Deeper Dive Thailand

Casinos polarise opinion. They’re legal in parts of north America and Europe but mostly illegal in the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia – including Thailand. But that could be changing. The legalisation of casinos is part of the Entertainment Complex bill in the Thai parliament. The draft bill states that a casino can take no more than 10% of an integrated complex that also includes components such as a hotel, a shoppingmall, an amusement park, bars and restaurants. These complexes must be in specific tourist zones such as Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and Chiang Mai. For Thai nationals, access to the casino is heavily restricted, with possible requirements to pay a 5,000 baht entrance fee and prove bank deposits of up to 50 million baht. Earnings are subject to a 17% tax and there would be strict screening, monitoring and oversight to prevent crimes such as money laundering. Advocates say these family-friendly complexes can significantly raise revenues from tourism spending, providing a new reason for visitors to enter the country. Thedisadvantages, opponents say, are a likely increase in crime and gambling addiction, and even general moral decay. On this episode of Deeper Dive, Dave Kendall speaks with an expert in the field of building entertainment complexes with casinos in countries where they were previously illegal: Bo Bernhard, Vice President of Economic Development at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

US President Donald Trump has cut off mostof America’s foreign aid programmes, directly affecting Thailand and its neighbours. The affected projects range from hospitals and refugee support to earthquake relief and clean energy, and people have already died as a result.Which projects have been shut down, how is the humanitarian community coping and what hope is there for the future? Dave Kendall speaks to Phil Robertson, the former deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch and the current Director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates Consultancy.

Over the past 20 years, fewer than one hundred people have died from vaping, while more than one hundred million people have died from smoking regular cigarettes. InThailand, the tobacco death toll is 71,000 people each year, and from vaping – zero. So why are cigarettes available in every convenience store, while e-cigarettes are banned?   In this Deeper Dive Thailand, Dave Kendall is joined by Asa Saligupta, president of Ends Cigarette Smoking Thailand, to help answer the following questions:   What are the health risks from vaping versus combustible cigarettes? Since e-cigarettes have only been around since 2004, how likely is it that they’ll cause disease as vapers get older? How effective is vaping to get people either toquit or avoid smoking for good? How likely is that people will get addicted to nicotine from vapes and then transition to cigarettes? Should tobacco-flavoured e-liquid be treated differently from candy flavours specifically marketed to children? If e-cigarettes are much safer than tobacco cigarettes, andmany smokers would have switched to vaping if it was legal, what is the likely death toll from Thailand’s ban? And finally: Among the hundreds of millions of foreign tourists since 2015, how many vapers may have switched back to cigarettes during their stay here and will eventually die as a result?

In the second half of 2024, 42 out of the 77 Thai provinces faced flooding. At least 50 people were killed and billions of baht were lost in damages to property and farmland. The flooding was particularly severe in the northern provinces of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. In the central district of Chiang Mai, the Ping River overflowed for the first time. Thousands were evacuated by boat. So what caused it all? The release of water from hydropower dams upstream, particularly in China and Laos, causes acute flooding and erodes the river banks. Encroachment on the river – by building structures next to the banks or that jut into the river itself – blocks drainage and prevents construction of flood barriers. But the larger issue is deforestation, partly for mining activities but mostly to plant feed crops for animal agriculture. Forests don’t just absorb carbon, they also absorb water, and when we cut them down, the water cascades down the fields, taking the topsoil with it and causing the invasion of mud we’ve seen this year.  To unpack the layers of Thailand’s flood crisis, Dave Kendall speaks with "Pai" Pianporn Deetes, campaign director for the Southeast Asia Programme at International Rivers.

Travel historian Imtiaz Muqbil addresses tourism in Thailand from economic, historical and social viewpoints. He says tourism is so key to Thailand’s post-Covid recovery that the government’s recent relaxation of immigration restrictions [https://bit.ly/3Yzu62e ] was necessary for both the economy and social stability. He worries that countries will compete with each other for tourist revenue in a race to the bottom that risks overtourism in certain areas. But he says the industry itself can solve these problems by using better marketing and promotion strategies. He says that the loosening of borders brings an inevitable rise in criminal activity that can only be mitigated, not prevented. And finally, he says that since the end of the second world war, travel and tourism has had a higher purpose – to promote cultural understanding and peace in the world.