OPINION

Hazardous waste

Re: "Get tough on plastics", (Editorial, May 24).

I recently had a sizeable bag of dead batteries and a couple of old mobile phones that I wanted to dispose of responsibly. I asked Mr Google where I could find appropriate bins near Asoke. The erstwhile, very convenient one in Interchange Tower is no longer there.

I was then directed to the Okura Hotel at Ploenchit, where there was ostensibly one "at the top of the escalator". After wandering around for a while, I asked a security guard where the bin was sited.

He took me to the main ground floor entrance where there were five bins, one marked "Hazardous Waste". It contained a few bits of crumpled plastic, a half-eaten sandwich and three decorative pieces of orange peel. I don't know what was in the sandwich, so it might indeed have been hazardous.

Can BP direct me and others in my predicament to a proper disposal point, please?

Re: "MFP slams holiday booze ban", (BP, June 5).

Move Forward is right that the current bans on the sale of the drug alcohol on Buddhist holy days should be ended. Buddhists who take their religion seriously already abstain from alcohol and other drugs on such holidays exactly as they do every other day of the year.

That a small percentage of Thai adults actually follow that Buddhist principle is no just reason to force their religious precept on everyone else in society. If such reasoning for a ban were actually sound, it would be equally reasonable to ban the eating of meat, which typically involves a meat eater paying others to kill for them, a reality that plainly violates the First Precept of Buddhism as largely ignored by Thai Buddhism.

The pro-ban excuse from Phetchawat Wattanapongsirikul, a list-MP candidate for the Pheu Thai Party, is even weaker since he presents zero evidence that such a ban on the sale of the popular drug actually "helps prevent road accidents caused by drink-driving".

As even Songkran Pakchokdee, director of the StopDrink Network Office, concedes, "People can still stock up in advance for consumption at their homes, anyway," making any causal relationship between interfering with adults buying alcohol on Buddhist holy days unlikely.

Unlike a ban on the recreational use of alcohol by adults, banning driving under the influence of drugs does not violate any right.

That is why such behaviour, but not the drug itself, may be justly banned by law, as is similarly the case for every drug in popular recreational use by adults.

Re: "Bottoms up to clarity on alcohol laws", (Business, May 31).

When Thailand's soon-to-be Prime Minister Pita Limjaroenrat appeared on television in Bangkok on Saturday, he mentioned he would encourage -- among his government's other major policies -- the production of upmarket liquors in Thailand. He was also heard to have mentioned a few formerly unknown brands of liquors on the market that were his favourite.

According to the news, Mr Pita has stirred up enthusiasm so much and so fast that the drinks he mentioned were wiped off the shelves within a few hours.

Congratulations, Mr Pita, for turning our country from being that of teetotalers into one of imbibers.

Let's look forward to further (abominable?) results.