re: "Police extortion racket in the crosshairs" (BP, May 13, 2020)
Dear editor,
The most recent reports of extortion founded on bad law are consistent with what the Thai public has long expected of the Royal Thai Police. The reports also help explain why the police are so consistently opposed to rational, just drug laws based on evidence: you can't extort people for victimless crimes unless their acts are deemed crimes, however harmless to society.
Apart from enabling mafia gangs to get rich, the major consequence of criminalizing personal decisions that do not harm others is to encourage corruption, including the reported extortion. If the drug laws were sane and in accord with good morals, the police and like-minded officials would lose a major source of income, and Thai society would be much better off in every way.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on May 14, 2020, under the title "Themselves to blame" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1917788/themselves-to-blame
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