Drug war déjà vu

re: "Pheu Thai vows to rid Buri Ram of illegal drugs" (BP, March 5, 2023) 

Dear editor,

Pheu Thai's promise made by the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra at a major campaign rally in Buriram to "transform this northeastern province by ridding it of all kinds of illegal drugs" inevitably recalls the horror of her father's morally repugnant war on drugs in 2003, which saw more than 2,000 Thais killed under circumstances that have never been adequately clarified, let alone seen justice done. 

There is precisely one way to justly rid a province or any other jurisdiction of illegal drugs: remove them from the list of illegal drugs; there will then be no illegal drug problem. That would be just. It would also be practical. It would also reduce drug harms to society, which has never appeared the goal of Thaksin or any like minded politician riding the wave of populist unreason fuelled by blind prejudice whipped up by political players to serve only their own dubious agendas. 

In addition to justly respecting individual rights of adults, there are several very practical benefits to such a just drug policy. 1) It removes the trade from criminal gangs, surely good for society as well as consumers. 2) It eradicates a major source of corruption in the Royal Thai Police and related bodies, which eradication most hopefully deem a welcome boon to society. 3) It allows tax to be collected on a thriving industry, which state income can then be spent on drug awareness and recovery programs. 4) It makes treatment easier by removing the threat of legal punishment for an awful personal and family problem, which is again surely to be welcome. 5) It saves a fortune on policing, court cases, and prisons, which budget funds can also then be diverted to rehabilitation, health care and education. 6) It allows police to focus on preventing murder, rape, theft, fraud and like crimes with actual victims, unlike most drug use which typically involves no such victims. The millions of drug users in Thailand are plainly not all slitting throats or even jay walking on a regular basis. 7) It ensures the quality of the product since when consumers buy from legally regulated businesses, they can file police complaints in case of tainted goods or other criminal behaviour by the seller, thus saving lives. 8) Nor should it be ignored that the evidence from around the world contradicts the unfounded popular belief that legalization greatly increases drug use. The use of alcohol, for example, did not surge in the US when, to the great distress of the mafia and their loyal retainers in US law enforcement, the prohibition era was ended in 1933. The legalization of cannabis for recreational use around the world in recent years tells a similar story of the relative inelasticity of recreational drug use with respect to legal status, a reality further confirmed by Portugal's long running decriminalization of all personal drug use. 

What, in contrast, are reasons to maintain a status quo that has utterly failed to reduce drug use or harms to society for many decades? The regular massive seizures reported in this newspaper attest only to the abject failure of current policy to reduce drug use despite having been repeated for many decades with only net negative consequences for Thai society and citizens for those same decades of costly failure. 

If Pheu Thai were proposing to eliminate illegal drugs by duly reforming a policy that is a solidly proven failure, it would deserve praise. If it merely seeks to repeat with variations one of the most shameful populist episodes of Thaksin's time as PM, it deserves only disdain at best. 

 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 March 7, 2023, under the title "Drug war déjà vu" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2521941/drug-war-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu