Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video might suggest, those out there who are Lebowski fans, or Dudists the Dudist religion as exists apparently, we are kind of referencing The Big Lebowski here. I personally am a big fan of The Big Lebowski; I will get into in a moment why we are referencing The Big Lebowski. The reason I thought of making this video, I was reading an article that made me think of another article which turns out to be from almost 10 years ago but it just in my brain it all connected so I decided to make this video.

The reason began from this article from ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, the article is titled: Marijuana users and sellers being highly responsible - no need for draconian measures - more specific laws out by August. Quoting directly: "The spokesman for the House Committee formulating laws and regulations connected to the legalization of marijuana and hemp has praised the reaction of weed users and sellers so far. Panthep Puaphongphan said in a Facebook post that uses had been behaving responsibly and so had those selling the drug." Quoting further: "Panthep said there were plenty of regulations in place in the interim before laws are promulgated and there was no need for a Royal Decree or use of the Emergency Decree at all." Quoting further, and I thought this was pertinent and this was the reason for the video: "Regulations such as not allowing smoking in public places, restrictions on youth access under the age of 20 and Ministry of Public Health rules about controlled herb use were all sufficient for now. The public, Police, Ministries and shops were all playing their part; everyone was chilling."

So the reason I thought about making this video and the reason for the reference to The Big Lebowski which anybody who has seen The Big Lebowski knows The Big Lebowski definitely enjoyed his marijuana consumption, but I immediately got to thinking of an article from, there was an article, I am going to go ahead and we will put it on screen. I don't have the citation but we will get the citation up on screen where this is from but the article is from Seattle, Washington. It is an article titled: Washington Police seem pretty chill (I like that, "chill", and they noted in the prior quotation they were saying everybody is chilling). Quoting further: "Washington Police Seem Pretty Chill About The Official Legalization Of Marijuana. Quoting directly: "While it is illegal to smoke weed in public”, it is almost and this is this is from, excuse me real quick, December 6, 2012 and I am sorry I do have a citation, this is Business Insider, businessinsider.com, December 6, 2012 so 10 years ago. Again, Washington Police Seem Pretty Chill About The Official Legalization Of Marijuana. Quoting directly: "While it is illegal to smoke weed in public, the Seattle Police Department said in a statement that the law doesn't currently tell them precisely how to deal with public pot smokers." And then there was this other kind of byline under a photo of The Big Lebowski, of Jeff Lebowski, the main character, quote: "The Seattle PD reinforced the public ban on marijuana use with a picture of "The Dude" from "The Big Lebowski" along with the message "The Dude abides, and says "take it inside!" 

So I thought this was kind of useful honestly to folks out there who are worried about this. I have had many people in correspondence trying to contact me saying "what are the rules on this; what can I do, what can I not do, da, da" Well I don't I am not going to sit here and try to itemize the do's and don'ts. As we have said in other videos, this is a tricky thing. Foreigners should be very cautious with this but as we have noted in another video one of the main themes was the police have said and we quoted in a prior video, they have said "look if you are in your own home alone, we really don't care about you; we are not looking for you; we are not going out of our way to cause you a problem." That's not something they want to really get into. So this whole sort of "the Dude abides and says “take it inside" from Seattle from a decade ago that's about I think where we are at with things here in Thailand at the moment with respect to yeah it is not legal to smoke in public. Meanwhile, it is merely decriminalized with respect to private usage but one thing that seems to be pretty clear at this point is, if you are in your own home alone that is not something law enforcement is particularly interested at all in. 

As I have noted in other videos, not even on this channel but in other venues, I think the big main impetus for this is and we have quoted officials going back a couple years ago, they just don't view this as a priority. It's not something they really want to spend a lot of time and resources on from a policing standpoint because quite frankly there a hard drugs out there that do far more damage than Cannabis, Marijuana are going to do. So I just thought that the reason for the video I thought that kind of a look at again it has been a decade ago, but a look at sort of how this was described when this was first kind of evolving back in the United States this sort of "the Dude abides, keep it inside", yeah I just thought that maybe that for most foreigners here might kind of sum up at least the overall paradigm as to what is going through the minds or at least seems to be going through the minds of law enforcement here in the Kingdom of Thailand.