Solidarity first
Re: "Asean regains footing despite setbacks", (Opinion, Nov 21).
In the light of Asean's recent successes, as well as in the face of its persistent internal divergences, it is imperative to ask how the grouping sustain its "centrality" when external powers increasingly shape final results through bilateral pressure and transactional diplomacy.
Reality shows that without effective solidarity of Asean's members, the centrality of this regional institution risks remaining just aspirational.
Ioan Voicu
Fossil fuel gabfest
Re: "Fossil fuel showdown looms on UN climate summit's final day", (World, Nov 21).
A fire broke out at the climate conference in Brazil.
A conference for 50,000 people who had travelled by private jet to Brazil to protect the environment and save the world.
To comfortably reach the conference centre from the plane, 100,000 trees in the endangered Amazon rainforest were cut down to create a four-lane highway.
The participants stayed in two luxury cruise ships fuelled by crude oil because they wanted air conditioning.
While these participants were discussing the need for the rest of humanity to abandon fossil fuels, their conference, too, was fuelled by fossil fuels, as the fire revealed.
Photos show the participants standing outside among diesel generators and trucks fuelled by diesel.
No unreliable energy by wind or solar panels for the climate activists.
Once again, as this episode shows, these hypocrites demonstrate that protecting the climate and environment is irrelevant to them.
Only other people should live by their rules and, in the future, live in poverty on unreliable wind and solar energy.
Anna Aarts
Through the haze
Re: 'Vapes laced with anaesthetic on the rise,' (BP, Nov 22).
As an American citizen, I was disheartened but hardly surprised to read that powerful psychotropic substances are showing up in e-cigarettes; thus implying that "pot" [an older American slang term for weed] has now graduated to "Pot K" and may be a key actor in "Zombie Cigarettes".
Alas, this is not a new game and was probably baked in the cake from the day Thailand started liberalising its policies on another narcotic: weed.
In the United States, our most recent drug crisis began principally involving hospital drugs, with oxycodone arguably graduating as the Holy Grail in the early 2000s to satisfy recreational users' desire.
Unfortunately, the drug cartels quickly realised that what had been illegal [but usually was 100% oxycodone] would become far more addictive if they tossed in fentanyl; which until then had been a legitimate hospital pain medication which is mainly used inside hospitals or at home by cancer and end-of-life patients.
That led to a massive street drug crisis in the USA because recreational users of the less powerful oxycodone now really want the more powerful & far more overdose-capable fentanyl which cartels quietly got users hooked on, and which many American recreational users never originally intended to purchase.
It was my belief from the day when marijuana was legalised in Thailand that a more complicated narcotic-drug/synthetic-drug crisis would ensue involving recreational users who now have a routine blind date with an increasingly unknown devil, and the only thing for certain is that more needless fatalities of recreational users will be the foreseeable result.
Jason A Jellison
