Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are kind of posing the question, "could these recent policy changes with respect to Cannabis in Thailand be reversed?" I got to thinking of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Drugs to be an election issue as Anutin digs in insisting that attitudes must change on cannabis. Quoting directly: "Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul insisted on Saturday that to even suggest that Thailand should again criminalize marijuana or cannabis was wrong. He said the new cannabis law defeated in Parliament last week was an attempt to change the public's perception of the drug which he insisted had a bad image and was treated unfairly. His comments were directly contradictory to the opposition Phue Thai Party which criticized the Government's handling of the issue by proposing a law to outlaw the recreational use of the drug but then failing to deliver." That is kind of interesting, I am going to read that again. "His comments were directly contradictory to the opposition to the opposition Phue Thai Party which criticized the Government's handling of the issue by proposing a law to outlaw the recreational use of the drug but then failing to deliver." Well I think he has been pretty clear on that down the line. I mean decriminalization was the major thrust of this I think. Quoting further: "Deputy Phue Thai Party leader and MP for Mahasarakam, Sutin Klangsang, said that the drug should never have been decriminalized in June this year after the regulation decriminalizing Cannabis was signed by Minister Anutin. As it stood last week he said, the new law had no provision making the recreational use of marijuana illegal and that failure to make it illegal, with the current free-for-all use of the substance will see even more people jailed as they become addicted to drugs in Thailand." 

Look, reasonable people can disagree. I've kind of followed this for years; I followed it in the United States just sort of as a public policy thing, similar to I have followed the same sex marriage issue for years and years now and I am always kind of fascinated, there is always kind of these same arguments that are in the quiver, the same arrows in the quiver of opposition, the whole "people jailed as they become addicted to drugs in Thailand". Well that's the whole ‘marijuana is a gateway drug’ and again reasonable people could disagree. I would like to see data on it, I'll put it that way. I'll preface what I say next, by first saying I would really like to see the data first. Now I suspect that the so-called gateway drug argument probably is a lot more valid in teenagers, in young kids, and obviously, obviously, every step needs to be taken with respect to regulation and criminalization of any sale of this stuff to minors, obviously. That goes without question, I mean it's just like alcohol. Kids should not be drinking alcohol. But I do find the gateway drug argument a little bit specious in a broader context because I don't know that the data is really behind that overall argument. 

Okay, leave that aside, the question posed is, "Does it look like this will get reversed?" I think it's pretty darn unlikely. The other thing and I think something that I don't usually like to talk much in terms of politics on this on this channel, but this has been a major legal change in Thailand so just to kind of talk about it on the periphery, I don't think any politicians are really looking at the economic side or I don't think the politicians that are coming at this in hard opposition are really looking at the economics of this and the economics of this in the grander scheme of things. Let me be clear what I'm talking about. Thailand has been through two and a half years of just abject downturn. As we have discussed in other videos, tourism, decimated. We showed the data on that, it was from the Bangkok Post, I believe I talked about that in January of 2022, this year that tourism is literally decimated. It was 20% of GDP and trumped down under 2, or they said I think in that article it was 18% of overall GDP knocked back to 1.8%, that is just staggering. I can't tell you, I can't convey to people that weren't here for the past couple of years, just how staggering this was on people. I mean I saw stuff I never thought I would see in Thailand. I mean economies, it ravaged the economy I mean and let's be clear, it ravaged SMEs and the middle class. Meanwhile, let's just speak hypothetically, meanwhile somebody comes along and brings online a program that is creating substantial economic activity and it is creating substantial economic activity for people who have been experiencing very little to no economic activity for two and a half years. So as general politicking goes, in my opinion anyone who brings something like that online is going to accrue some political capital on that, and I think it would be remiss to fail to see it from that perspective, that at the end of the day people tend to vote their pocketbook and if an initiative has been brought online that improves the state of a substantial number of voters' pocketbook, those voters are probably going to vote for the person that brought that online, I would think. It would stand to reason. Now again, the voting politics, economics, there is a certain level of irrationality associated, the madness of crowds if you will, but to my mind and specifically speaking to the issue of Cannabis, to me it was just staggering that in the course of a few weeks literally, an industry with a market capitalization of 28 billion Baht just almost appeared overnight. I mean that to me, if that was anything, if that was the introduction of Snicker Bars to Thailand and the market capitalization of that was 28 billion, I would say "wow!' obviously Thailand needs to really take a close look at this whole Snicker Bar market thing.

So again, I don't really like to get overtly political that is not the point of this channel, but there are legal ramifications to policy decisions and I suspect in the longer term this overall policy is probably going to have beneficial economic impact and one would presume that that would mean that it would presumably as a policy, have some staying power.