Showing 51 - 60 of 71
A swinish proposal
News, Editorial, Published on 23/04/2018
» At a meeting earlier this month in Washington, the US government asked its Thai counterparts to do something they have never done, and should not do. In brief, the US delegation to bilateral trade talks asked Thailand to legalise a drug and put it in animal feed. The drug, ractopamine, is banned in 160 countries including Thailand. The back story to this disappointing US chicanery is that if Thailand legalises and allows Thai farmers to use ractopamine, Washington will then demand the end of the Thai ban on US pork.
Death penalty ineffective
News, Editorial, Published on 21/03/2018
» US President Donald Trump is exploring options including the use of capital punishment to battle a new and deadly epidemic of drug abuse. So many Americans have died while abusing the world's most powerful opioids that the outbreak has reduced average US life expectancy by two years. The trafficking of drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl and the like has resisted standard "war on drugs" enforcement, and the US government is floundering and grasping at promised solutions.
Marijuana high jinks
News, Editorial, Published on 24/01/2018
» The government is still unable to articulate a coherent policy on currently illicit drugs. While there obviously is some support inside the cabinet to liberalise laws, no rational programme has yet emerged. Senior ministers up to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha refuse to touch the subject. And the same situation holds within the Royal Thai Police. Police departments concerned support a new policy of liberalisation but at headquarters, the police chief still can't get past the failed war on drugs.
Law on marijuana should be eased
News, Editorial, Published on 17/12/2017
» In a long overdue move, the government this past week decided to relax the narcotics law and allow hemp to be grown as a cash crop in six provinces in northern Thailand. The decision to allow hemp in 15 districts of six designated provinces -- Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Nan, Tak, Phetchabun and Mae Hong Son -- is right but hardly enough. Hemp or ganjong, classified as a type 5 narcotic, will remain under control in the rest of the country.
Back to the war on drugs
News, Editorial, Published on 04/12/2017
» For a while there, it appeared that Thailand and the military regime were preparing to take new steps to update the worn and losing campaign against illicit drugs. Instead, the people in charge of reforming and modifying policies have largely doubled down on the old ones. The losing ways of the country's war on drugs will remain in place and dominate the amended and now patchwork Narcotics Control Bill.
Drug fight off the rails
News, Editorial, Published on 18/10/2017
» The government continues to press on with its failed war on drugs, when the country would be better served by a serious effort to reform this old programme. Last week, secretary-general of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board Sirinya Sitdhichai announced the agency was to assume yet another new power. He says he and ONCB enforcement agents can now hold parcel delivery firms responsible if they carry drugs.
Food exports in a pickle
News, Editorial, Published on 29/07/2017
» Nearly 30,000 tins of canned pineapple were removed from market shelves in Taiwan this week and sent back to Thailand after traces of saccharin, an artificial sweetener, were found in the product, local media reported.
Manas case all too rare
News, Editorial, Published on 21/07/2017
» The conviction of Lieutenant General Manas Kongpan and Co for human trafficking earlier this week, demonstrates a major step in efforts to combat serious crime involving modern-day slavery.
Pursuing a lost war
News, Editorial, Published on 26/06/2017
» Monday's annual event in Ayutthaya marks a great setback in a campaign to bring sanity to the 46-year-old "global war on drugs" instigated by ex-US president Richard Nixon. Officials will stage their usual torching of tonnes of drugs seized in raids, highway searches, street-corner arrests and home invasions. But for the first time in years they will be working under orders to step up the suppression. The prime minister "expects to see better results", meaning more arrests in the so-called war that that was lost years ago.
S44 won't help patents
News, Editorial, Published on 06/03/2017
» If further proof were needed after the Dhammakaya fiasco that the abuse of the interim charter's Section 44 is becoming excessive, last week's decree will suffice. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha signed the 138th edict to target intellectual property. The order aims to cut red tape and clear some 12,000 pending patents. While this will undoubtedly bring smiles in the US Trade Representative's office, the prime minister's staff should reconsider this hasty move that creates more problems than it solves.