re: "Mass parole no solution" (Editorial, BP, May 20, 2021)
Dear editor,
The Bangkok Post is certainly correct that "The move (to release 50,000 prisoners early) would not win plaudits from the public." That does not, however, mean it is not the just and practical course of action. Most of the 80% in prison for drug crimes should not be there in the first place. That people are imprisoned merely for using a socially disapproved drug, unlike the vast numbers who use the more socially harmful drug alcohol as approved by society's tyrannical majority, proves only that social norms are irrational and therefore contrary to justice. Society owes those so unjustly imprisoned not only prompt release, but an apology with reparations.
This is an opportunity for Thai society to reflect on what is and is not just, and why. By imprisoning people who have not actually harmed a single person other than themselves, society has committed a grave injustice against its own members. There being no relevant difference in harm to others between a heroin user who has the means to buy his drug of choice and does so at home, where he nods of as heroin users tend to, and an alcohol user who goes out to a pub and becomes highly excitable under the influence of that drug, as alcohol users tend to, there can be no just reason to treat users of heroin and alcohol differently merely for using their chosen drugs. As the philosopher John Stuart Mill concluded in 1859 in his introductory chapter of "On Liberty", it can only be just to impose criminal punishments on those who have actually harmed or directly threatened to harm others, his rightly famous harm principle. It follows that merely getting drunk or taking a few pills that damage the brain and other organs as effectively as alcohol does fails to justify imprisoning people.
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 22, 2021, under the title "Free drug convicts" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2119815/free-drug-convicts
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