Koh Samet Says No More Plastic Bags or Styrofoam on Island

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31 October 2018, 13:01

A file photo of tourists arriving on Koh Samet.

RAYONG — The top parks official on Koh Samet said Wednesday that plastic bags and styrofoam will no longer be welcome there as of tomorrow.

In a bid to reduce the amount of plastic waste, the chief of the Khao Laem Ya–Mu Ko Samet National Park said tote bags have been distributed to all island residents, and those found using plastic bags and styrofoam containers will face fines. Tourists are unlikely to be penalized, for now.

“Tomorrow we will organize an event calling for people to stop using styrofoam and plastic bags,” Prayoon Pongpan said today. “We want to announce that Koh Samet will no longer be using plastic bags.”

He said visitors won’t be allowed to bring them onto the island, which is national park land. He said staff members at the pier would check if people have plastic bags, an enforcement scheme difficult to imagine in practice.

A campaign video posted online by the park Monday said that the more than 1,500 tourists who visit the island each use about eight plastic bags, making for 12,000 bags dumped every day on the environmentally sensitive island.

It was announced in June that all national parks across country are banning plastic and styrofoam containers, but enforcement appears lacking.

For Samet, shop owners were told to stop distributing plastic bags or risk fines of 1,500 baht, Prayoon said. Residents will first be warned, and repeat offenders face fines between 500 baht and 1,500 baht.

He said tourists won’t be fined just yet if found bringing a plastic bag onto the island, adding that free tote bags will be available for their use.

Belgian Groove Gurus ‘2ManyDjs’ to Mix Things Up in Bangkok

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

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31 October 2018, 12:34

A promotional poster of an upcoming 2Manydjs gig in Bangkok

BANGKOK — A frontrunning act in Europe’s electronic scene and the ‘00s remix movement are heading to Bangkok late November.

Known under the moniker Soulwax, Belgian brothers David Dewaele and Stephen Dewaele are coming to Bangkok to perform as 2ManyDJs.

The left-of-center progressive duo has been active since mid-1990s. They play and mix everything from prog-rock and R&B to hip-hop and techno (one of their bootleg mashups,“Smell Like Teen Booty,” mixes Nirvana and Destiny’s Child).

Their album “As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2” was highly acclaimed upon its release in 2002 and was named the best popular music album of the year by The New York Times.

For their Bangkok gig, 2ManyDjs will be supported by local veteran DJ Knatz. The concert takes place Nov. 24 at Live Arena. The renovated music venue, at same location of the former Live RCA, can be found in the RCA area just a few kilometers from MRT Phetchaburi.

Tickets are 690 baht and available online.

Hate Rejection? ‘My Taxi’ to Guarantee Trips – For a Premium

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

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31 October 2018, 12:31

Police put stickers on a taxi in Bangkok on July 26, 2017, during a campaign to educate cab drivers on laws and etiquettes.

BANGKOK — If you, like so many other Bangkokians, are fed up with taxi drivers refusing your fare, a novel cab service has a pitch to make.

For a fixed monthly price – starting at 6,500 baht – its cabbies would always pick you up and take you to your destination. The founder of the firm, called My Taxi, said he hopes the service would not only end passengers’ complaints, but also offer taxi drivers steady jobs with decent pay.

“Passengers often can’t find cabs when they need them, but we have them for those who buy our service,” Woraphol Kaemkhuntod said in an interview. “Whichever driver is nearest to the customer, he can get it. We will use a GPS pin system.”

Though prices have yet to be announced and My Taxi is still in the planning stages, Woraphol outlined some basics. The cheapest package, at 6,500 baht a month, comes with three daily trips – about 70 baht per ride. There’s also a more expensive monthly fare of 12,000 baht for “long-distance trips” across the metropolis, such as from “Rama II Road to Pathum Thani,” Woraphol said.

Here’s the catch: Trips must be made between 6am and 6pm. Outside those hours, drivers will still pick passengers up but on metered fares.

“We set a target of 2,000 drivers,” said Woraphol, who also heads a taxi association. “The way I see the future is, when all the skytrain lines are completed, taxi drivers will find it harder to make money. So I set up this company as a way for them to earn money.”

But thousands of Bangkokians already sidestep the problem of non-compliant taxis by booking their rides through GrabCar and GrabTaxi. Indonesian ride-booking application Go Jek is also reportedly coming to Thailand soon.

Despite these entrenched competitors who do not require customers to pre-book rides for an entire month, Woraphol said he’s confident the idea will take off.

“It’s business,” he said. “It’s about competition and whose service is better.”

Woraphol added that My Taxi was already registered with the authorities, and its “official opening” would be announced at a later time.

Airport Taxis Back Down From Strike Threat

Govt Hopes New Apps Will Mean Better, Safer Bangkok Taxis

Synagogue Extremist Was Obsessed With Jewish Refugee Agency

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 11:49

From left, President Donald Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, and Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, puts down a stone from the White House on Tuesday at a memorial for those killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press

Just moments before the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 people dead, the suspect is believed to have posted a final social media rant against a Jewish refugee settlement agency most people had never heard of, but which has increasingly become the target of right-wing rage and conspiracy theories.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” Robert Gregory Bowers wrote on the platform Gab early Saturday. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The group, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, was founded in 1881 in a Manhattan storefront to assist Jews persecuted in Russia and Eastern Europe. HIAS is now among nine groups that contract with the State Department to help refugees settle in the United States, and it has recently clashed with the Trump administration over policies that have throttled the flow of such newcomers.

Leaders of HIAS and the group’s Pittsburgh affiliate vowed to continue their work.

“We were the perfect target for this murderer, because we’re Jewish and we help refugees. So he gets to check off the two hate boxes,” Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, told a news conference Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

Hetfield said HIAS is getting flooded with donations, with more coming in from non-Jews around the world than Jews for the first time in the organization’s history.

Analysts who follow the extreme right say the fixation some extremists have with HIAS appears to be fueled by a mix of anti-Semitism and the recent caustic rhetoric about an immigrant caravan trudging slowly toward the United States.

Specifically, they believe Bowers ascribed to the “white genocide” conspiracy, which holds that Jews are prominent among the forces seeking to destroy the “white race” by bringing in non-white people. The Gab.com account believed to be Bowers’ includes several recent postings or re-postings critical of HIAS.

Based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Silver Spring, HIAS has an annual operating budget of USD$42 million and receives about half of its money from the federal government. It has resettled refugees of different faiths from Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran and elsewhere. Among the thousands of people it has aided are Google co-founder Sergey Brin and singer Regina Spektor.

As the Trump administration restricted the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., HIAS and its local affiliates went from resettling 4,191 refugees in 2016 to 1,632 for the fiscal year that just ended.

Though HIAS strongly supports the rights of asylum seekers to a fair hearing, it has no connection to the immigrant caravan, said spokesman Bill Swersey.

“We’re the people who go to the airport, that bring the refugees home, that make sure there’s food in the fridge, make sure their kids know where the school is,” said Melanie Nezer, HIAS’s senior vice president for public affairs.

But right-wing extremists see HIAS in a more sinister light.

Heidi Beirich, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said HIAS’s name comes up on white-supremacist message boards whenever posters become angry about refugees or immigrants. She noted that other resettlement agencies, such as those associated with Christian religions, have not raised the same sort of ire.

It happened toward the end of the Obama administration during the debate over Syrian refugees. Attention ratcheted up recently as President Donald Trump and others started drawing attention to the migrant caravan slowly making its way through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

Trump intensified his warnings about the caravan Monday, tweeting, “This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” as the Pentagon announced plans to deploy 5,200 troops to the Southwest border.

“White supremacists are ginned up right now,” Beirich said. “Their words are being echoed back to them by high-profile public figures.”

HIAS also has been public in its opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. It sued the administration in 2017 over the executive order halting refugee resettlement. In August, HIAS and the ADL led a delegation of national Jewish organizations to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said the high-profile visit this summer could have drawn the attention of right-wing extremists.

As Bowers appeared in federal court in a wheelchair Monday, HIAS-affiliated offices across the country increased security.

Nezer said the group is still processing the tragedy.

“I think we need to redouble our efforts to stand up for these values and not cower and hide,” she said, “because to me that would be the most dangerous response.”

Story: Michael Hill

Kepler Telescope Dead After Finding Thousands of Worlds

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 11:33

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary.

Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday.

Already well past its expected lifetime, the 9 1/2-year-old Kepler had been running low on fuel for months. Its ability to point at distant stars and identify possible alien worlds worsened dramatically at the beginning of October, but flight controllers still managed to retrieve its latest observations. The telescope has now gone silent, its fuel tank empty.

“Kepler opened the gate for mankind’s exploration of the cosmos,” said retired NASA scientist William Borucki, who led the original Kepler science team.

Kepler discovered 2,681 planets outside our solar system and even more potential candidates. It showed us rocky worlds the size of Earth that, like Earth, might harbor life. It also unveiled incredible super Earths: planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

NASA’s astrophysics director Paul Hertz estimated that anywhere from two to a dozen of the planets discovered by Kepler are rocky and Earth-sized in the so-called Goldilocks zone. But Kepler’s overall planet census showed that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky could have planets like ours in the habitable zone for life, he said.

The USD$700 million mission even helped to uncover last year a solar system with eight planets, just like ours.

“It has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos,” Hertz said. “Now we know because of the Kepler Space Telescope and its science mission that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy.”

Almost lost in 2013 because of equipment failure, Kepler was salvaged by engineers and kept peering into the cosmos, thick with stars and galaxies, ever on the lookout for dips in in the brightness of stars that could indicate an orbiting planet.

“It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,” said Borucki said.

The resurrected mission became known as K2 and yielded 350 confirmed exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, on top of what the telescope had already uncovered since its March 7, 2009, launch from Cape Canaveral.

In all, close to 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed over the past two decades, two-thirds of them thanks to Kepler.

Kepler focused on stars thousands of light-years away and, according to NASA, showed that statistically there’s at least one planet around every star in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Borucki, who dreamed up the mission decades ago, said one of his favorite discoveries was Kepler 22b, a water planet bigger than Earth but where it is not too warm and not too cold – the type “that could lead to life.”

A successor to Kepler launched in April, NASA’s Tess spacecraft, has its sights on stars closer to home. It’s already identified some possible planets.

Tess project scientist Padi Boyd called Kepler’s mission “stunningly successful.”

Kepler showed us that “we live in a galaxy that’s teeming with planets, and we’re ready to take the next step to explore those planets,” she said.

Another longtime spacecraft chasing strange worlds in our own solar system, meanwhile, is also close to death.

NASA’s 11-year-old Dawn spacecraft is pretty much out of fuel after orbiting the asteroid Vesta as well as the dwarf planet Ceres. It remains in orbit around Ceres, which, like Vesta, is in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Two of NASA’s older telescopes have been hit with equipment trouble recently, but have recovered. The 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope resumed science observations last weekend, following a three-week shutdown. The 19-year-old Chandra X-ray Telescope’s pointing system also ran into trouble briefly in October. Both cases involved critical gyroscopes, needed to point the telescopes.

Hertz said all the spacecraft problems were “completely independent” and coincidental in timing.

Now 94 million miles from Earth, Kepler should remain in a safe, stable orbit around the sun. Flight controllers will disable the spacecraft’s transmitters, before bidding a final “good night.”

Story: Marcia Dunn

Leicester to Return to Action Saturday After Death of Owner

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 11:17

Buddhist Monks pay their respects at Leicester City soccer club Tuesday Oct. 30, 2018, after Leicester Chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, seen in poster, died along with four other people Saturday evening in a helicopter crash outside King Power Stadium. Photo: Mike Egerton / Associated Press

Leicester’s grieving players will take to the field for the first time since the death of the club’s owner in a helicopter crash when they visit Cardiff for a Premier League game on Saturday.

The two teams said Tuesday the match will go ahead as planned in the Welsh capital, with a minute’s silence before kickoff and players wearing black armbands as a mark of respect for Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four other people who were killed in the tragedy.

Leicester’s players have been visibly affected by the incident and have spent Monday and Tuesday attending commemorative events to pay tribute to Vichai, the club’s popular Thai owner whose helicopter spiraled out of control as it left the King Power Stadium following a Premier League game against West Ham on Saturday.

“We will be offering our support to Leicester City in any way necessary in respect of this weekend’s fixture,” Cardiff chief executive Ken Choo said.

Leicester’s English League Cup match against Southampton, scheduled for Tuesday, had been canceled, while games involving the club’s women’s team were also called off in wake of the crash.

Leicester opened a book of condolence inside a specially erected marquee in memory of Vichai on Tuesday, as more supporters and people from the wider community arrived at the stadium to pay their respects.

Leicester striker Jamie Vardy and his wife, Rebekah, wept as they placed a wreath among an ever-growing shrine to Vichai that includes flowers, scarves and soccer jerseys. Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, who was present at the scene of the crash on Saturday, was in tears as floral tributes were laid inside and outside the King Power Stadium on Monday.

Former Leicester manager Nigel Pearson, who guided the team away from relegation trouble the season before it won the Premier League in improbable fashion in 2016, said Vichai’s “quiet yet authoritative aura, presence and personality have had an immeasurable influence on English football.”

“A manager could not have wished for a better boss,” Pearson wrote in a personal letter published on the website of Belgian team OH Leuven, where he has been coach since last year.

Story: Denise Lavoie, Alanna Durkin Richer

Possible Seabed Position of Crashed Lion Air Jet Located

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 10:52

Rescuers Tuesday carry a body bag containing the remains of victims retrieved from the waters where Lion Air flight JT 610 is believed to have crashed at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Binsar Bakara / Associated Press

JAKARTA — A massive search effort has identified the possible seabed location of the crashed Lion Air jet, Indonesia’s military chief said Wednesday, as experts carried out the grim task of identifying dozens of body parts recovered from a 15 nautical mile search area.

The 2-month-old Boeing plane plunged into the Java Sea on Monday just minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

“Based on the presentation of the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, the coordinates of the suspected body of the aircraft have been found. We will send a team there to confirm,” said armed forces chief Hadi Tjahjanto.

The disaster has reignited concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry, which was recently removed from European Union and U.S. blacklists, and also raised doubts about the safety of Boeing’s new generation 737 MAX 8 plane.

Boeing Co. experts are expected to arrive Indonesia on Wednesday and Lion Air has said an “intense” internal investigation is underway in addition to the probe by safety regulators.

Locating the fuselage will bring the search effort closer to finding the airplane’s flight recorders, which are crucial to the accident investigation.

Data from flight-tracking sites show the plane had erratic speed and altitude in the early minutes of a flight on Sunday and on its fatal flight Monday. Safety experts caution, however, that the data must be checked for accuracy against the plane’s “black boxes,” which officials are confident will be recovered.

Passengers on the Sunday flight from Bali to Jakarta have recounted problems that including a long-delayed takeoff for an engine check and terrifying descents in the first 10 minutes in the air.

Officials said the non-stop search effort has sent 48 body bags containing human remains to police identification experts.

Anguished family members have been providing samples for DNA tests and police say results are expected within 4-8 days.

Daniel Putut, a Lion Air managing director, said the airline and Boeing will meet Wednesday afternoon.

“Of course there are lots of things we will ask them, we all have question marks here, why? What’s the matter with this new plane,” he said.

Indonesia’s Transport Ministry has ordered all Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes operated by Lion Air and national carrier Garuda to be inspected.

Boeing declined to comment about potential inspections globally.

The aircraft manufacturer told airlines in a bulletin, “Boeing has no recommended operator action at this time,” according to two people familiar with the matter.

Story: Niniek Karmini, Stephen Wright

Louis Cha, Hong Kong Martial Arts Novelist, Dies at 94

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 10:46

In this 2007 photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Louis Cha smiles during a speech at Peking University in Beijing. Photo: Luo Xiaoguang / Xinhua via AP

HONG KONG — Louis Cha, a Hong Kong journalist and best-selling Chinese martial arts novelist, has died at age 94 after a long illness.

The Hong Kong newspaper founded by Cha, Ming Pao Daily News, said he passed away Tuesday at a Hong Kong hospital.

Cha’s novels about ancient Chinese swordsmen have sold millions and are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world. They inspired film adaptations, TV and radio dramas, comic books and videogames, and greatly influenced Hong Kong popular culture.

They include “The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Saber,” about a kindhearted hero who is indecisive but uses his kung fu skills to unify a divided gang and is elected its leader, and “The Eagle-Shooting Heroes,” about a tragic hero who sacrifices his life in guarding the country against invading Mongolians.

Cha was born in 1924 in Hangzhou in mainland China and graduated from the Law School of Suzhou in 1948, the South China Morning Post said. He had planned to become a diplomat, but began work as a journalist in 1947 to support his studies. The communist revolution in 1949 closed off his opportunities to enter diplomacy.

Cha’s first novel, “The Book and the Sword,” was published in 1955 and became an instant hit. He went on to write 14 martial arts novels, often under the pen name Jin Yong.

TWG Tea Pays Tribute to the Month of Earl Grey with Earl Grey Afternoon Tea Set (Sponsored)

By

Khaosod English

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31 October 2018, 10:40

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Honouring the marvellous black tea blended with the finest TWG Tea bergamot, delight in a range of tea-infused savouries set to impress even the most discerning epicureans. Savour every mouthful of the delicious Pulled Lamb Tartlet with couscous in Smoky Earl Grey infused gravy, accompanied by herb mashed potato and pink peppercorn or the Potato Confit and Avocado Salad in French Earl Grey infused broth, stuffed with Turkey ham, avocado salad, crushed cashew nuts and egg.

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Mouth-watering canapés to entice seafood enthusiasts include Smoked Earl Grey Salmon infused with Earl Grey Gentleman served on melba toast, topped with ikura; Baked Blue Mussel with sautéed spinach and ham infused with Russian Earl Grey Tea, topped with creamy hollandaise sauce; and Crab and Avocado Ceviche infused with Earl Grey Buddha Tea, accompanied by a purple potato crisp. 2PACX 1vSwys7 XnqKOQzuluuQoVNljAw5taW0ObpUdXifqVHdsmuILyoCBJ4mP3w5neHak1 Kna Z GGk 8kK&rev=1&h=148&w=381&ac=1

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Indulge in a variety of tea-infused desserts, featuring French Earl Grey Canelé; Earl Grey d’Amour Mont Blanc, an Earl Grey d’Amour infused sweet potato, accompanied by meringue and black currant ganache; Earl Grey Buddha Pavlova, a meringue with Earl Grey Buddha infused chantilly; and Smoky Earl Grey Chocolate Bonbon, a dark chocolate filled with Smoky Earl Grey infused caramel.

End your gastronomic journey on a high note with Breakfast Earl Grey Panna Cotta, featuring a butterfly pea jelly infused with Breakfast Earl Grey and vanilla panna cotta topped with fresh blueberries and Earl Grey Buddha infused chantilly – a perfect wrap-up to this elegant afternoon tea experience.

The Earl Grey Afternoon Tea Set is available at all TWG Tea Salons & Boutiques in Bangkok from 1 to 30 November 2018, priced at 850 Baht per set. For more information, please contact us at 0-2259-9510.

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About TWG Tea

TWG Tea, the finest luxury tea brand in the world, was established in Singapore and celebrates the year 1837 when the island became a trading post for teas, spices and fine epicurean products. TWG Tea, which stands for The Wellbeing Group, was founded by Taha Bouqdib, Maranda Barnes and Rith Aum-Stievenard in 2008 as a luxury concept that incorporates unique and original retail outlets, exquisite tea rooms and an international distribution network to professionals. Committed to offering teas directly from source gardens, TWG Tea’s collection is the largest in the world, with fine harvests from every tea producing country and exclusive hand crafted tea blends. Internationally recognised as a true innovator with the creation of new varieties of tea every season in collaboration with the world’s most renowned estates, TWG Tea also offers exquisite signature modern tea accessories and delicate tea-infused sweets and savouries.

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TWG Teas are available in Singapore, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kuwait, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Vietnam. European online orders can be made at www.Harrods.com; online orders within the USA can be made at www.DeanDeluca.com; Canadian orders may be made online at www.VansingDG.com; worldwide online orders can be made directly from the TWG Tea e-Boutique and m-Boutique at TWGTea.com.

Hard Final Push on Medical Weed Pledged by Officials

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

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31 October 2018, 09:26

BANGKOK — Less pain for cancer patients. Fewer seizures in young children. An economic boom for farmers. A more humane society.

These are some of the supposed benefits Thailand would gain if marijuana could be used for medical research and treatment, according to experts and activists who made impassioned pleas to lawmakers at a public hearing Tuesday at Parliament. The session was convened to explore what impacts would follow if cannabis were to be legalized.

One neurologist said he could have used cannabis to treat patients with chronic pain instead of the morphine which ravaged their health.

“Why do we have to wait for their pain to escalate until patients need morphine and develop an addiction to it?” Thiravat Hemachudha, who also teaches at Chulalongkorn University, told the lawmakers. “I’m tired of looking after my patients only to see them fail to recover.”

Read: February Elections Jeopardize Rollout of Thai Medical Weed

Another advocate, from the Medical Council of Thailand, implored lawmakers to stop dithering and speed up the legalization process for the sake of the country.

“We can turn Thailand into a medical hub of cannabis treatment. Think of the new employment opportunities and investment from overseas,” Oraphan Methadilokul said. “If you hesitate in your duty, you will be at fault.”

Thiravat and Oraphan were among physicians, drug enforcement agents, pharmacists, police officers and cannabis activists invited to brief junta-appointed lawmakers today following a proposal from some politicians to “fast-track” legalization of medical marijuana.

The audience even included a Thai woman who lives in California and identified herself as a vendor of cannabis medicine in the states.

“I want to sell it to Thai people. I can only sell to the Americans right now,” Gamhom Nalangchang said.

“It’s also not true that marijuana hinders sexual prowess,” she added, to the laughter in the room. “I can confirm it myself!”

To Beat the Ballots

At the beginning of the four-hour hearing, the National Legislative Assembly member who proposed a fast-track amendment that would be less ambitious in scope, said he hoped the parliament can pass the new law by New Year’s Day.

“It could be a New Year present to the Thai people,” Somchai Sawaengkarn said.

The session was part of a years-long effort by the current military regime to roll back the country’s draconian drug laws. The proposed overhauls include less severe penalties, more focus on rehabilitation and legalizing some substances – namely marijuana and kratom plants.

That it’s a priority to the government was clear from the moment the interim parliament chairman himself took the seat at the table’s end and opened the session with a supporting message.

“Both domestic and foreign research indicates that cannabis has qualities that can treat many diseases,” Pornpetch Wichitcholchai said. “Some [lawmakers] believe we can unlock the laws on cannabis. I think we can do it.”

But the ambitious project has fizzled. Of 180 sections of the new drug bill, lawmakers have only reviewed seven, NLA member Jate Sirathranont said.

With the new election – slated for Feb. 24 – looming, lawmakers realized there isn’t enough time to pass the entire bill, Jate said. So the reformers are now hurrying to salvage what they started by proposing a separate bill that only focuses on medical cannabis.

“If we don’t do it, the matter will be dropped, and we will have to wait for the new government to pick it up,” Jate said. “We will lose so many opportunities.”

Somchai and Jate had hoped junta chairman Prayuth Chan-ocha would invoke Section 44, a constitutional clause that grants him unlimited power, and enact the new bill into law. Prayuth demurred; now they must get there through normal parliamentary procedure.

Questions Unanswered

Proponents of the amendment are required by law to conduct public hearings to air the law’s positive and negative impacts, and how to best enforce the new policy.

Citing an online poll organized by the parliament, Somchai said an overwhelming majority of Thais are in favor of legalizing cannabis for medical use – of the 16,431 people surveyed, 16,288 said they agreed.

But that public endorsement doesn’t preclude deliberative vetting by experts, who voiced their cautious concerns at today’s hearing.

“Sometimes social media makes cannabis sound like a magical elixir for all diseases,” Jate, a physician by trade, told the panel.

For example, there’s no evidence cannabis cures cancer, a popular claim made by weed activists, the lawmaker said.

While Thiravat, the Chulalongkorn physician, touted cannabis as a cure for severe seizures in children and people with multiple sclerosis, he noted that claims of marijuana healing Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases are unproven.

Medical Council member Oraphan also warned that legalizing medical cannabis could allow minors to access it and damage their development.

“There are negative sides to this too, especially brain damage among young children,” Oraphan said, citing a US-based pediatric journal.

‘Please Don’t Arrest Me’

What was perhaps most surprising at the hearing was a rare display of rationale and sincere debate of a health issue in a country where moralism and fear-mongering usually trump science.

A wide range of topics were discussed frankly – to the point of bureaucratic mundanity. Which agency should oversee the regulations? The Office of Narcotics Control Board, the Ministry of Public Health or the Food and Drug Administration?

What kinds of cannabinoids, a non-psychotropic extract that doesn’t get one high, should be unlocked? How many farmers should be allowed to grow cannabis and in which provinces?

And, as whenever weed is discussed, there was even humor. The presence of stern-faced officials from the anti-narcotics agency – Thailand’s equivalent of the US’s DEA – offered a recurring theme, like a late-night comedy skit. A former senator said he recently checked out cannabis oil in Australia, before adding in a hurry that he didn’t buy any.

“Please don’t arrest me, okay?” Jarupong Jeenapan said, drawing laughter.

Vicha Mahakun, a former anti-graft commissioner affiliated with conservative factions, also confided to “being familiar” with marijuana since a young age.

“I lived on the Thonburi side. Many houses grew it in their backyard,” said Vicha, who’s serving as a lawmaker. “In fact, I think the parliament should serve us marijuana noodles today so we know what it does.”

“I can’t. The ONCB is here,” his colleague Somchai said matter of factly.

New Era

It’s a dramatic departure from the years of drug wars waged by populist prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in the early 2000s, during which thousands were murdered in government-sanctioned “extrajudicial killings.”

“If you love your king and care for your children, unite against drugs,” was a slogan adopted by the Thaksin administration.

Several officials said today they changed their minds after overseas visits and seeing country after country end their wars on cannabis. For instance, Vicha said he was briefed by UN officials recently about the global narcotics situation. He was told that cocaine, opioids and methamphetamines were among the top dangers to look out for.

“There was no mention of marijuana at all,” Vicha said.

Medical cannabis advocate Saichol Sorathat pleaded with any lawmaker who has lost a loved one to cancer under immense pain to look back on their own experience.

“Not every cancer patient gets morphine around the clock. They were left to suffer in pain. Some patients even told their doctors, ‘If the pain was as bad as last night, I would rather be given a fatal shot,” Saichol said. “Some of us saw our friends suffer like this. Why do we let them suffer?”

Somchai said all opinions voiced today will be included in the parliament’s deliberation when the proposal is formally submitted. He said the junta chairman has communicated “informally” to him that he’s closely following the matter.

“He has asked us to proceed with this issue without creating possible legal violations,” Somchai said.

To Beat the Ballots

Questions Unanswered

‘Please Don’t Arrest Me’

New Era

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