Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "bad regulations" associated with Cannabis in Thailand. I put that in quotes because the minute I read the byline of this - we will put this on screen - I actually read this from the print edition of the Bangkok Post so not bangkokpost.com, but the print edition, the article is titled: Weed policy shift gets thumbs down. And first of all look, I've made this pretty clear, I actually think Thailand got this right and frankly it was primarily Anutin Charnvirakul who at the time was the Minister of Public Health and some others. There was this movement behind Cannabis. It wasn't really organized. I mean what a shock, a bunch of potheads don't get real organized, but it was the right move because at the end of the day, international Cannabis Policy, this notion that it needs to be hunted down like it’s heroin or something, is ridiculous. I mean anybody that knows anything, I'm not saying it's perfect, but I view it very much like alcohol. It is an intoxicant, and it will sort of alter your mind set but it's not crystal meth or cocaine or heroin. It's not a hard drug that you get a bad dose and you are gone, you can die from it. So the point I am trying to make is I think Thailand really approached this rather well. Now they kind of backed into it, like it happened in a kind of, as I have discussed in other videos, basically at the time Public Health Minister Anutin had emergency powers under the COVID stuff, and he pulled it from the narcotics list. But then the emergency powers, the Emergency Decree, expired and was not renewed and we reverted back to just standard operating procedure and to put it back on there requires an act of Parliament. So in a sense, it came about through a bit of very adept legislative maneuver if you will, but I think the result was pretty darned good at the end of the day insofar as - I have said this before and I will say it again - it should not be, anybody that sells to children, I think you need to do some jail time for that or at least have the threat of it to keep that from happening. But first of all, well let me dig in further from the print edition. Quoting further: "Some legal experts, meanwhile, have pointed to a policy vacuum that emerged following a 2022 Ministry of Public Health Decree removing Cannabis from the narcotics list without enacting a corresponding control law." Well Bangkok Post is very guilty of this, this talking about how it was ‘decriminalized’; no it was legalized. In a Civil Law System, if something is not affirmatively illegal it is by definition legal. That's one of the basic tenets of the Civil Law. I do not come from necessarily a Civil Law System background although I have been out here 17 years, I've had to deal with it. My JD back here is primarily from a Common Law background, but I took Comparative Law, I mean I have studied this stuff, I do have a Doctorate in Jurisprudence, so yeah, I do have some insight into how the law operates, and again, call it my lay person's outside perspective on the Thai Civil Law, that's how it worked. And they constantly talked about how there's this vacuum and all of this - well no it's just legal. And that is why I come back to "bad regulations". What bad regulations? The only two regulations right now are, you can't sell to children or pregnant women effectively. So which of those are the bad regulations? Or is it no, we want to tighten everything up and make everything real difficult? 

Now real quick here, shameless plug and you know, it's a Cannabis video so I figured that maybe there are some viewers out there that might have a heightened appetite. We have opened Pancake Palace. It is down here on Soi Anuman Rachadhon and I'll put a link in the description below to the Google maps link. We are serving pancakes down there. We have got some great buffalo wings, we've got chilli, we've got cheeseburgers; it's really an American diner kind of place. All day breakfast. Right now we are open 8 am - 10 pm. I am hoping over time to possibly bring this thing up to hopefully one day a 24-hour kind of experience, but we're just getting opened up. I do appreciate folks kind of bearing with me while I am doing these plugs occasionally in these videos because I do want to let people know that it's there. I'm there quite frequently. Honestly, please don't come up and just start hammering me with questions about like Thai Immigration or something, but I'm always happy to talk to folks and yeah we are over there. Again link in the description below but some photos of the food and stuff that we've got. Again, great American diner food if that's what you are into, and all-day breakfast, breakfast anytime. 

That said, getting back here to the Cannabis article in the Bangkok Post print edition. Quoting further, and as I said, this whole notion that there was some kind of vacuum or something, no it just legalized, okay. It can't be served to anybody under 20 years of age here in Thailand, and you can't sell to pregnant women. I mean those are currently the rules. Frankly I am not quite sure what everybody else wants. We don't have much more in the way of rules with regard to alcohol, and look, you have to have a license to sell this. In that article, I'm not quoting this part, but they actually noted now there's 18,000 legal dispensaries in Thailand and there has been this massive push, I don't know from what forces - I guess call it the Fun Police or something – who, they seem to want to restrict it all up and make it worse frankly. And honestly again, we can look at others who jurisdictions, and California is a really good example. I talked about this in the context of when Mr. Abhisit was talking about how casinos, not the greatest idea - I am talking about this in the context of the so-called re-classifying it as "Medicinal" Cannabis and throwing out recreational. It doesn't work because what ends up happening is you throw all these regulations, you throw all this red tape on top of these businesses, it becomes unprofitable to run it legally, but it's still nominally legal, so it becomes more profitable to just completely go off the reservation and run it illegally. So I go back to my analysis when asking from the byline, "what bad regulations?" The one that says you can't serve to anybody under 20, or the one that says that you can't serve to pregnant women? Because both of those to me make pretty good sense. 

That said, quoting further: "This effectively opened the door to widespread recreational use without adequate safeguards..." Adequate safeguards of what? Consenting adults in the privacy of their own domiciles; what's the problem? Where does all of this impetus for this nanny-minder nonsense come from? This is Thailand. Thai means free; it's the land of the free. Now if somebody is out smoking a bunch of reefer, bashing their car into somebody or something, charge them criminally for that. We have laws on the books to deal with that. I mean what are we talking about? Lord knows we wouldn't want anybody having any fun without adequate safeguards. And by the way, where are the “adequate” safeguards when you hear about people getting hammered drunk and doing all kinds of stupid stuff? You never hear about that, but with Cannabis somehow magically, we need adequate safeguards. It doesn't make any sense to me. Quoting further: "..while later attempts to classify Cannabis as a controlled herb have proven insufficient.." Well it's already classified as a controlled herb. That's what you need the license for. Quoting further: "..said Paisal Limsathit, a scholar with the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University." Well I would have to respectfully disagree with his scholarly opinion. And frankly at this point, where does the legal analysis play out, what adequate safeguards are for recreational use? What are you talking about? We are talking about practical usage at this point. Meanwhile, is this somebody else who says that it's decriminalized, not legalized, when in fact I mean it's my basic understanding of Thai Law that again some thing is either affirmatively illegal which Cannabis is not or it is legal. Quoting further: "Civil Society networks have submitted over 20,000 signatures in support of a proposed Cannabis and Hemp Control Bill now under review in Parliament, to address these concerns." Well I am in favour, and I have said this before, Parliament should be the one to make legislation on this. But I really question exactly what “bad regulations” we are talking about here? Now I can kind of see where maybe some rules regarding where these places can be - proximity to schools for example - that that seems to make sense; maybe rules regarding quality control or something of this nature. 

Now more importantly, how about tax? Let's forget about trying to illegalize something, there is already 18,000 shops that sell it. The horse has bolted from the barn; the cat is out of the bag, okay? Cannabis is prevalent in Thailand; there's no question about that. You are not going to get that genie back in that bottle. Okay. So let's get something out of it as a society. Let's get some tax money out of it rather than trying to mess with all the farang and drive them away because of all this weird OECD-inspired sovereignty infringing tax policy. How about we just tax this thing that grows here in Thailand, and we sell to the tourists primarily, how about we tax that and use that revenue to make ourselves better here in Thailand? Again the ongoing policies regarding Cannabis, regarding this constant drive to nanny-mind and just overly regulate, when it's not even really necessary, pertinent or particularly commonsensical or pragmatic. It just doesn't make any sense to me.