OPINION

Facts, not fear

Re: "Thai senator's 'live executions' proposal panned", (BP, Jan 29).

Senator Angkhana Neelapaijit duly condemns, on the grounds of justice and human rights, the recent proposal by a fellow senator to bring in public executions for drug crimes.

However, Senator Amat Ayukhen is right that drugs are harmful, both to society and to users. The senator is also correct that decades of repeating the same proven failure have reliably resulted in a repetition of the failure to reduce drug harm to society and users. That solid record of failure is not, in fact, a good reason to keep repeating the same policy, let alone intensify such a proven failure. Sane, moral societies do not do that. Justice does matter. But reality, the set of relevant facts, also matters.

There are a range of drugs apart from alcohol in popular recreational use, such as ecstasy and cannabis through ya ba and heroin. These widely used drugs are not equally harmful to their users or society. Since just law requires that like acts be treated alike, drug policy needs to be evidence-based. In the case of drugs, the only justification for criminalising drug A whilst leaving drug B legal is that drug A is overall demonstrably more harmful to society and users than drug B. This cannot be based on personal observation, newspaper reports of horrors committed under the influence of ya ba, alcohol or whatever, nor is a gut feeling good enough: those are just euphemisms for uninformed prejudice.

Justice requires that the statistics for each drug's harms and benefits be set out in a table so that, line by line, the relative harms to society and users of each drug on a variety of relevant criteria.

Since alcohol is the most widely accepted and likely most widely used drug in society, it would seem sensible to make the overall harm number for that drug the standard. If a drug's evidence-based harm is equal to or below the number for alcohol, justice requires that the sale and use of that drug for adults be similarly legal; if the number is higher than that for alcohol, it may justly be criminalised. Otherwise, the law fails to treat like acts alike; it is unjust.

So far as I know, this has not been done for Thai society's drug use: the evidence-based statistical comparison does not seem to exist. That means that everyone held in a Thai prison on a drug charge is there unjustly.

It is worth noting that when those studies have been done for drug harms in other countries, alcohol has been found to be the most harmful drug overall when harm to users and society is taken into account. This is what the famous study led by Professor David Nutt found in 2010, as published in the highly respected medical journal The Lancet -- "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" (Nutt, King & Phillips, 2010, Nov 6). When the same evidence-based analysis was done on drug use in Australia, the findings were similar: alcohol was found to be the most harmful. This is reported in "The Australian drug harms ranking study" (Bonomo et al, 2019, The Journal of Psychopharmacology). Bonomo and her team also did a further analysis, taking into account the relatively high prevalence of alcohol use in Australian society, which left unaltered their overall conclusion that alcohol was the most harmful drug in popular recreational use.

If alcohol is the most harmful drug to Thai society and its users, then it can only be unjust to imprison the users or sellers of those currently criminal drugs if the alcohol companies' executives are not similarly treated by the law.

As it stands, only two groups clearly benefit from the decades of failed drug policy, not excluding Thaksin's murderous "war on drugs" that killed thousands to the shameful applause of the ignorance-driven, get-tough mob. Those two beneficiary groups of prevailing drug policy are the criminal gangs getting rich by supplying popularly demanded products and those employed in lucrative jobs at the Office of the Narcotics Control Board and related agencies, who, from understandable self-interest, favour the existing policy.

What are the objective, verifiable statistics that justify criminalising any drug by demonstrating it to be overall more harmful to society and users than alcohol is?

Scrutiny for all

Re: "Fan input", (PostBag, Jan 27), "Fair scrutiny needed", "Selective criticism in "Roosevelt revisited?" (PostBag, Jan 23) & "Trump: new 'golden age'", (BP, Jan 22).

John Kane's response to my letter, "Fair scrutiny needed", was certainly illuminating -- if only to highlight his unwavering devotion to partisan tunnel vision.

Apparently, comparing former President Trump's pardons to President Biden's is a "twisted defence". Allow me to apologise for daring to suggest that fairness should apply equally to all leaders, regardless of their political party. How silly of me to think that pardons of family members and administration officials under the pretext of a "witch hunt" might warrant the same scrutiny as pardons involving Jan 6 defendants. Clearly, double standards must be the hallmark of "real fairness" in John Kane's dictionary.

Kane seems to believe that one form of abuse of power is inherently more virtuous than another, depending on who's sitting in the Oval Office. By this logic, we should all just accept that some pardons are righteous and pure because they come from the "good guys". After all, why bother holding everyone accountable when selective outrage is so much easier?

If fairness is now a "twisted defence," then I'll gladly continue to twist. At least I can sleep at night knowing I'm consistent in my principles rather than bending them to fit a partisan narrative.

Paying the price

Re: "Thailand to lose $29 million from China's syrup import ban", (Business, Jan 24).

Thailand should rethink its attitude towards China. Recently, they refused Thai sugar products, costing Thai exporters $29 million (976 million baht). Yet there is a flood of cheap, low-quality products from China.

Now, fruit and veg are being dumped on the market; are they being tested for toxin levels? Next, the Chinese are "cooling" the property market out of safety concerns. Maybe that's good if it makes property more affordable for Thais. China has a grand expansion plan, which is always favourable to them. An example is in Laos, where the government is bankrupt now from borrowing for a fast rail project. Beware China!

Beyond buzzwords

Re: "Trump's band back already", (PostBag, Jan 26).

It is unfortunate for both readers and for the pseudonymous Felix Qui that he was only able to repeat talking points from the benighted Harris campaign yet again in this column. He asserts these as if they were an address to policy, which they obviously are not. Here are some examples of Trump's diplomacy and policy by way of executive order (legislation will follow in due course):

Strong advocacy of Opec lowering oil prices to help end the Ukrainian war, eliminating government censorship, ending the weaponisation of law enforcement, eliminating DEI policies from the government and military, facilitating the ceasefire in the Middle East, ending the Green New Deal, withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, cancelling the electric car mandate, designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, releasing classified documents on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, prohibiting transgender women from participating in women's sports, reinstating government recognition of only two genders, cancelling offshore wind leases, and the profoundly moral decision to withdraw from the WHO. More examples of policy and diplomacy include a landmark speech delivered to the WEF and scheduling a meeting with Vladimir Putin intended to end the war with Ukraine.

One welcomes informed analysis of these matters, but invoking Jesus and lawfare-enabled lower court decisions that will certainly be overturned on appeal does not constitute rational debate, only commonplace uninformed bias.

Anyone can believe the WHO is a sacred institution, the UN climate agenda is a planetary emergency, a man who imagines he can become pregnant must be right because his imagining is the determining factor, and rivers, mountains and trees are actually people (yes, folks this is now law in liberal parts of Canada and elsewhere), but where is the sanity or wisdom in doing that? People are free to believe what they want, but in governance, reason and action responsible for causing the least harm while providing the most benefit for all must prevail.

Hidden hell

Re: "Thailand 'must prove it merits Human Rights Council seat'", (BP, Jan 20).

Regarding the human rights issue and the state prison system, Thailand has much to improve. Philippine prisons allow photos inside. Thai prisons don't, and there are good reasons why: Thai prisons are among the worst in Asia; no mattresses and hyper crowded. I went into a Thai prison on May 8, 2018. The charge (bogus and unproven): pandering. It was a sting operation orchestrated by three Christian NGO farang who hired 25 DSI agents to conduct a sting operation.

The day I was locked up, DSI agents went to my house, broke in and stole 60,000 baht. I never got that money back, nor my wallet or computer. I was sentenced to one year but was locked up for 400 days and nights. The reason for the added 34 days: The King's coronation was at the one-year mark of my sentence, so the prison authorities couldn't function.

Three fellow inmates stood out as being horribly abused by Thai authorities: #1. a 17-year-old kid who was in for 17 years for getting caught with a half-speed pill in his pants pocket. #2. A 64-year-old man was given 28 years for having a speed pill in a shirt pocket. #3. A Malaysian man whose thighs were as thick as my arms. He was in for life, perhaps for having one or two pills. No prisoners are allowed phone calls, and perhaps 1% have lawyers. Over 90% are hill tribers, and over 90% are in for speed, a non-addictive drug which is less harmful than alcohol. The Malaysian will never get out. He's as black as the ace of spades, which partially explains why he's expendable in the eyes of Thai justice.