Drugs or alcohol?

re: "Drug-fueled horrors" and "Reality check" (BP, PostBag, September 27, 2023) 

Dear editor,

In my letters to PostBag to which both Richard Bryant (Drug-fueled horrors) and Christian Reeve (Reality check) respond, an original concluding sentence was: "At the very least, there needs to be more public discussion about what could justify criminalizing some recreational drug use whilst legally blessing the use of other, more socially harmful drugs by adults." I thank the writers for contributing their personal perspectives to this discussion.

In both cases, their evidence is entirely personal anecdote and observation of news reports. As such, they are excellent examples of the problematic nature of such observations and reports. Whilst I do not doubt that they honestly report what they believe they observe, such personal accounts are both extremely limited and inherently, albeit unconsciously, biased, so typically do not reliably represent reality. 

Let me begin by conceding that the claim that alcohol is the most socially harmful drug in popular recreational use is based mainly on research regarding the situation in developed Western countries. Two useful pieces of the published research are: 1) "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" (Nutt et al., 2010 The Lancet) and 2) "The Australian drug harms ranking study" (Bonomo et al., 2019, Journal of Psychopharmacology). Both of these are available for free public access. The Australian study is particularly useful. Australians like our beer, wine and other alcohol-laced drinks. The experts, therefore, specifically address the obvious concern, writing in their Results section that: "Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug when harm to users and harm to others was combined. A supplementary analysis took into consideration the prevalence of each substance in Australia. Alcohol was again ranked the most harmful substance overall." Needless to say, this evidence-based conclusion does not go down well with many of my compatriots. 

The situation in Thailand could well be different. I have not been able to find the necessary statistics to say with absolute confidence one way or the other. But what is known suggests that Thailand is not in fact so different to the UK or Australia when it comes to drug harms to society.

As a telling example, it was reported when the Democrat Party's infamous Prinn Panichpakdee's long career of sexual abuse finally came to public light last year that he had been in the habit of plying his victims with alcohol to make them more readily available to his lusts. He typically did this over a meal at a classy restaurant with a few glasses of wine. I am sure that Mr. Panichpakdee saw himself as a responsible social drinker. His mates in the Democrat Party certainly observed nothing to raise any concern worth mentioning to anyone regarding Mr Panichpakdee's social use of alcohol on such occasions.  

We do, however, have some solid statistics for one area where alcohol appears to be the hands down winner in causing harm to others in Thai society: road deaths. Let me quote from a recent, 2023, World Health Organization report that says nothing surprising to anyone who has lived in Thailand for a few years: "Similarly, drunk driving causes 5,529 deaths annually, or roughly 28% of all traffic deaths" (WHO, 2023, "A New Year's resolution 'for life').  

If either Mr Reeve or Mr Bryant has a statistic that shows any such annually repeated drug-fueled horror for cannabis, ya ba, or any other drug in popular recreational use in Thailand, I would very much welcome them to bring it our notice as a valuable contribution to the discussion. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

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 October 2, 2023, under the title "Drugs or alcohol?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2655831/current-charter-a-no