2y ago

Thailand moves to ban recreational cannabis use, 18 months after historic decriminalization

www.cnn.com

Thailand moves to ban recreational cannabis use, 18 months after historic decriminalization | CNN

Thailand’s new government is moving ahead to pass new legisalation banning cannabis for recreational use in a major reversal 18 months after the country became the first in Asia to decriminalize the plant.

The relaxed laws saw a lucrative cannabis industry catering to locals and foreigners alike boom across the Southeast Asian nation, but a new conservative coalition government came to power late last year vowing to tighten the rules and only allow medical use.

A draft bill was released on Tuesday by Thailand’s health ministry outlining hefty fines or prison sentences of up to one year for offenders – or both.

131 comments

Banning something enjoyable that harms no one and has nil impact on society - just conservative things.
- Ain't nothing more conservative than banning fun.
  
  You know what's even worse than conservatives? People who vote for them.
- *regressive
  
  Potato tomato
- have you heard about disposable vapes? i find that topic brings them out of even a hippie
  edit: see its like flies to honey
  
  Disposable vapes do cause harm though, regardless of what's in them
  Those should be restricted
  
  Sure; that's a container that is unnecessary and a problem in itself. It's contents are not the issue.
  
  They cause an incredible amount of e-waste and are frequently targeted at children.
  
  Have you heard of banning the vapes but not the drug thats in them?
  
  that's just ewaste. at least reuse the battery! also every place that sells them should required to have a bin you can drop off your used carts in for recycling.
why are people still so backwards about this? what's the point? everyone uses caffeine and/or alcohol and that's fine but weed is horrible and bad? just blatantly denying reality
- In most places, there's money in enforcement, and power in disenfranchisement.
  I don't know what Thailand-specific motives might be in play here, if any.
- And tobacco.
  I think the idea is that they can't fight a war on those drugs since they're already there, but they can still win against the others by keeping them out.
  It helps when you have relatively tight borders and your neighbours agree.
  
  I smoked weed in Thailand as a 15 year old in like 2006 lol. It's always been there and always will be.
  I've also smoked hash in Saudi Arabia. I have yet to find a single country in which I could not find cannabis in if around for more than a week or two. Literally no one has ever won the war on drugs or even come close.
- People are okay with drug use as long as it's drugs they use.
  You even see it among pot smokers towards nicotine and alcohol.
  
  No, not really.
- Thai people just didn't want to be thought of as drug users. That's it.
- Totes fine with people smoking pot, provided said pot is odorless.
  
  And I'd be fine with the neighbors cooking up a smelly fish meal if they could just make that food odorless.
  But obviously they can't and that makes no sense, so instead I am a normal human being and just deal with a smell that is not to my preference since it's completely subjective and can't hurt me.
  
  I don't understand how people hate it. Weed is better-smelling than tobacco by a mile and then some. Tobacco smoke irritates your lungs when you smell it, something that doesn't happen with weed unless you have some medical condition.
  
  The pot will be odorless when the cigarette is.
- Honestly, it's a nuisance for many.
  I wouldn't want to live close to a dispensary, there's almost always a "stench". Don't get me wrong I like to partake, but I definitely understand why it's stigmatized. It fricken stinks and the stereotype of high kids doing dumb shit is real as well. I think they just need better control
  Edit: damn guys I like weed and Thailand was on my list of countries to visit because they legalized. I'm just not surprised... They're the only country in APAC to have legalized and there are countries around then giving out death penalties.
  
  High kids' dumb shit will always pale in comparison to drunk kids' dumb shit and it's not even close.
  
  Kids are capable of extremely dumb shit even when sober.
  
  I wouldn’t want to live close to a dispensary, there’s almost always a “stench”.
  I pass by dispensarys all the time and never notice a smell. The only places that smell are those that allow smoking on premise -- which with our state's indoor smoking laws are very rare.
  It's no different than tobacco, really.
  
  Most really good quality weed doesn't smell much. Also you use a lot less generally.
  
  Make smoking around others outside or in public without other's consent illegal (i.e. you can complain to police if you don't like the smell), and introduce a rule you can only smoke on licensed premises (with smoking rooms) or at home.
  That's what some places have done with tobacco smoking. It is basically harassment or assault in my view to have people consume your second hand smoke and smells.
  Edibles on the outer hand, or if you create flavored vapes that don't smell much or travel far in the air, all good.
  Lack of creativity among conservatives is never surprising.
  Also it's already illegal for kids to do weed, smoke or drink.
A pity. That country is very dependent on tourism and really hasn't recovered since the virus.
There is something about being high as a kite in Bangkok and eating one of the best meals of your life from a stand for a 100 Bhat.
- Yeah I agree, it's sad.
  When I heard they had legalised weed I thought it was a really clever move.
  There were some other changes to visas around the same time which made Thailand a really great destination for young remote workers. I remember thinking how unusual it was for a south east asian country to be so progressive.
  Now they're going to shoot themselves in the foot just because they're worried about what people might think.
Did I miss it? Was there a reason given or is it just the new “conservative coalition” doesn’t like it?
- Right-wing gonna hate. Conservatives just got nothin else to do.
- You can't be a conservative without hating things that make people happy while allowing things that make people sick like alcohol, cigarettes, and motor vehicles.
- It was part of their election campaign I presume. Vote for us and we will walk back the law.
  I've spent a lot of time in South East Asia and I've found most south east asian cultures to be deeply pretentious. It's fine to live in a shoe box provided that you're carrying an iPhone, et cetera.
  A lot of Thais felt that legalisation had meant that the world suddenly identified Thailand as some kind of "drug country", which is absolutely unacceptable to many Thais.
  It's not a question of whether weed ought to be legal, it's a question of whether Thai people wish to be thought of as some kind of junkie nation.
  
  The equivalent to the legalization of cannabis making people think of Thailand as a 'junkie nation's would be the rampant sex tourism making people think of Thailand as a paedo nation. And they've been fine with that for decades. So I very much doubt that it's because "south east Asian cultures" are "deeply pretentious". Also, just grouping hundreds of millions of people from vastly different cultures together as monolithic and "deeply pretentious" ironically says more about your own levels of deep pretension than about south east Asian cultures
- I’ve seen article in the past couple of months that basically said the regulation for cannabis when it became legal was next to nothing, and that caused some issues with locals when some people tried to take advantage of the lack of regulation.
  I can’t remember the specifics, but I’m sure it had to do with an over abundance of stores popping up in major tourist areas.
  Anecdotally, I will say that it has caused an increase of selling weed to other neighbouring countries. When I went to visits friends in Cambodia this summer, there was lots of ‘hydro’ available in cities close to the border that is 100X better than the stuff in Cambodia, where it’s legal-ish.
  
  I was there this summer and finding cannabis was not hard. One tourist place there was literally woman walking around holding a tray of selection trying to get the attention of foreigners to sell. Like in an old fashion casino. The rule was you could only use the stuff in designated areas but no one was enforcing. Every tourist bar has people using it. Hemp does grow wild there and they been making tea for selling for who knows how long.
  From what I gathered the market exploded, got oversaturated, and now places are starting up/dying every month. I guess like vape stores in the West.
  
  It isn't legal-ish in Cambodia, laws are just not enforced very much with low public confidence in anything being done.
What year is it?!
- think we replaying the 1920s right now all over the world progress is going backwards at a phenomenal rate
  
  Conservatives should really be called something like Regressionists
"God forbid we do something good for society!" - Conservatives
Nothing good in all of human history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
Dumb
lame!
- Now this is an interesting bot
- Bad Bot.
  Check the post history. Its spamming this same response across many unrelated threads.
  
  .... but why? They could be spamming something political or whatever. But no, they feel so strongly that they need to spam bot about the formatting in lemmy?
- So is caffeine.
- Bruh, your account is decked out as a McDonald's advertisement. Nothing you say will ever be respected.
- Joined today. Troll account.
- So is alcohol
- I love it when bots come in and act like they have a great gotcha saying.
- Like sugar or heroine?
- a rarity in a region where many countries give long jail terms and even death sentences for people convicted of marijuana possession, consumption or trafficking.
  Anything that can get you the death penalty is dangerous by proxy.

131 comments