Another alcohol clampdown

[PeteC]

Controversial ban on online sales of booze to come into effect amid cries from businesses

https://www.thaienquirer.com/21341/cont ... usinesses/

The controversial ban on online sales of alcoholic products is imminent as the law will come into effect next Monday.

Entrepreneurs, businesses and activists in the field have been campaigning against it for the past three months since the Royal Gazette published the announcement of the ban on September 8. But their efforts are now next to futile.

Starting December 7, direct selling and attempts to promote alcoholic drinks online will be prohibited. Those who violate this could be fined up to 10,000 baht or face up to six months of imprisonment.

Anutin Charnvirakul, Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister, said in November that the national committee on alcoholic drinks will introduce guidelines on the law for businesses once it comes into effect.

However, the efforts to first halt and then revise the law is already ongoing as many experts, entrepreneurs, businesses and activists have all deemed the law to be vague, unnecessary, and unfair.

They also believe that the law will eventually kill out small players who are already working on their back foot against large corporates that already have a strong grip on the entire alcoholic beverage market.

Vague and unnecessary

Thaopipob Limjittakorn, a Move Forward Party’s MP for Bangkok and a beer activist, told Thai Enquirer on Thursday that the government’s efforts to listen to the complaints from businesses is just for show, and nothing more.

He also said that the law is so vague that up until now, the regulators could still not properly explain it to businesses on what it meant and how they will enforce it.

“The Office of the Consumer Protection Board couldn’t even explain what they meant by ‘electronic’ or ‘online selling’,” he said.

The law that was published on the Royal Gazette prohibits the direct sales and the promotion of alcoholic drinks via “electronic devices” or “related services”.

Thaopipob said businesses are concerned that the vagueness of this law will be similar to Section 32 of the 2008 Alcoholic Beverage Control Act.

According to the section, it is an advertisement of an alcoholic beverage, or merely an expression to the name or sign of such beverage in a manner directly or indirectly encouraging another to consume an alcoholic beverage.

“Businesses are concerned because they do not clearly understand how the law will be interpreted and which actions would be considered wrongdoings,” he said.

“For example, can someone send a catalogue of alcoholic products they have via an email to a retail store to choose, would that be considered illegal? Can someone who sells alcohol use LINE Call to talk to their clients, would that be considered as using electronic device to sell?” he added.

He said if the law is to be broadly interpreted these actions that were mentioned would be considered illegal.

Thaopipob also said that the new law is also repetitive given that it is very similar to Section 32 and other rules within the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act which are already being used to protect youth from alcohol.

“Even if the new law does not exist, it will not affect the ongoing efforts to protect youth from the consequences of alcohol related problems,” he said.

Thaopipob was referring to the government’s reasoning that the new law would prevent youth from acquiring alcohol online without any requirements to see their identification.

According to the Thai law, sales of alcoholic drinks to people under 20 is prohibited.

Thaopipob said his party is willing to consider any ongoing efforts from the people to revise the new law on the online selling of alcohol.

Prapawee “Bamhee” Haemathat, a coordinator and speaker for the Thai Alcohol Beverage Community, a network of 200-300 businesses that are related to alcoholic drinks producers and distributors, told Thai Enquirer that the regulators still have little clue how they will implement the new law.

“They cannot answer at least 70 per cent of our questions,” she said, while referring to the public hearing that was set up by regulators to listen to business concerns over the new law on Thursday.

One of the concerns businesses have is they will no longer be able to communicate with their clients via social media as the new law states that they cannot sell their products online to any individuals unless it is a retail business.

“How would we know whether they are going to resell these products or not?” she asked.

“Looking at the amount alone would not help, since there are some people who would buy one or two expensive alcoholic drinks to keep before reselling it later. How would we know if they are the consumers or not? The regulators also cannot answer that,” she added.

Prapawee said the her group along with the Liberate Thai Alcohol pressure group that has been campaigning at rallies conducted by the student-led pro-democracy movement, Ratsadon, have already gathered more than 10,000 signatures in bid to revise the new law.

“First, we are still trying to use legal means to ask for the Office of the Alcohol Control Committee to halt the law from coming into effect,” she said.

“Second, we are going to propose for the amendment of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act to eventually get rid of the new law on the online selling of alcohol,” she added.

Jerome Le Louer, founder and CEO of Wishbeer, a popular startup beer store, told Thai Enquirer that since their website is registered abroad, they are still unsure how the ban on online selling alcohol in Thailand will affect them.

“Hopefully, they are going to provide more information of what can be done and what cannot be done because if the law comes into effect, most of the selling means will become illegal and it would create a lot of questions,” he said.

“The law is very broad on what is included or excluded. For example, on the business to business side, can we call importers to order and would that be considered as electronic?” he added.

He said the law that came out was only one page long and it does not say much where initial interpretation means that everything could become illegal, unless a postcard was used to make an order.

“It would be very hard to do business when the law is unclear,” he said.

Unfair

Not only that it will be much harder to do business, the law could potentially shrink the alcoholic drinks market as well, Jerome said.

“All the small companies will no longer have any distribution channels anymore, which makes it even harder for them to compete with the larger companies that are already monopolizing the market,” he said.

“The online channel is basically the only channel for small players to affordably introduce their products and sell,” he added. “If all of this becomes forbidden, it will severely limit the actions that small players could take, and that is unfair.”

He said the law will only provide benefits for large businesses to continue to control the market and that it would lower the choices for consumers at the same time.

Jerome said the online selling of alcohol in Thailand only accounted one per cent of the entire alcoholic drinks market, which makes it even harder to understand why the law is needed.

Tanthong Tumwattana, a craft beer distributor, told Thai Enquirer the shutting down of the online selling channel will certainly affect craft beer producers and distributors in Thailand because it is the only channel they are using to communicate with their clients at the moment.

“This is a niche and premium market as craft beers are not cheap that could cost anywhere between 80 baht to more than 1,000 baht per bottle,” he said.

“The regulators said the law is meant to protect the youth, but the youth that buy these products will need to have a sizable income to regularly order these kind of expensive products online,” he added.

Tanthong said there are technologies that can effectively be used to check for ID before selling the products so the law is mostly “unfair” for small businesses.

He added that with the existent of the Section 32 and the law prohibiting the selling of alcohol to people aged under 20, the new law on online selling of alcoholic drinks is effectively, “unnecessary”.

“Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to try and stop papa-mama shops from illegally selling alcohol to youth than to come after us?” he asked.

There are currently 40 types of craft beers available in Thailand, but this availability would be limited even further when the law comes into effect.

“Small businesses already do not have the capital to compete at the same level in terms of advertisement and distribution channels. It almost seems like the government wants to kill off all the small players in this business,” Tanthong concluded.

[handdrummer]

Now that the govt. has legalized, for medical purposes only, (snicker, snicker) hard drugs, alcohol won't be needed.

[buksida]

Online alcohol sales banned from today
That ban on sales of alcohol online kicks in today. Announced 3 months ago, the actual ban starts from today. The Royal Thai Police and Public Health Ministry reminded us about the start of the new law on Friday, that prohibits the sale or advertising of alcoholic beverages through digital and social media channels.

“From Monday, December 7, the sale and advertisement of alcoholic beverages online will be prohibited. Direct selling, persuading consumers, introducing products or other related services via digital channels that enable sellers to complete a sale without meeting the buyer face to face is now banned.”

https://thethaiger.com/news/national/on ... from-today

I wonder if Mr CP can still order stock for his monopoly online. There seems to be no other purpose to this aside from killing smaller businesses - the Thai youth don't buy 800 baht bottles of imported wine online.

[Big Boy]

This is part of an e-mail I received in the last 2 hours, so usual thing, we'll write a new law, but don't have any way of policing it

beer.jpg (75.69 KiB) Viewed 1754 times

I've never bought booze online, rarely drink, and have no intention of buying anything. It simply amuses me the numerous unenforceable laws that are written here. I'm sure if ordered, it will arrive in a plain brown box. Unless somebody grasses them up, how will anybody know?

[buksida]

They don't need to police it - they'll just block alcohol websites the same way they do with gambling ones.

[buksida]

A new anti-alcohol law is in the works and it could fine you THB50,000 for posting a photo of booze
There is a chance that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act, B.E. 2551 might get revamped. For the (much, much) worse.

Among other penalties it enshrines in law, the act from 2008 currently fines people THB50,000 (US$15,513) for posting a photo of their alcoholic drink online, or THB500,000 if they’re the owner of an alcohol-related business. The newly drafted one wants to fine people THB500,000 and THB1 million (US$31,027) if those people are business owners.

Here is a list of other things the authorities want to do with the new act:

– If business owners refuse to obey, they could be fined THB50,000 per day until the mistakes are corrected.

– The authorities will have full autonomy to raid bars, restaurants, or alcohol-related businesses without court orders.

– The authorities can introduce new orders without having to do so through referendums or public hearings.

– Any indirect advertisements about alcohol—including those that are not about alcohol but could be interpreted as advertising about alcohol — would also be outlawed. This means bye-bye to alcohol brand logos on soda or water bottles.

It’s also worth noting that the authorities who fine businesses or individuals will get to keep a percentage of it — an incentive to encourage enforcement of the law.

https://coconuts.co/bangkok/news/a-new- ... -of-booze/

Nice way to revive tourism ... just what is it with this shower of cu...

[Big Boy]

I've been wondering about this since I first saw the article a couple of days ago.

I have a fair bit of football memorabilia e.g. shirts featuring things like Chang 'water' motifs. Will it no longer be legal to wear these in Thailand? Will tournaments such as the Chang FA Cup disappear? Will the Leo and Chang Stadiums need to be re-branded? How about tourists wearing their Stella or Fosters T-shirts?

To me, this looks like a case of opening mouth before engaging brain.

[migrant]

It’s also worth noting that the authorities who fine businesses or individuals will get to keep a percentage of it — an incentive to encourage enforcement of the law.

That will create quite a desire to enforce it.

[HHTel]

And the numerous businesses/bars/restaurants/nightclubs owned by the police will be fined??

[buksida]

Just when you thought Thailand couldn't become any more anal. Now we'll be having squads of bent booze cops fining the bars and restaurants that have already seen their businesses decimated by prolonged closures. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them just remained closed - it is clear that they don't fit into the model that the junta is trying to force onto society.

[PeteC]

It’s also worth noting that the authorities who fine businesses or individuals will get to keep a percentage of it — an incentive to encourage enforcement of the law.

That will create quite a desire to enforce it.

It will create quite a desire to abuse it and set people and places up. They're good at that.

[PeteC]

It has to be a group of big hair wives beating the donkey on this one. They're the only ones with the power to tell these guys what to do, and the guys may simply do it to shut them up.

There should be push back from the booze moguls on this one as it's going to begin to hurt them. Those making the rules perhaps forget who keeps them there?

[hhinner]

It’s also worth noting that the authorities who fine businesses or individuals will get to keep a percentage of it — an incentive to encourage enforcement of the law.

That will create quite a desire to enforce it.

Doesn't work with police traffic enforcement.

[hhinner]

It’s also worth noting that the authorities who fine businesses or individuals will get to keep a percentage of it — an incentive to encourage enforcement of the law.

That will create quite a desire to enforce it.

It will create quite a desire to abuse it and set people and places up. They're good at that.

Agree with that!

[hhinner]

Good job tourists never post anything like meals and drinks online.