Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Cannabis yet again. I actually thought of titling this video in a more coy way, sort of having a title, something like: If the Thai Government Needs More Tax Revenue, I have an Elegant Solution, or something, something along those lines. I decided to go ahead and forego that, and just jump right in. 

Look, the Thai Government has been talking a lot recently, "oh we need more tax revenue for this reason, that reason, all these other reasons." As we've discussed, fundamentally what it comes down to is they shut down the economy for two and a half years under the auspices of so-called COVID and we are still having to deal with the aftermath of that, and the government is having these unexplained shortfalls. Well two and a half years of shutting down your economy will do that. Meanwhile, they have also done all kinds of things like handing out all kinds of money that frankly, I'm not sure we really have, but whatever. They've done that and they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, basically looking for money. 

As we discussed in another video, they brought up the issue of increasing the VAT, all sorts of notions of doing things under the OECD and harmonizing their tax laws with other countries in order to tap into the tax revenue of foreigners here in Thailand, which if you actually read the law, the vast majority of them are never going to end up paying anything in any way. And freaking them out with all of this tax stuff is only going to drive both investors and tourists and long-staying retirees away, so what is the solution? It's pretty simple. We legalize Cannabis. We have recreational Cannabis. Why not create an excise tax for Cannabis, specifically recreational Cannabis. They had such a big deal about the difference between medicinal and recreational Cannabis. Well okay fine, for recreational Cannabis - much like alcohol - why not just create an excise tax and go ahead and tax that. Frankly, this is also something that will primarily affect foreigners because a lot of the retail sales of Cannabis right now are happening in tourism sectors, so it's not like the domestic economy is going to be greatly impacted by the possibility of an excise tax on Cannabis, but tourists very well could be.

So - as you can see, I'm sort of sweating here - the thing to take away from this video, at the end of the day is look you are talking about all this tax stuff, and all these cockamamie ideas when there's one very elegant, quite honestly very straightforward solution sitting right in front of you, which is excise tax on Cannabis.