re: "Anutin slams call to re-list cannabis as narcotic plant" (BP, September 20, 2022)
Dear editor,
Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul may be right that "there is no evidence of improper use of cannabis under existing laws," but even if there were such improper use, that would be no reason to recriminalize a drug that should be at least as freely available for recreational use as the far more harmful drug alcohol has long been.
The doctors concerned about the drug's possible harmful effects have every right to speak out about those harms, just as they regularly bewail the greater harms of cigarettes and alcohol on users, especially the young. But the doctors are not experts on public policy and are certainly not competent to speak with any authority on matters of ethics. The essence of democratic principle is accepting that others will have different values and make different decisions as to how to live their own lives as they judge best according to what they value, including doing what doctors deem foolish and even idiotic. Merely being idiotic and harmful, as so many popular activities are, from smoking cigarettes to pigging out on salty, hyper-processed food, is no reason to criminalize such acts by consenting adults, although due regulation regarding sales to children might be just. Have the doctors also called for criminalizing the sale of McDonalds, Coca Cola and like to those under 18?
The "hilariously misnamed Democrat Party" is, of course, merely showing its traditional loyal contempt for the Thai people in its insulting presumption that Thai parents are not to be trusted to refrain from pushing alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes and whatever on their own children. I believe the reports were that the Democrat Party's long-nurtured poster boy Prinn Panichpakdi found alcohol, not cannabis or any other, a very useful drug to give to his intended victims. But then, alcohol has a long history of use in furthering non-consensual sexual conquests, as university jocks and other such manly types have long embodied in popular culture.
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 September 21, 2022, under the title "Worse than weed" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2396566/more-expats-please
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