's fine..

No Joints though..

1/ limit your drinking

2/ wear a condom

dead easy when you think about it

[Pdaz]

Maybe I've been here too long.. But it doesn't seem that long ago that almost every bungalow and restaurant in Samui and Koh Phangan had 'ganja' on the menu... or a big sign outside some places stating ''We have magic mushroom omelette'' First thing I noticed on my arrival in KPG in 87 was that you could buy rolling papers in most 'shops' but couldn't get rolling tobacco anywhere... Place I used to stay in Ban Tai had their own ganja patch out the back.. The owners father used to tend to it .. Most days you could see him sitting behing one of the bungalows either rolling a J or chewing Betel... Thailand was very free and easy back then... 50 baht a night for a bungalow with a latern, hammock and a bamboo bong.... You used to write what you bought in a note book and pay the buggalows owner when you left.. Can't see that sort of honesty system working today... shame

Of course back then there wasn't any Police station on KPG and and only a few stationed on Samui.. Oh and only 50 - 100 people at the FMP

[bojo]

Maybe I've been here too long.. But it doesn't seem that long ago that almost every bungalow and restaurant in Samui and Koh Phangan had 'ganja' on the menu... or a big sign outside some places stating ''We have magic mushroom omelette'' First thing I noticed on my arrival in KPG in 87 was that you could buy rolling papers in most 'shops' but couldn't get rolling tobacco anywhere... Place I used to stay in Ban Tai had their own ganja patch out the back.. The owners father used to tend to it .. Most days you could see him sitting behing one of the bungalows either rolling a J or chewing Betel... Thailand was very free and easy back then... 50 baht a night for a bungalow with a latern, hammock and a bamboo bong.... You used to write what you bought in a note book and pay the buggalows owner when you left.. Can't see that sort of honesty system working today... shame

Of course back then there wasn't any Police station on KPG and and only a few stationed on Samui.. Oh and only 50 - 100 people at the FMP

Don't stop! You got any more stories pdaz, perhaps you could start a thread with some of your experiences. My first trip was in '91(excuse the pun), but I never made it to KPG. I'm sure there are many who would like to hear about the good ole days.

Regards Bojo

[Birdman]

Maybe I've been here too long.. But it doesn't seem that long ago that almost every bungalow and restaurant in Samui and Koh Phangan had 'ganja' on the menu... or a big sign outside some places stating ''We have magic mushroom omelette'' First thing I noticed on my arrival in KPG in 87 was that you could buy rolling papers in most 'shops' but couldn't get rolling tobacco anywhere... Place I used to stay in Ban Tai had their own ganja patch out the back.. The owners father used to tend to it .. Most days you could see him sitting behing one of the bungalows either rolling a J or chewing Betel... Thailand was very free and easy back then... 50 baht a night for a bungalow with a latern, hammock and a bamboo bong.... You used to write what you bought in a note book and pay the buggalows owner when you left.. Can't see that sort of honesty system working today... shame

Of course back then there wasn't any Police station on KPG and and only a few stationed on Samui.. Oh and only 50 - 100 people at the FMP

You are certainly not here too long, but obviously have been away from islands long time...check out the threads about Thailand in the 60s and 70s at the General Forum.

[MSingh]

But come here, spend fortunes on Alcohol & spreadign STD's, that's fine..

No Joints though..

1/ limit your drinking

2/ wear a condom

dead easy when you think about it

It's not me that needs ot be told that though..

[doodee]

Maybe I've been here too long.. But it doesn't seem that long ago that almost every bungalow and restaurant in Samui and Koh Phangan had 'ganja' on the menu... or a big sign outside some places stating ''We have magic mushroom omelette'' First thing I noticed on my arrival in KPG in 87 was that you could buy rolling papers in most 'shops' but couldn't get rolling tobacco anywhere... Place I used to stay in Ban Tai had their own ganja patch out the back.. The owners father used to tend to it .. Most days you could see him sitting behing one of the bungalows either rolling a J or chewing Betel... Thailand was very free and easy back then... 50 baht a night for a bungalow with a latern, hammock and a bamboo bong.... You used to write what you bought in a note book and pay the buggalows owner when you left.. Can't see that sort of honesty system working today... shame

Of course back then there wasn't any Police station on KPG and and only a few stationed on Samui.. Oh and only 50 - 100 people at the FMP

Awesome story Daz

[doodee]

But come here, spend fortunes on Alcohol & spreadign STD's, that's fine..

No Joints though..

1/ limit your drinking

2/ wear a condom

dead easy when you think about it

It's not me that needs ot be told that though..

Just spread the news lol

[britishrobert]

Drug use and abuse by foreigners or thais should be stamped out

[ParadiseLost]

Perhaps the brains behind these campaigns should read this article (copied from another thread on TV):

We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works

By Hodding Carter III.

There is clearly no point in beating a dead horse, whether you are a politician or a columnist, but sometimes you have to do it just the same, if only for the record. So, for the record, here's another attempt to argue that a majority of the American people and their elected representatives can be and are wrong about the way they have chosen to wage the "war against drugs." Prohibition can't work, won't work and has never worked, but it can and does have monumentally costly effects on the criminal justice system and on the integrity of government at every level.

Experience should be the best teacher, and my experience with prohibition is a little more recent than most Americans for whom the "noble experiment" ended with repeal in 1933. In my home state of Mississippi, it lasted for an additional 33 years, and for all those years it was a truism that the drinkers had their liquor, the preachers had their prohibition and the sheriffs made the money. Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

But as a first-rate series in the New York Times made clear early last year, Mississippi's prohibition-era corruption (and Chicago's before that) was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the U.S. today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, big drug money is purchasing major breakdowns in law enforcement. Sheriffs, other policemen and now judges are being bought up by the gross. But that money, with the net profits for the drug traffickers estimated at anywhere from $40 billion to $100 billion a year, is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments. The latter becomes an increasingly likely outcome in a number of cities and states in this country as well. Cicero, Ill., during Prohibition is an instructive case in point.

The money to be made from an illegal product that has about 23 million current users in this country also explains why its sale is so attractive on the mean streets of America's big cities. A street salesman can gross about $2,500 a day in Washington, which puts him in the pay category of a local television anchor, and this in a neighborhood of dead-end job chances.

Since the courts and jails are already swamped beyond capacity by the arrests that are routinely made (44,000 drug dealers and users over a two-year period in Washington alone, for instance) and since those arrests barely skim the top of the pond, arguing that stricter enforcement is the answer begs a larger question: Who is going to pay the billions of dollars required to build the prisons, hire the judges, train the policemen and employ the prosecutors needed for the load already on hand, let alone the huge one yet to come if we ever get serious about arresting dealers and users?

Much is made of the cost of drug addiction, and it should be, but the current breakdown in the criminal justice system is not one of them. That breakdown is the result of prohibition, not addiction. Drug addiction, after all, does not come close to the far vaster problems of alcohol and tobacco addiction (as former Surgeon General Koop correctly noted, tobacco is at least as addictive as heroin). Hard drugs are estimated to kill 4,000 people a year directly and several tens of thousands a year indirectly. Alcohol kills at least 100,000 a year, addicts millions more and costs the marketplace billions of dollars. Tobacco kills over 300,000 a year, addicts tens of millions and fouls the atmosphere as well. But neither alcohol nor tobacco threaten to subvert our system of law and order, because they are treated as personal and societal problems rather than as criminal ones.

Indeed, every argument that is made for prohibiting the use of currently illegal drugs can be made even more convincingly about tobacco and alcohol. The effects on the unborn? Staggeringly direct. The effects on adolescents? Alcoholism is the addiction of choice for young Americans on a ratio of about 100 to one. Lethal effect? Tobacco's murderous results are not a matter of debate anywhere outside the Tobacco Institute.

Which leaves the lingering and legitimate fear that legalization might produce a surge in use. It probably would, although not nearly as dramatic a one as opponents usually estimate. The fact is that personal use of marijuana, whatever the local laws may say, has been virtually decriminalized for some time now, but there has been a stabilization or slight decline in use, rather than an increase, for several years. Heroin addiction has held steady at about 500,000 people for some time, though the street price of heroin is far lower now than it used to be. Use of cocaine in its old form also seems to have stopped climbing and begun to drop off among young and old alike, though there is an abundantly available supply.

That leaves crack cocaine, stalker of the inner city and terror of the suburbs. Instant and addictive in effect, easy to use and relatively cheap to buy, it is a personality-destroying substance that is a clear menace to its users. But it is hard to imagine it being any more accessible under legalization than it is in most cities today under prohibition, while the financial incentives for promoting its use would virtually disappear with legalization.

Proponents of legalization should not try to fuzz the issue, nonetheless. Addiction levels might increase, at least temporarily, if legal sanctions were removed. That happened after the repeal of Prohibition, or so at least some studies have suggested. But while that would be a personal disaster for the addicts and their families, and would involve larger costs to society as a whole, those costs would be minuscule compared with the costs of continued prohibition.

The young Capones of today own the inner cities and the wholesalers behind these young retailers are rapidly buying up the larger system which is supposed to control them. Prohibition gave us the Mafia and organized crime on a scale that has been with us ever since. The new prohibition is writing a new chapter on that old text. hel_l-bent on learning nothing from history, we are witnessing its repetition, predictably enough, as tragedy.

---

Reprinted with permission of Wall Street Journal Jul 13, 1989. Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

Note it is 20 years old...

Edit: As this is describing USA drug enforcement, for Thailand I guess I would substitute ice or yaba for crack...

Edited August 6, 2009 by ParadiseLost

[Rooo]

Let's all be honest here. Would anyone report a person for drug dealing or distribution if you had your chance to be anonymous? This is what this thread is all about isn't it?

[maccaroni man]

Let's all be honest here. Would anyone report a person for drug dealing or distribution if you had your chance to be anonymous? This is what this thread is all about isn't it?

just like Mr. T's war on drugs; dealers narcing on dealers would be my best bet

[carmine]

It has always amused me that the police here seem to attach far greater importance to finding someone smoking a joint to for example, catching perpertrators of shooting incidents.

[smokie36]

Let's all be honest here. Would anyone report a person for drug dealing or distribution if you had your chance to be anonymous? This is what this thread is all about isn't it?

Better to leave the police to do the detective work. If they can be bothered..

Would you trust the police not to divulge your details? If you don't have to leave any details then how do the police know which leads are good or not?

Anyway I think Samui has much more of a drink/drive problem which would be better for the police to try to eradicate first.

An anonymous phoneline and quick action taken on this issue might actually save a few lives.

[Samuian]

...........

last July 17 police arrested five men for drug possession. Apprehending officers seized five packs of marijuana weighing 1 kilogram from Ornranop Boonjan, 28; Adisit Choomthong, 31; Aphisorn Meesit, 37; Suthad Thongfur, 29; and Phakin Vitha, 29.

"Tourist's" huh?

It's the typical Thai Approach... if there is a problem... blame it on somebody else!

have a walk around or after sunset along Chaweng Beach - many peddlers... many!

ahhh.. and yes - shut dwon the lucrative fullmoon parties all together, they are "incentives for drug abuse"..

Edited August 7, 2009 by Samuian

[carmine]

...........

last July 17 police arrested five men for drug possession. Apprehending officers seized five packs of marijuana weighing 1 kilogram from Ornranop Boonjan, 28; Adisit Choomthong, 31; Aphisorn Meesit, 37; Suthad Thongfur, 29; and Phakin Vitha, 29.

"Tourist's" huh?

It's the typical Thai Approach... if there is a problem... blame it on somebody else!

have a walk around or after sunset along Chaweng Beach - many peddlers... many!

ahhh.. and yes - shut dwon the lucrative fullmoon parties all together, they are "incentives for drug abuse"..

Interesting point. I for one, don't agree with drugs and would rather Samui was drug free. That aside, i have been offered drugs as i'm sure most have and with me it's always been by Thai peddlers

[Samuian]

Maybe I've been here too long.. But it doesn't seem that long ago that almost every bungalow and restaurant in Samui and Koh Phangan had 'ganja' on the menu... or a big sign outside some places stating ''We have magic mushroom omelette'' First thing I noticed on my arrival in KPG in 87 was that you could buy rolling papers in most 'shops' but couldn't get rolling tobacco anywhere... Place I used to stay in Ban Tai had their own ganja patch out the back.. The owners father used to tend to it .. Most days you could see him sitting behing one of the bungalows either rolling a J or chewing Betel... Thailand was very free and easy back then... 50 baht a night for a bungalow with a latern, hammock and a bamboo bong.... You used to write what you bought in a note book and pay the buggalows owner when you left.. Can't see that sort of honesty system working today... shame

Of course back then there wasn't any Police station on KPG and and only a few stationed on Samui.. Oh and only 50 - 100 people at the FMP

Awesome story Daz

....not "a story" plain history and genuine reporting!

regarding this campaign, "weeding out unwanted competition comes to mind.."

or the fox shouts: "shoot the chickens!"

[ham]

Let's all be honest here. Would anyone report a person for drug dealing or distribution if you had your chance to be anonymous? This is what this thread is all about isn't it?

they (historians) call that "nazi behavor" blackmailing, was a tool they used to implement too in their politics. What a change of a country (or an area) where all started because the drug trail from Europe to Australia those day's or let's say it the real way,the hippie trail. What a awesome time, as one here said about the honesty and trust in those times between locals and travelers some people forget very fast. Or otherwise never wanted to understand!! It is awfull in my mind anyway.

In India was a simmilar "problem" due to this hippie trail, thousands under way, making the Hindus thinking Shiva and Parvaty hanging around everywhere in India

[Mark Wolfe]

Paradise Lost:

Each carrying a 1kg bag? laugh.gif laugh.gif

That's not what the report says. Read it again, please.

happylarry:

I havent touched any recreational drugs in my life and am dead against them.

Why?

My concern on hearing this sort of thing is petty revenge and anonymous retaliation (not in kind). It's like in Iraq were neighbors were telling the US troops (secretly of course) that one of their neighbors was collaborating with terrorists -- without a shred of evidence -- and the troops go in and storm the house and find a gun (which every family has) and off goes the man for infinite detention. Turns out the "informant" had a score to settle since the guy in question had let his dog crap in the neighbor's yard (or something).

Someone in Samui piss you off? Write a secret report saying he does drugs and give it to the cops. Keep doing it even if they don't find anything.

Brilliant fking idea....

[ParadiseLost]

Paradise Lost:

Each carrying a 1kg bag? laugh.gif laugh.gif

That's not what the report says. Read it again, please.

Yes sir, master sir

Meanwhile, last July 17 police arrested five men for drug possession. Apprehending officers seized five packs of marijuana weighing 1 kilogram from Ornranop Boonjan, 28; Adisit Choomthong, 31; Aphisorn Meesit, 37; Suthad Thongfur, 29; and Phakin Vitha, 29.

Funny it still reads the same to me

I know - it was five packs totalling 1kg?

Whatever...

[Samuian]

Let's all be honest here. Would anyone report a person for drug dealing or distribution if you had your chance to be anonymous? This is what this thread is all about isn't it?

they (historians) call that "nazi behavor" blackmailing, was a tool they used to implement too in their politics.

Like "the war on drugs"...this kind of operation is open for all kinds of abuse

or simply have the "law" help you blow away the competition for free!

ONLY 20 years ago - in communist Germany the so called former GDR had a system of "Informants"

who would spy on everyone in their environment, family members making

political or other critical statements about politicians or the system were reported

in detail to the "Stasi" (National Security Agency) and followed if their "misbehavior"

was repeated often they were somewhat considered for re-education, if they didn't

show any remorse and clear withdrawal from their "wrong views" they got locked away..