Thailand’s new government is moving ahead to pass new legisalation banning cannabis for recreational use in a major reversal 18 months after the country became the first in Asia to decriminalize the plant.
The relaxed laws saw a lucrative cannabis industry catering to locals and foreigners alike boom across the Southeast Asian nation, but a new conservative coalition government came to power late last year vowing to tighten the rules and only allow medical use.
A draft bill was released on Tuesday by Thailand’s health ministry outlining hefty fines or prison sentences of up to one year for offenders – or both.
Banning something enjoyable that harms no one and has nil impact on society - just conservative things.
Ain’t nothing more conservative than banning fun.
You know what’s even worse than conservatives? People who vote for them.
*regressive
Potato tomato
You’re a good person
have you heard about disposable vapes? i find that topic brings them out of even a hippie
edit: see its like flies to honey
Disposable vapes do cause harm though, regardless of what’s in them
Those should be restricted
Harm…to the environment, yes.
Sure; that’s a container that is unnecessary and a problem in itself. It’s contents are not the issue.
Have you heard of banning the vapes but not the drug thats in them?
They cause an incredible amount of e-waste and are frequently targeted at children.
Won’t someone please think of the children!!!
Seriously though, why not just support regulating them and allowing only reusable vapes instead of supporting a ban which only results in a black market?
Has this happened anywhere? My country has talked about banning disposables and only disposables. It makes too much money from vaping to ban it totally.
How is it much different than disposable batteries?
Not saying there aren’t better options. But seems like it’s a weird hill to die on
Lithium (and other materials that go into common rechargable batteries in vapes) are rare earth minerals that could be used for other much more important uses whereas the materials in non-rechargable batteries are less useful or rare. Not all vapes use lithium but it’s common, and using it just once is a particularly wasteful use of a valuable resource, along with other hazards that come from dumping it in landfill.
Making a vape with a (user) rechargable battery that has a decent amount of re-uses isn’t that hard, so these single-use vapes really are just pointless.
But yeah, disposable batteries in general aren’t great either, and I avoid them as much as possible my self.
that’s just ewaste. at least reuse the battery! also every place that sells them should required to have a bin you can drop off your used carts in for recycling.
A pity. That country is very dependent on tourism and really hasn’t recovered since the virus.
There is something about being high as a kite in Bangkok and eating one of the best meals of your life from a stand for a 100 Bhat.
Yeah I agree, it’s sad.
When I heard they had legalised weed I thought it was a really clever move.
There were some other changes to visas around the same time which made Thailand a really great destination for young remote workers. I remember thinking how unusual it was for a south east asian country to be so progressive.
Now they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot just because they’re worried about what people might think.
Did I miss it? Was there a reason given or is it just the new “conservative coalition” doesn’t like it?
Right-wing gonna hate. Conservatives just got nothin else to do.
You can’t be a conservative without hating things that make people happy while allowing things that make people sick like alcohol, cigarettes, and motor vehicles.
It was part of their election campaign I presume. Vote for us and we will walk back the law.
I’ve spent a lot of time in South East Asia and I’ve found most south east asian cultures to be deeply pretentious. It’s fine to live in a shoe box provided that you’re carrying an iPhone, et cetera.
A lot of Thais felt that legalisation had meant that the world suddenly identified Thailand as some kind of “drug country”, which is absolutely unacceptable to many Thais.
It’s not a question of whether weed ought to be legal, it’s a question of whether Thai people wish to be thought of as some kind of junkie nation.
The equivalent to the legalization of cannabis making people think of Thailand as a 'junkie nation’s would be the rampant sex tourism making people think of Thailand as a paedo nation. And they’ve been fine with that for decades. So I very much doubt that it’s because “south east Asian cultures” are “deeply pretentious”. Also, just grouping hundreds of millions of people from vastly different cultures together as monolithic and “deeply pretentious” ironically says more about your own levels of deep pretension than about south east Asian cultures
Sure mate.
You probably mean to say I’m prejudiced or even racist or something rather than pretentious, and that would be true in this case.
Pretentious is a loaded term. One might say “heavily motivated by perceptions of class”.
I haven’t grouped culture’s together as monolithic. Merely that the many and varied cultures I’ve encountered in SEA are very concerned with the perceptions of others.
I’ve spoken to many Thais about this very issue, at length, including my partner. You don’t care whether you believe me, but it absolutely is because they worry about being perceived as a country of drug users.
You literally wrote most south east Asian cultures are deeply pretentious. Having a Thai partner doesn’t somehow magically make you an authority on a region with close to 700 million people. You’re grouping together countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Burma and Singapore and calling them deeply pretentious. Bringing up a Thai partner to demonstrate some kind of authority in the matter fits perfectly in with the rest of it. I don’t have any issues believing you have a Thai partner and have spoken to many Thais. My issue again is with you thinking that fact gives you the authority to casually judge a region of 700 million people as deeply pretentious. And then doubling down.
Not OP but:
My issue again is with you thinking that fact gives you the authority to casually judge a region of 700 million people as deeply pretentious. And then doubling down.
It’s kind of true. As an Indian I know how much SEA turns up their nose at the sight of Indians.
I worked over there. Man Singapore looks so far down on Indians and Malaysians it’s amazing they can even see things to be racist about. And then they steal everyone else’s cuisine anyways.
It’s amazing how much SEA cares about status and all that but I think it’s to make sure they note that while being working class countries they are white collar instead of blue in an attempt to excuse anything away. “Hey, at least we aren’t farmers”
Even the birth places of Buddhism, Daoism, and more can’t avoid the trappings of perceived identity.
I don’t claim to be an authority. This is my opinion.
I’ve actually spent a great deal of time in each of the countries you mentioned with the exception of Singapore. I’m entitled to have an opinion, with which you may disagree if you wish.
I didn’t disclaim my opinion with mealy mouthed qualifications as in “well in my opinion people I’ve met in South East Asia often tend to be more pretentious than the average person in, say, Australia” because I just don’t care what you think.
I have in fact spent a great deal of time talking with Thais both in Thailand and abroad about this exact issue. I suspect you might be surprised at how many of them would just outright tell you “yeah I don’t like how everyone thinks Thailand is some kind of drug country now”.
Are you white? Because they won’t extend the same courtesy to brown people… specifically Indians.
Yes I’m white.
Skin color is a very strong indicator of class or social status in Thailand. People who work outside or in the fields will have darker skin. People who sit around all day in-doors will have lighter skin.
While logically people can acknowledge that this isn’t true in 2024, there’s plenty of wealthy people with a dark complexion, it’s so deeply embedded in Thai culture that beautiful, desirable people have light skin.
I’ve seen article in the past couple of months that basically said the regulation for cannabis when it became legal was next to nothing, and that caused some issues with locals when some people tried to take advantage of the lack of regulation.
I can’t remember the specifics, but I’m sure it had to do with an over abundance of stores popping up in major tourist areas.
Anecdotally, I will say that it has caused an increase of selling weed to other neighbouring countries. When I went to visits friends in Cambodia this summer, there was lots of ‘hydro’ available in cities close to the border that is 100X better than the stuff in Cambodia, where it’s legal-ish.
I was there this summer and finding cannabis was not hard. One tourist place there was literally woman walking around holding a tray of selection trying to get the attention of foreigners to sell. Like in an old fashion casino. The rule was you could only use the stuff in designated areas but no one was enforcing. Every tourist bar has people using it. Hemp does grow wild there and they been making tea for selling for who knows how long.
From what I gathered the market exploded, got oversaturated, and now places are starting up/dying every month. I guess like vape stores in the West.
It isn’t legal-ish in Cambodia, laws are just not enforced very much with low public confidence in anything being done.
It’s legal for ‘traditional uses’ which I would say is legal-ish. Even though most of them shut down, there are still Happy Pizza shops in every major city.
It had use traditionally and could be bought by the bagful (as in, plastic bag) for a dollar back in the day at local markets, however that is no longer the case. Happy pizza places bribe the cops not to bust them, which doesn’t make it legal. I don’t think there is a provision for traditional usage anymore:
You can get permission for medical purposes, but that’s about it.
What year is it?!
think we replaying the 1920s right now all over the world progress is going backwards at a phenomenal rate
Conservatives should really be called something like Regressionists
Or just plain cunts and assholed
Nothing good in all of human history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
“God forbid we do something good for society!” - Conservatives
Dumb
lame!
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Now this is an interesting bot
why are people still so backwards about this? what’s the point? everyone uses caffeine and/or alcohol and that’s fine but weed is horrible and bad? just blatantly denying reality
In most places, there’s money in enforcement, and power in disenfranchisement.
I don’t know what Thailand-specific motives might be in play here, if any.
And tobacco.
I think the idea is that they can’t fight a war on those drugs since they’re already there, but they can still win against the others by keeping them out.
It helps when you have relatively tight borders and your neighbours agree.
I smoked weed in Thailand as a 15 year old in like 2006 lol. It’s always been there and always will be.
I’ve also smoked hash in Saudi Arabia. I have yet to find a single country in which I could not find cannabis in if around for more than a week or two. Literally no one has ever won the war on drugs or even come close.
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Bad Bot.
Check the post history. Its spamming this same response across many unrelated threads.
… but why? They could be spamming something political or whatever. But no, they feel so strongly that they need to spam bot about the formatting in lemmy?
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So is caffeine.
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Cannabis doesn’t cause schizophrenia. It merely brings out symptoms earlier than normal in individuals that already have schizophrenia but haven’t had a major episode yet.
Repeat after me: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation.
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Can you share some of that research with me? Anecdotally, I know plenty of non-schizophrenic stoners.
Of course, when we’re talking about heightened risks that spread out to entire population, you might not see any change in your local groups, if your local groups are lucky. Getting schizophrenia involves an amount of shitty luck every time, but that’s is true in varying quantities for pretty much every other disease as well.
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> be ronald mcdonald > claim marijuana causes schizophrenia > refuse to provide source > leaveUnfortunately, they never left.
You made a claim, and refuse to support it with evidence. Sounds like a troll or an idiot to me.
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Be honest, you have literally nothing better to do than spread misinformation, you’re already wasting your time.
That’s not our job in an argument tho. You make a claim, people asked you to show evidence - now it’s your turn to to your part of the debate and show what it is that made you so sure that this was true.
Cannabis doesn’t cause anyone to “develop” schizophrenia.
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That doesnt mean it’s dangerous to society at large, and I’d argue that authoritarism IS. Also, (illicit) heavy cannabis use saved my life and is the only thing that adaquately treats my depression and allows me to function like a normal human being. So reading this honestly makes me want to tell you to go play in traffic -The world is bleak-a-fucking-nough I hope you’re at least getting paid to post this crap
authoritarism is the #1 danger
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Would you say the same thing to someone who needs SSRIs to maintain stability?
no there isn’t
Yes and your chances are very very low… Lower than say getting hit by a car.
And that’s factoring the possible 30% increase in incident rate from those studies…
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Only if you force me to do it and watch 🤤
This astroturf smells like shit
Nah, it just supports general atrocities like child labour and slaves though.
Bruh, your account is decked out as a McDonald’s advertisement. Nothing you say will ever be respected.
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Joined today. Troll account.
So is alcohol
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Maybe that’s why all the gods died out?
Trololol
I love it when bots come in and act like they have a great gotcha saying.
Like sugar or heroine?
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Kinda what? That’s not a binary question. Is weed a dangerous drug like sugar, or a dangerous drug like heroine? What kind of dangerous drug is it? Ketamine?
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Is weed a dangerous drug like sugar, or a dangerous drug like heroine? What kind of dangerous drug is it? Ketamine?
a rarity in a region where many countries give long jail terms and even death sentences for people convicted of marijuana possession, consumption or trafficking.
Anything that can get you the death penalty is dangerous by proxy.
