Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Cannabis yet again. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Officials fear Pattaya and Phuket are overcrowded hotspots. Quoting directly: "Some commentators see Thailand's recent Crackdown on foreign crime - over 400 arrested in Phuket on a variety of charges - and the likely banning of leisure Cannabis later this year as signs that the Government wants to deter some fun loving overseas visitors. As one Cabinet Minister put it, "We want quality tourists from now on." Okay, what's that? 

I mean I find it really fascinating. It's been this way since COVID, these Government apparatchiks around the world talking about the economy like it's a switch you can turn on and off, like the Government can somehow hand pick the kind of tourists they want. That's ridiculous; it's nonsensical, okay? Meanwhile let's go back to this and the thrust of this video "and the likely banning of leisure Cannabis later this year". Who says? Who says? I'm not seeing any major push for this. I've seen certain aspects of the coalition that have talked about it and then tabled the motion because it is not a widely popular notion to just unilaterally illegalize this stuff. Yeah I'll be the first to say I agree with regulation but all of this scaremongering about 'recreational use', who says? Meanwhile, the same people that are espousing this notion that we need to do something about recreational Cannabis, are perfectly happy with the decriminalization of 'less than five meth tablets' which I mean that is so paradoxical as to be absurd in the way that you would be thinking about overall policy. I mean quite honestly, not to put too fine point on it, but it makes no sense. I'm really getting tired of the narrative out there of all of these pushes of these - again 'overtourism' is the latest one that I've been seeing: "Oh, overtourism, overtourism"! What is that? I mean we have been striving to get tourism back and now we're talking about there's too much. Meanwhile there is been no evidence that has been presented that there is too much. On the other side of the coin there's also this push that "well cannabis is going away; that's a foregone conclusion." Doesn't look like one from where I sit. 

Now I definitely see a future in which we see some sort of regulatory structure out there; I definitely see a future where we see some sort of tax structure out there, but this notion that Cannabis, leisure Cannabis or whatever - and the other one is this implicit judgmentalism on the part of people work there's leisure cannabis and there's recreational; we don't want those recreational people out there. Well why? What does it have to do with you? And by the way, illegalizing the flower or this part of the plant and that part of the plant it's just silliness. It would be like somebody say "oh we are going to illegalize flowers", just unilaterally or "you can only have the stems of flowers but you can't have the flower buds themselves" or something. Again I'm getting a little off track here and getting a little too hyperbolic but I am getting that way because I am getting really tired of watching the media across the board, I am not just picking on Pattaya Mail, I know Bangkok Post has said some stuff like this before and other outlets as well, but I am getting very tired of, and mostly I see this from the Western press so let me be clear, I'm not fully putting Thailand on the spot with this but I am getting really tired of seeing these narratives just pushed as if they are either a foregone conclusion or they are the consensus opinion when they are not. I don't see any massive consensus for re-illegalizing cannabis. If anything, I think it's moving in the opposite direction. So this notion that it is likely to just be re-illegalized by the end of this year, I don't see where there's any substantial evidence to that effect.