Sawadee Everyone,
The big news this week has been the Minister of Public Health, Cholnan Srikaew, saying that the new regulations would come by the end of the year.
For those keeping score at home, the government has slipped their deadline for a ban on recreational cannabis use from end of year 2023 to Jan 2024 to Feb 2024, now to end of year 2024.
The new timeline has a bill passing in parliament by end of the regular session of parliament in October and going into effect in the weeks or months afterward.
I’m 50-50 on whether it’s bad reporting, bad translation, or whether Cholnan has become a tad bit more aggressive in his stance towards cannabis, but the most recent statements by Cholnan have seemed like a middle-finger at the dispensary side of the business.
On one hand, he did reiterate that things had gotten out of control and that the new laws would reign in “inappropriate” use of cannabis, which he has been saying all along, but in one article he was quoted as saying that the new laws would “kick in like a bang“, which is not the kind of language that businesses want to hear.
That said, given the past track record of this government, there’s a better than average chance that they won’t hit these timelines which will drag the status quo into another year.
I also go back and forth on whether or not the former Minister of Public Health, Anutin, was a brilliant political tactician or just the beneficiary of his own dumb luck.
By completely removing cannabis from the list of controlled substances he effectively burned all bridges going back to criminalization.
That is what Cholnan is just beginning to realize and why it’s taking him so long to write a bill.
I think PM Srettha thought they would just declare recreational use illegal and that would be the end of it.
People (mostly in the cannabis community) often don’t like hearing these statistics but something like 87% of Thais said just in November 2023 that they are opposed to recreational cannabis use but in the same NIDA poll, over 60% said that they favored medicinal use.
If Cholnan is too aggressive against recreational use, he risks pissing off the 60% of Thais that approve of medicinal use.
And if he wants to keep the support of the people that approve of medicinal cannabis there will be gaping loopholes for recreational use.
For those who were following the news just before legalization, two separate incidents occurred where elderly Thai women were busted for growing a small number of cannabis plants for medicinal purposes.
In one incident, village locals actually surrounded the police and forced them to leave the poor woman alone.
My point of taking this trip down memory lane is to illustrate that if the law starts turning little old ladies into criminals, Thai people will be pissed and support for the bill could crater.
That’s one of the reasons why I gave the Future Cannabis Network praise in last week’s newsletter. The way they’re trying to corner Cholnan into admitting that with the new law innocent people could be hassled by police, is exactly the kind of thing that even people that don’t support cannabis use can get behind.
Given the huge numbers of Thai people who are opposed to recreational cannabis use, the smart move is to engage the Thai public on how the law can be abused by police.
In other words, quit talking about your right to smoke weed (which 87% of Thais don’t agree with) and focus on one thing all Thais can agree on, namely, that Thais don’t trust the police.
Not too far back the Bangkok Post, who normally relishes in publishing anti-cannabis stories, posted an opinion piece saying that most of the negative effects from cannabis legalization have been the result of lack of enforcement, not a lack of laws.
That’s exactly the kind of shift we need in the debate. We need people to start questioning what the law really aims to accomplish.
In my, ever so humble, opinion, Thai cannabis advocacy should focus on the following issues:
The ways that the bill incentivizes police corruption
The economic impact on Thais if recreational cannabis sales ended
Cannabis vs Alcohol and Cannabis vs Yaba comparisons that illustrate how much worse these substances are compared to cannabis
Promotion of the positive impacts of cannabis. For instance, stories of people who used cannabis to curb their yaba addiction, or people who had suffered mental health disorders who have been helped by cannabis use.
Thai opinion influencers (news outlets, etc), authority figures (doctors, former police, former judges, etc), and cultural influencers speaking in support of cannabis or, at least, against the cannabis law.
The move to push the bill until October isn’t just good news because it maintains the status quo longer. It’s also good news from the aspect that it gives the cannabis community time to poke holes in the bill and the motives of those pushing it.
We don’t need total victory. All we need is a loophole.
Stay lifted and enlightened,
Don’t forget that we’ve partnered with some dispensaries for exclusive deals available to members of this newsletter and the r/CannabisThailand sub on Reddit. Just type “Dank Deal” into the comments of any post and the AutoMod will send you the current discounts being offered.
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