Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Cannabis regulations here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Anutin calls for patients as debate over hemp bill drags on. Quoting directly: "The problem of the increasing recreational use of cannabis continues while Thailand waits for the Cannabis and hemp Bill --an all-in-one legal mechanism to ensure better control of Cannabis use in the country and limit it to medicinal purposes -- to be passed into law, he said." They are quoting I believe Anutin in the earlier part of this article. Again I urge folks who are watching this video, go ahead and read that article in detail, a lot going on in there. 

To start off the analysis here, one thing I find interesting, the presupposition of the "problem of increasing recreational use". Khun Anutin has been talking about this since he was on the campaign trail some years ago and he never ruled out the possibility of recreational use. I am not saying that I am on one side or the other against it but it has kind of been like it has been moved to this track where it is a foregone conclusion that recreational usage is or should be or whatever, illegal. Now I don't know what the answer to that is but what I do know is when this started getting going, it seemed as though the movement was to get this to become as much of a cash crop as it possibly could be. Now I think reasonable people can totally disagree with respect to the extent, I have got to be honest with you, I don't agree in any way, shape or form with the notion that people are walking around outside just smoking Cannabis or whatever, using it. I don't think that's probably the greatest thing in the world, in fact far from it. Meanwhile though, what people do in the privacy of their own homes, I personally like the present policy as it is insofar as it's just very pro “live and let live” if you will. I'll get to some further analysis on that, comparing it to some other laws in a moment, but I just wanted to kind of note that as of now it seems like it is like kind of being especially in the media, it's kind of being posed as a foregone notion that recreational use should be illegal and I don't know that Parliament has ever fully sussed that out. In fact, I thought that's what we were talking about here in all of this and if so at the end of the day, alcohol has medicinal uses but I don't think anybody's going out to bars for that purpose. Now again not an apples to apples necessarily comparison and again I don't know, I kind of like the way Seattle started with this whole thing years ago, the whole "the Dude abides, keep it inside". We did a video on that where we talked about hey this has been decriminalized; this is now technically speaking legal, but it's not something that we really want out on the streets and we are going to use nuisance laws similar to Thailand; we're going to do some things with respect to regulation", which I will get into in a minute, in order to kind of curtail that because at the end of the day it's got to be a society you want to live in and me frankly I don't want to be walking down the street out or have somebody else walking down the street with their family, their children and things and seeing a bunch of people wandering around basically intoxicated on Cannabis, I don't think that is the society we necessarily want to live in. At the same time, it's good to have the economic benefits, there is no doubt about that and quite honestly I think Thailand's economy has come roaring back because of the foresight and the farsightedness of these policies in seeing that "hey there is a place in the market to be filled here". I mean as we discussed in another video, 28 billion Baht of GDP appeared in mere weeks after this initiative began. So again there are positives to this and yes there are negatives which is the reason regulations are the best thing to do, not re-criminalization, regulation. 

Quoting further: "When the latest notice on controlling the herb is published in the Royal Gazette, the sale of Cannabis flowers and buds will become illegal, except when they are sold by parties specially permitted to supply these materials for medicinal purposes, Mr. Anutin said on Wednesday.'" So yeah okay, there is a licensing mechanism for folks that are operating dispensaries. Again, I thought that was kind of a given from the beginning when this was being discussed from the get-go. Now as to my thinking on it, I actually think Thailand has a pretty good template for how to deal with this to one degree or another. Again not apples to apples necessarily but as we've discussed in other videos on this channel, prostitution is something that in my opinion Thailand has dealt with in a very mature manner which is basically prostitution is illegal but under the statute as we have discussed at length, there is a promiscuity element which basically says, it's transactional sex which is being the transaction being conducted in a quote and quote and I am paraphrasing, "promiscuous manner", basically out in the open, being a nuisance, being a problem. Again at the same time being very mature about the fact that look what goes on behind closed doors among consenting adults, again emphasis on "consenting" and "adults" but what goes on behind closed doors amongst consenting adults, kind of their own business. It's not something Thai Policy makers or Law enforcement really want to get involved in; that's people's own business. That is good policy in my opinion. It is good thinking and I think frankly Thailand has dealt with that issue quite well. I think it could be similarly done with respect to the issue of Cannabis. As noted further in that article, I'm not going to quote further, again I urge folks who are watching this video to read that article but again one of the concerns is folks are having these kind of cafes and these venues where people are sitting around, again not in public it is behind closed doors but it is right pretty close to being public I would say and I can see where conservative Thais especially older conservative Thais, might be worried that that looks a little bit like, I could see where they could say: "hey how far away are we from an opium den to that?" Kind of a slippery slope argument, maybe not the most grounded argument but one that perhaps, I can see the argument, I don't necessarily agree with it but I can see it. I can also see what conservative folks, me included, again they don't really love the idea of walking around their neighborhood and smelling this stuff and again we have got to live in a society we want to live in. But me personally, I would rather live in a society where something this innocuous is not criminalized so people aren't sitting in jail over it and where people are kind of having a live and let live attitude about it so long as folks are keeping it behind closed doors; I could live with that frankly. And looking at it again medicinal versus recreational, I think that there is some kind of balance in there that the policy makers can come up come to some kind of consensus on that will probably make everybody at least reasonably happy at the end of it and would come to a reasonable conclusion about this. 

The reason I bring it up, and the reason I am kind of concerned sorry about this was the result of another article I was just recently reading. This is from Bloomberg, bloomberg.com, the article is titled: New York Cannabis Farms Have $750 million of Weed -- and Nowhere to Sell It. I want to read that headline again. "New York Cannabis Farms Have $750 million of Weed --and Nowhere to Sell It." Again, Bloomberg, bloomberg.com, so let me just quote this real quick. Again I urge those who are watching this video, to go check out that article in detail. Quoting directly: "By almost all metrics, New York's Cannabis market rollout should be in the final innings. The state began handing out growing licenses to more than 200 farms last spring and farmers have since sowed seeds, tended to rows of plants all summer and just in the last few weeks, finished harvesting. Now hundreds of thousands of pounds of weed -- worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- is ready to be sold at dispensaries. There's one hitch: Instead of being shipped to retail stores, the weed is just piling up. Though a rampant gray market is already up and running, not one legal recreational dispensary has yet opened in New York, despite the state regulators' repeated assurances that Cannabis stores would be a fixture by the end of the year." Now to Thailand's credit, I think they did this better than New York to begin with. By rolling it out and just kind of getting the momentum going, I think it's a lot better than having all these folks out there that have now expended a bunch of money, time and resources to this endeavour only to say "oh hey, sorry you're not going to be able to ply your trade", basically or “we're just going to keep the whole system constipated up and not let you ply your trade during that time period”. I don't think that really helps anybody.

What got me freaking out about this frankly when I read this article is, and again not an apples to apples comparison here, but it kind of reminded me of the old rice pledging scheme here in Thailand which resulted in some serious economic, for lack of a better term blowback, because it wasn't very well executed at the end of the day. Again I don't want to get political or into any of that. This is mostly me talking in a historical context but yeah it led to some problems and again if you look at it, it's just agricultural products; they're commodities at the end of the day. If we're going to go ahead and do this, let's do it, let's get some regulation in there and figure out how we are going to do it, the parameters under which we are going to deal with this, and let's set some good policy because I think we are on a roll here with something here in Thailand. I think this is a boon for Thailand; I think it could very much help Thailand but I certainly agree with a number of people out there who have their concerns, who say "look, I don't want to live in a place where I am wandering around getting a contact high off of everybody smoking around me, I don't want to live in that kind of world." I totally get that but I think there is a good middle ground here between just kind of off the rails insanity on the topic and going back to what we were dealing with before which frankly I think everybody can kind of agree, it wasn’t great policy. It really wasn't the best way to deal with the overall matter and so hopefully we will see some good traction on this in the coming weeks and months.