Gentlemen, how do we feel about governmental drug control policies in Thailand and elsewhere?
Are they good ideas, bad ideas or just quagmires?
In the not so distant past, Thailand employed death squads to aggressively combat "the scourge", and even though Wikipedia suggests a modicum of success noted in terms of stemming the tide of drug use in schools... as a policy it was abandoned. Like a turd in the puchbowl, it was whisked away.
In the Philippines, Duterte's drug sniffing death squads have popular support among inhabitants of the PHL. But, once carnage reaches a tipping point, people will hopefully sour on this approach. IMHO, Duterte is a turd in the punchbowl...and should be whisked away.
In Indonesia, Jokowi sees aspects of Duterte's no holds barred approach he likes, and has recently implemented a shoot to kill policy for suspected drug traffickers bold enought to resist arrest. Will he go full bore death squad? Does he have turd potential?
In America, we've got a "drug war" started under the Nixon administration, that gave rise to the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA is a huge turd extruded upon the American public via the orifice of Uncle Sam, and has managed to squander 50.6 Billion USD from 1972 to 2014. DEA's only positive metric, is a yearly need for larger amounts of funding. Whisk away... couldn't this obscene amount of money be used more productively?
The International Drug Policy Consortium published an article titled " Thailand amends drug law to reduce penalties and ensure more proportionate sentancing"...where they describe changes to the law enacted in January 2017, motivated primarily by the need of the government to curb the increasing Thai prison population.
Is this the first baby step by the Thai government to a more rational drug control policy? Or will it continue ineffective drug control policies, while drug cartels get wealthier?
PS: yes...know I screwed the pooch on the title. Should read "Like a turd in the punchbowl" Found no way to edit the title after submitting.
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