I couldn't help but kind of laugh when I saw the headlines on a couple of English-language websites that focus on Thailand news because since the online site is probably very closely watched by officials, they can never be openly critical of anything that Thai officials do but to an actual native English speaker it is quite evident that the authors were not praising Thailand in this, but actually just kind of poking fun at the fact that the people involved take this so seriously, don't realize the futility of it all, and also refuse to acknowledge that this is almost certainly a move on the part of government officials to protect the very well-connected tobacco monopoly in Thailand that is **literally called the Tobacco Monopoly."
The event was called "Unmasking the Appeal" and it was all about keeping vapes illegal in Thailand. I took one look at this picture and realized that I wasn't going to be able to take it seriously. Seriously, it's 2025 and you got a person on the stage that is a keynote speaker presumably, and they are wearing one of those masks that has been shown time and time again to be capable of accomplishing almost nothing?"
I don't smoke. I don't vape. I do not have any skin in this game but I call a spade a spade when I see it. The efforts on the part of various Thai agencies to ban vaping is a facade. They talk about how they want to protect the youth from harmful chemicals and what not, the same way that all politicians all around the world prop up children and use them in order to progress some sort of political agenda, but in the case of Thailand it is just so evident what is really going on here.
When vaping made its way to Thailand, all of a sudden almost all of the smokers that I knew converted away from cigarettes and took on vaping instead. Is it healthier? or a better way to say it would be is it less harmful? I have absolutely no idea, but I do know that the officials at a conference like this would say that it absolutely is as they highlight some really horrible outlier results of some random test that they did on probably substandard black-market Chinese vapes that explode every now and then or something like that.
As a non-smoker, I was extremely pleased to see that burning and stinky embers were so much less a part of my life and it was replaced by something that by design smells like air freshener. I would of course prefer that they weren't smoking anything but if they are going to do it, I would much rather it smell like blueberries than like an ashtray.
Now that the ban has kind of gone into effect, all of those nice smells have reverted to ashtray stank everywhere that I go as these people have returned to smoking cigarettes.
Now while I am sure that there probably were some kids out there that were taking up vaping because of various reasons, but chances are the number of people that were doing this that otherwise wouldn't have smoked or inhaled anything at all is probably very very small. Let's combine this with the fact that the selling of vapes or cigarettes to anyone under 18 has always been illegal since I arrived here so well, if kids were getting their hands on vapes or ciggies, that isn't the manufacturer's fault.
I will say this though, the ban has been effective for the most part. Bars will for the most part really get on your case if you vape in there, but all the while it is perfectly ok for you to smoke, indoors even, despite the fact that this too is illegal in Thailand.
You see this 2nd sign all over the place. All the bars that I go to where people do smoke in them have them up as well. Notice the difference in the fine if caught? It's a massive difference... why is that? Well, the official reason would be "To PrOtEcT dA kIdS" but it is really easy to look between the lines here. The cigarette industry in Thailand is absolutely huge and the introduction of vapes into society was pulling what was likely a massive amount of money away from the old money tobacco producers and putting that money into the hands of other people that the big tobacco industry wasn't prepared or capable of competing with.
The old adage is "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" but in corrupt Thailand it is "if you can't beat 'em, make what they are doing illegal."
It's all a lie. Sure they will spend big money on campaigns and conventions where they congratulate themselves on helping the health of the kids, but to quote System of a Down, "The bottom line is money, nobody gives a fuck!"
Their latest convention happened because they were celebrating the fact that the World Health Organization gave their approval of the Thailand ban on banning e-cigarettes or "vapes."
If there is one organization that I think has lost a tremendous amount of any sort of credibility in the past 6 years or so, it would be the World Health Organization.
Now to wrap this up I want to point out one more thing. This ban on vapes hasn't affected one's ability to get a vape. They, just like anything else that is deemed illegal by the government, simply drops in quality and goes up in price. Therefore, instead of the money being made by competition based on value and quality, it instead goes into corrupt government officials who work at borders that are most likely allowing the unchecked shipping of such items into the northern borders, just like it has always been.
The people who want to get vapes can still get vapes. The people who were vaping before are now smoking cigarettes. Nothing has changed other than what a room smells like and where the money is flowing.
And on that note I will say once again that I don't smoke or vape and never will. I do hate when politicians and other health officials just LIE to everyone's faces though, and that just seems to be par for the course here in Thailand and perhaps, the entire world.