🗞️Thailand News Roundup: Cannabis Re-criminalisation?

Falling down manholes claims two lives, multiple warehouse & factory fires, ambulance crashes into oncoming traffic, Covid propaganda returns, gender ideology seeps into schools

I’ve compiled several stories which I think are worthy of your attention. Both for the outside world peeking in, and for readers based in Thailand who might’ve missed something.

---

Weed ban looms

This is an interesting one. The de-criminalisation of cannabis in June 2022 has seen an explosion of dispensaries, cafes, and online businesses revolving around cannabis flower and edible products, as well as CBD oil derived tinctures. It is a cash crop. The Thai people have been handed back “their herb” from long since past - or their “samoon pie” as the word herb is called in Thai language. Most Thais refer to weed as “gaan-jaa”.

Now the new WEFFIE prime minister Srettha Thavisin is pushing to re-criminalise the harmless herb.

Link to article.

A complete re-criminalisation ordered by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday will also push the cannabis trade underground, said Rattapon Sanrak, owner of the Bangkok-based dispensary Highland Cafe.

Writing Thailand’s Cannabis Future, an advocacy group, said it would hold a protest against the move in Bangkok on May 16. The future of thousands of cannabis dispensaries and related businesses is unclear now that the government is moving to re-criminalise the plant.

Mr Srettha’s directive to re-label cannabis as a Category 5 narcotic will make it a crime to “produce, sell, import, export or possess” the plant and use it, according to drug laws.

What is this all about then? Thailand is infamous for its flip-flopping, U-turning policies on, well, just about everything. Based on conversations I’ve had with friends working in the cannabis industry here, and some speculation of my own, it could be for any of the following reasons:

• More people have stopped drinking as much alcohol as they used to, having switched to cannabis to relax, de-stress, and sleep more easily.

• The big alcohol companies - namely Singh Beer and Chang Beer - which monopolise the market and are run by powerful and influential families, could be lobbying the government to ban weed because their sales are down, having ‘lost’ business to the thriving weed industry.

• A former prime minister - Thaksin Shinawatra, is recently back from a long exile - having received a royal pardon, spending a short stint in jail, then hospital, before roaming around free. Thaksin has been quite active lately, with speculation that he is calling the shots behind the scenes, politically. Thaksin is notorious for the drug war he waged back in the early 2000s - thousands of drug dealers were executed…Could this be the return of a hardline on all drugs? Except alcohol of course, which causes the most deaths and most of the carnage on Thailand’s roads, 365 days a year. Drink driving is as normal as breathing here.

• It may just be for show, a song and dance for the sake of appeasing the dinosaur political old guard, whom may want to further decimate the precarious economy, or find a more creative way to tax cannabis via “medical certificate” chicanery.

Writing Thailand’s Cannabis Future, an advocacy group, said it would hold a protest against the move in Bangkok on May 16. We shall see what happens.

---

Ambulance driver goes against traffic flow and crashes

Back in 2002, My driving instructor in England told me to “never make anyone else slow down, swerve, or stop. Always make allowances for other people’s mistakes”. It seems the complete inverse of this driving ethos is held true by an overwhelming majority of drivers here (Thais and foreigners). However, this case in point even surprised me. Imagine if you witnessed this unfold as you were minding your own business on a four-lane-wide main road…

The driver filming the incident is also in an ambulance - obviously both drivers are at fault and should not be driving towards oncoming traffic, especially in such a reckless manner. The driver filming the incident says “Look, he isn’t thinking about his life, he is rushing too much…Oh! Now he has crashed of course” *laughs*. Crazy.

---

Chemical fires galore

Thailand is not renowned for health and safety, this is a given. Yet such a recent spate of chemical fires, scattering hazardous waste and pollutant chemicals into the environment of local villagers, has raised eyebrows. Check out the timeline on this:

11th April

Link to article.

18th April

Link to article.

22nd April

Link to article.

2nd May

Link to article.

9th May

Link to article.

*To further clarify the answer “Intentional: overhaul for net zero” - I mean that the fallout from so many environmentally devastating chemical fires could help to rally support for legislative measures that promote net zero by further measuring carbon footprints of industrial estates. I.e. Problem-reaction-solution.

---

Watch your step

The local news has reported on a flurry of steel manhole covers being stolen throughout Bangkok - presumably sold for scrap. Cue some resulting unfortunate accidents and deaths.

Link to article.

Pol Col Chatthakit Padungjandanai, superintendent of Bukkhalo police, said Wanlop Homjampa, 29, a native of Ubon Ratchathani, was driving his motorcycle at high speed when it skidded inside the underpass. Thissent the man careening for several metres before he ended up inside a drainage opening.

The drain was left open after the lid was stolen, and it had not been replaced. The severely injured motorcycle driver was admitted to Taksin Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries and died later.

Rescue workers are seen near a drain opening in Thon Buri district after an accident on Sunday.

The incident came less than a week after a man fell into a poorly covered 15-metre-deep tube well on a road divider and died in Lat Phrao district, sparking a public outcry over the lack of sufficient safety measures on the part of City Hall and relevant agencies.

The phone addicts playing on their infinite scroll have always trusted drivers to swerve around them whilst crossing busy roads. Now they will have to hope that they don’t fall down open manholes whilst traversing the pavements too.

---

😷Papa’s got a brand new Covid bag

Mask fetishists unite! Covid is back baby! Ask a perpetual masker any day of the year in Bangkok why they mask up and they will always have an answer for you:

The pollution is so bad outside.

I always wear a mask whilst riding my motorbike because of exhaust fumes.

I worry about Covid.

I am sick, I don’t want others to get sick.

I have bad skin, I want to hide my face.

I am shy, I like to wear the mask.

Whenever they ask me, exasperated, why I do not mask - even when the polluting haze is bad?!?! My answer is simple:

The mask is synonymous with slavery, servitude, subjugation, compliance, and conformity. It shows that the wearer is beholden to the new normal ideology. It enables totalitarianism to thrive. It provides a role model from adults to children to normalise and cover one’s face, as not only socially acceptable, but noble and heroic. It is wrecking society.

Link to article.

The number of new Covid-19 infections is expected to continue rising into the upcoming school term, following a spike in hospital admissions and deaths among at-risk groups since the Songkran holiday, according to the Department of Disease Control (DDC).

The reason Covid-19 can spread so easily now is because people confuse it with the regular flu, he said. Covid tests are recommended for anyone who develops flu-like symptoms, he added.

Oh? Confuse it with the regular flu? As in how flu cases disappeared in the early 2020s as Covid cases ‘surged’? 🧐

Ah, the tyranny of words. Covid itself, portrayed as a physical, sentient menacing entity, sliding over the cityscape like a veil of death, as ‘it’ “claims” lives.

That last piece didn’t quite do the trick. Crank it up a notch boys…

Link to article.

Crikey! Nobody told me that the new KP strain had the capability to grow!! FFS, lock me down, mask me up, and stab me like a pin cushion with some gene juice, rapid time.

Thirteen Covid-19 infections from the new KP strain of the Omicron variant have been found in Thailand, according to the Department of Medical Sciences.

These new sub-variants are two times more effective than the common JN.1 variant in terms of their ability to grow, he said.

Assoc Prof Dr Thira Woratanarat, an epidemiology expert at Chulalongkorn, posted a message on Facebook on Friday warning people to use masks.

“Covid-19 is not a common cold. It’s not flu. Each time you get infected, you risk getting severely sick, dying, or getting long Covid, which will impact your ability to live and work,” he wrote.

Um, excuse me Prof, could it be that, er, maybe, 25% of people have VAIDS so their immune systems are a wee bit damaged? SSShhhhhh.

Cambridge University Scientists: 25% of Vaxxed Now Have VAIDS

---

Gender ideology push

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gender dysphoria in the world. However, the ‘woke’ angle and LGBTQ celebration has only been pushed in the last few years, by the captured media. It is sad to see this drivel doing the rounds to further indoctrinate the kids.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS. MALE AND FEMALE. BIOLOGICAL SEX IS IMMUTABLE.

Link to article.

A secondary school in the Northeast allows boys to wear "girlish" long hair and girls to have a "boyish" short haircut.

Schoolboys are allowed to wear long hair but it must be ponytails tied with white ribbons. Meanwhile, schoolgirls can have short hair.

School director Wichiean Thongkhli said on Monday that amid the trend of gender diversity, the school management valued equality among all groups of students and agreed with parents and the students' council to introduce the new hairstyle rules, so that students could wear the hairstyles that suit the genders they identified with.

"The school management believes that it will make students enjoy their studies at school and their performance will improve. I think that any school that applies this model of Boonwattana School will become schools of happiness," Mr Wichiean said.

School director Wichien Thongkhli - hero or villain?

Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

---

Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok based writer. All content is free for all readers, with nothing locked in archive that requires a paid subscription. Any support is greatly appreciated.

Bitcoin address:

39CbWqWXYzqXshzNbosbtBDf1YoJfhsr45

Monero address:

86nUmkrzChrCS4v5j6g3dtWy6RZAAazfCPsC8QLt7cEndNhMpouzabBXFvhTVFH3u3UsA1yTCkDvwRyGQNnK74Q2AoJs6