Former Deputy PM Anutin Charnvirakul is credited with helming the effort towards decriminalization, but his party (the Bhumjaithai) isn't in power anymore; the current government of Thailand is led by the Pheu Thai party, which has an unfavorable position on ganja. The Pheu Thai have expressed desire to recriminalize cannabis before, but they were locked into a coalition government with the Bhumjaithai. Bhumjaithai recently withdrew from that coalition following political scandal which, at time of writing, has people taking to the streets demanding the resignation of PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra. With the Bhumjaithai out of the coalition, Pheu Thai is free to pursue recriminalization of cannabis.

There has certainly been some classic fearmongering going on in Thailand to support this move. Just about every article I've read on this issue cites concerns about ganja as a gateway drug, being sold illegally to children, inducing psychosis, and increasing crime. Just how widespread are these concerns among the Thai public? How much of the population supports recriminalization? According to Bloomberg:

At least 80% of the 111,201 respondents supported a draft plan to once again label marijuana as a “category five” [narcotic]

This immediately gave me pause. That's a large proportion of a huge sample size, and it was supposedly collected over just two weeks. Either Thailand has some stellar data collection methods, or something fishy is going on. Can I read the report? How was this data collected? Well...it seems it just came from the Health Minister. Even local Thai sources are unable to point to any published report of this data, it's all "according to Somsak Thepsutin." Thesputin has changed parties several times in his 30+ year political career, but he has been a member of Pheu Thai since 2023. It is in his party's interest to depict recriminalization as the democratic option that 4 out of 5 citizens support. Somsak is embroiled in controversy of his own after he intervened in a medical council disciplinary decision, and he has amplified misleading statistics about a progressive link from ganja to heroin. I don't trust this guy to truthfully represent the opinion of the Thai population.

I am disappointed in Bloomberg and Time for reporting this figure uncritically. It is imperative for journalists to keenly examine their sources and be able to discern between reliable and unreliable statistics when issues of public opinion are involved. I can only guess that Sangwongwanich and de Guzman (the authors of the Bloomberg and Time pieces, respectively) are treating a government as an inherently reliable source, which is an ameteur approach that simply does not pass the smell test for me. I would hope that these publications would be more critical when handling the US government's recent wave of misinformation about COVID-19, or the NHS' willful ignorance on gender transition.

This poor reporting leaves us with a good critical thinking exercise, but no clear picture of Thai opinion of cannabis. I would really like to know more about how decriminalization has unfolded in Thailand since 2022, and what the real opinions are like. If you know where to find better data or reporting on this topic, drop it in my guestbook. ★