How serious is Thailand's illegal drug use?

[wakeupplease]

I have many friends and family there and over the years never seen any of them use drugs except 1 who I was told did, his actions also said to me he did. But I have never seen anyone use drugs except for that god dam brother in law who now has been cut from my side of the family for ever.

 

He got nicked so i am told and had to report to the army every month or so, all he did was not take drugs within a few days of having to go and report, the rest of the time he is nicking money from the shop along with cigs and booze to trade for them.

 

Lock the Bs up for 5 years and more is the answer.

 

But you get it in every country, such a waste of life, they are all scum bags.

[RobyG]

any illicit drug selling and use and abuse are no good to society !  Thailand has an even worse Alcohol abuse addiction !

the country needs to dry sober up a bit ! close down some bars and cut off the alcohol sales times ! 

they say Russian countries are still #1 in drunks  where the Vodka is cheaper than water ! 

that why Pattaya thrives ! 

 

cut off the raw material suppliers !  and get addicts into sobriety !

[lamyai3]

15 hours ago, Shiver said:

My business partner was getting through 400K baht per month.... 

Bear in mind I'm talking specifically about Meth-Amphetamine here (aka crystal, or ice), not a relaxing toke of Mary Jane.

Your story about the widespread use of these drugs is certainly believable, it seems to be endemic here in certain circles. However, part of the reason for the popularity of the drugs you mention is the low cost and the regional production, as opposed to things smuggled in from further afield. 400k a month is a completely implausible figure, unless it's associated with other reckless spending, gambling etc. 

[Laza 45]

In the news this morning:     

 

[Farang hunter]

death to drug lords.

[Shiver]

20 hours ago, Tapster said:

@Shiver

 

Seriously (this is not a troll wind-up), what are the signs to look for.

 

And are we talking about here: meth being smoked or snorted, or do you mean ya-ba, not crystal meth?

 

Cheers

I was referring to ice used in a bong made from a cheap plastic bottle (paraphenalia incude a needle for putting in the top of a lighter (or just make the flame really really small, PTFE tape for joint sealing the insert into the bottle, the glass part of a dropper bottle to place the crystal while you heat it with the lighter very gentle, and an exit hole to suck the smoke from the water (the smoke goes through the water).

For physical attributes the easy one is the eyes as the pupils dilate like dinner plates, but they also hold themselves differently, sometimes fidget (like straight amphetamine/whizz/speed) not not necessarily depending on dose.  They talk differently, often carrying multithreaded conversations rather quickly and become blinkered in whatever is occupying them at that moment - kind of focussed, but fasster equates to lower quality or productivity.  When off, they do nothing but sleep (often for >24 hours) and become listless and 'elsewhere'.  If using a small amount then they cane be rather amorous or horny.  Empathy seems to be a stage you pass through but not a permanent feature.  Selfishness is highly predominant.

 

A lot of these things it helps if you know how the person personally to compare current state, but if you just walk into a room and look who seems to be 'different' or more animated than required (and the eyes, they don't like you staring at their eyes and become very self conscious).  As I mentioned earlier, once you see it you know instantly, and it might sound as though some of the above suggestions are contradictory, but I had many people around me for large parts of the day so it was quick to see the cycles.

Edited May 15, 2017 by Shiver

[Shiver]

19 hours ago, morocco said:

You don't have a clue about what you are talking about. I have not heard so much dribble as you talk. I have seen good and intelligent people lose everything due to hard drugs. Most of them did not start drugs because they were broken people. Fortunately many people make it back to reality.  Many don't. Weed is just another gateway drug like tobacco and alcohol. The most common problem is excess use due to addiction. 

I was with you until you got to 'gateway'.  I suspect it's more of a gateway to climbing off more destructive practises.  I've heard people say to me 'smoke some marijuana then get a pint of beer, and at the end of the night you'll still have most of your pint of beer.  I don't know if that is true or not, but the idea is very appealing for a relaxation method rather than getting drunk.

 

If they legalised it I'd be using it on occasion.  The breweries would hate it though, and as always we need to follow the money.

 

I did read a while back that Thailand is considering commercial cannabis (low THC) as a useful crop that will grow where many other things won't, and could be a boon for monocrop farmers here.  You can get your bottom dollar though that in those vast fields there will be a marijuana plant or two.

 

I like the idea of 'personal use' being fine, but dealing without a license and best practises inspections etc being punishable.  Corruption will always be somewhere nearby, but it's better than gang wars, quality control issues and price extremes.

 

[hobz]

On 5/14/2017 at 3:56 PM, morocco said:

You don't have a clue about what you are talking about. I have not heard so much dribble as you talk. I have seen good and intelligent people lose everything due to hard drugs. Most of them did not start drugs because they were broken people. Fortunately many people make it back to reality.  Many don't. Weed is just another gateway drug like tobacco and alcohol. The most common problem is excess use due to addiction. 

I have countless friends who smoke weed, do cocaine on weekends, etc. The only ones who got addicted and got into any sort of trouble are the ones who were already broken, no life, no gf, no.ambitions etc.

My opinion is clearly biased from my experience. And so is yours it seems. I guess we are both wrong or right. I dunno.

Obviously there must be people that were doing good in life and then drugs ruined them, but i think its a tiny minority that goes this path.

Ive also read a ton of stories and listened to a ton of addicts in 12 step meetings and 99% or more used drugd/alcohol to self medicate for preexisting conditions. 

 

Honestly, i dont know what you are talking about.. Have you been to 12 step meetings? They have open meetings.. Anyone is allowed.. Go and make mental notes and come back to.me. Peace.

 

 

Edit: how dare you equate intelligent with not broken. The intelligent people are the ones that tend to get most depressed and troubled in my experience.

 

 

Edit2: just realized you think cannabis is a gateway drug.. That has been disproven for such a long time that if you still believe that then you are so out of date that its ridiculous, or you are trolling.. Damn.. Got trolled again... Dead giveaway lol

 

Edited May 15, 2017 by hobz

[Sapporillo]

About the "gateway drug" thing: it is a complete myth, the US administration pulled it out of their a$$ once they could no longer tell the public that MJ was a dangerous drug, so they simply said that it would lead to dangerous drugs. It's a claim that has never been backed by any evidence. 

 

The fact is that most users of hard drugs "got started" by smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and smoking mj, BUT, on the other hand, only very few pot-smokers and alcoholics end up using hard drugs.

[nisakiman]

Countries don't have drugs problems, they have drugs laws problems. Had the moralistic, self-righteous finger-waggers not prevailed nearly a century ago, there wouldn't be a 'drugs problem'. I've seen the results of the heavy-handed prosecution of drugs laws unfold before my very eyes.

 

I arrived in Melbourne in the early part of 1971. When I got there, there was loads of home produced grass on the streets. Zombie grass, they called it, and it was cheap and plentiful and good. Ok, it may have demotivated some of the kids somewhat, but it was basically a benign alternative to booze and did no-one any harm.

 

The Australian authorities, in their wisdom, decided to crack down hard on all this grass on the streets ('can't have people enjoying something we personally don't approve of, can we now'), and over the course of the next year or so managed to pretty well eradicate all the growers and the dealers and remove it as a choice. Of course, busting people for grass is pretty easy, because it's bulky and it has a pungent aroma. To turn a good profit, you need to ship truckloads of the stuff.

 

Inevitably, as supplies of grass diminished, supplies of heroin increased.

 

When the grass was around, the heroin users were a tiny subset that were so few in number that you wouldn't have known they existed. But heroin is concentrated, easy to conceal (you could fit a king's ransom's worth in a small suitcase), easy to cut with other stuff like sugar, and high profit margin. So where the grass disappeared from the streets, it was largely replaced by heroin. Over the next few years I lost several good friends to it (people who I know would never have been tempted to even try it had they had access to their buzz of choice; grass), and heroin addiction was reaching almost epidemic proportions.

 

This was a direct result of drugs laws. Without those laws, nobody would have been interested in taking heroin. Without the demand, there would have been no supply.

 

And the same applies to Thailand. When I travelled through Thailand in '71, I was offered a bong (bamboo water pipe) nearly everywhere I went. It was part of the culture, and nobody thought twice about it, even though it was technically illegal. The police didn't seem interested. There was no meth on the streets in Thailand then, or if there was, I never saw any evidence of it. It's only since there has been a crackdown on grass that the more easily concealed and higher profit margin drugs have made an appearance, to devastating effect.

 

Portugal has been mentioned several times in this thread, and not without good reason. They (the Portugese) have looked at the problem, and have come to the (correct) conclusion that the problem lies more in the law than it does in the drugs themselves.

 

As long as drugs are illegal, they will continue to be an escalating problem.

 

Prohibition doesn't work.

 

It never has, and it never will.

 

And that applies equally to drugs, tobacco and alcohol. All you achieve with prohibition laws is to drive the trade underground, lose any semblance of quality control and create a highly profitable criminal network.

 

All laws criminalising drugs should be abolished, and then the huge problems those laws have created should be addressed in a pragmatic and humane way. It would take a generation or two, but it's the only hope we have of dealing with the human cost of the stupidity of prohibition.

 

Drugs, per se, are not the problem. It is the drugs laws that are the problem.

 

 

[Shiver]

I read a study on mice that basically said both Ice and Cocaine if given to the mice and unmetered, they all eventually take enough to kill them. 100% - no exceptions. Self preservation isn't in there.

 

I guess for some people that could be said of alcohol, but it isn't even close to the above two.  Smoking could be causative/additive for other conditions, but it isn't a perfect predictor of outcome.

 

Weed I just don't see how someone could kill themselves with it.  

 

I'm quite amazed given the above that they see fit to make smoking and alcohol legal (and more importantly to them) Taxable, yet not allow recreational drugs that killed how many? zero, or one maybe at the upper limits.  More likely that it assists in falling off your scooter, but that could be said of alcohol or smoking too (those ashtrays aren't wind proof).

EDIT: Actuaries suggest that smoking can take 7-8 years off your life.  In other studies, drinking a lot of green tea can add about 13 to your life.  You could do both and be a net +5 years compared to an RDA follower.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Shiver
New info

[nisakiman]

5 hours ago, Shiver said:

EDIT: Actuaries suggest that smoking can take 7-8 years off your life.  In other studies, drinking a lot of green tea can add about 13 to your life.  You could do both and be a net +5 years compared to an RDA follower.

Ha! Love it! :)

 

I'll remember to start drinking lots of green tea!