Transcript of the above video: 

As you can see, we are still kind of in a sort of a limbo situation with technical issues associated with my transit back into Thailand due to me being abroad. That said, I thought it was worth making this video real quick and putting this up online. As the title of the video suggests, we are talking about the Thai Interior Minister warning of dangers from what can only be described as arbitrary or what we would call sort of in the Common Law vernacular, 'arbitrary and capricious' sort of Law and Policy making if you will. 

I thought of making this video, after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com. As usual, Thai Examiner does a really good job of sort of pulling out a lot of the finer points and details of what's going on with respect to this whole Cannabis issue and how it is sort of playing out in a practical matter or in a practical manner from a policy making standpoint. The title of the article is: Anutin turns up the heat on PM over Cannabis issue as critical drug control panel meeting looms to decide. Quoting directly: "Deputy PM warns against Cannabis recriminalization. Cites investor confidence damage." And that's worth noting. This whole thing it's really almost beyond the issue of Cannabis itself. It's more to the issue of good policy making and good lawmaking insofar as doing things in a consistent way. I have said before many times that I have serious questions as to whether or not this Board, this ONCB can just sort of unilaterally re-list a plant as a narcotic. I fail to see what's the difference between that and just saying overnight that a bouquet of roses are narcotics or something. I know that that sounds a bit hyperbolic and somewhat rhetorically flamboyant, but it's not because when you think about it from the standpoint of making public policy and making law, do you really want just a small group of people to be able to unilaterally say "oh overnight we are saying that this is something that we can now call illegal." Again, and this would be coming after a major reversal we've discussed before which was done under the auspices of the Communicable Diseases Act Emergency Decree in my understanding, or my understanding at the time was the Minister of Public Health at that time had emergency powers. Those emergency powers were utilized in order to change the listing of Cannabis and then we left the Emergency Decree and so procedurally I've asked the question many times, is this procedurally correct to now be trying to call this a narcotic without a full Parliamentary Law, without a promulgated law? Which by the way everybody seems to kind of now be overlooking the fact that for two years, the factions that are against this tried to maneuver some sort of Law in place that would have changed the policy but failed to do so and now they are trying to sort of do it through basically bureaucratic re-regulation if you will and again regulations, it's my understanding, even in again a Civil Law system and I am a lay person when it comes to the issue of Thai Civil Law, but in relation to Thai Civil Law, the doctrine of codification prevails which is the notion that in order to make something illegal you need to promulgate a law through Parliament to do so and again that isn't what is happening here. This is sort of being done bureaucratically. And the next question arises is again it goes deeper than the issue of Cannabis, which is outside investors from around the world are looking at Thailand with respect to this issue because they are wanting to know if what we would call ‘arbitrary and capriciousness’ is being sort of utilized here when making these policies because again as I've said in prior videos, how is that different than if they said a florist was now sort of decreed to be somebody who's selling narcotics. 

It comes down to the issue that you want to have some certainty with regard to ongoing laws and policies and that when such major about-faces are made with respect to law and policy, they are made in such a way that they are not arbitrary and capricious. Again I am using Common Law vernacular but I think it's apt under the circumstances to utilize such terminology because as pointed out in this article, the Interior Minister is saying "look outside investors are looking at this; they don't want to invest in a place that's going to do things arbitrarily and capriciously." 

That being said, quoting further: "Deputy PM warns against Cannabis recriminalization. Cites investor confidence damage. Business will live in fear of policy reversals as political dynamics change. In addition, Mr. Anutin said this reversal of policy will damage Thailand's credibility. The interior Minister said investors scanning the country will see that policies shifted significantly from Government to Government. In effect, a signal that a climate of policy instability prevails."

Again, and not to put too fine a point on it but yes it's what we would call in the Common Law vernacular 'arbitrary and capricious' and in the legal realm when you hear that in terms of Common Law and I do understand this is sort of a Comparative Law exercise - we don't utilize the Common Law in Thailand - but it's the same concept. It's the concept that hey you can't just do an about-face on something this significant especially where 8,000 businesses in Thailand have detrimentally relied on the prior policy, you can't just do an about-face without at least some level of substantial due process and is that really in effect here or have we just seen one faction become part of the ruling coalition and now unilaterally decide that hey we are just going to reverse all of this and we are going to, in my opinion, likely substantially damage many of these small business owners. Again as the Interior Minister points out, this could have more broad ramifications in terms of investor confidence in the future. How this exactly is going to play out remains to be seen. That being said, we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as this situation evolves.