Dr. Cholnan Srikaew, the minister of public health, spoke out about a group that alcohol affects: people who die while driving drunk. These people asked the Thai government for steps to be taken against the proposed longer hours for entertainment places.
In his role as a Public Health spokesman, Dr. Cholnan told Thai national media that the Thai government’s policies need to balance health and well-being. The quality of life of the people must also be maintained.
“Regarding the entertainment zoning areas that provided services until 4 AM starting December 15th, the Thai government has put safety measures in place to support this in line with Thai law.” Cholnan said, “The protection of alcohol consumer groups was mainly meant to stop car accidents and other bad things from happening.”
One idea is that everyone should take an alcohol test before going home. The entertainment places would be in charge of the tests, and they would have to show that the legal limit for blood alcohol is less than 50 mg% or a taxi would have to be called for the person. As another example, people who drink are not allowed to drive at all, and leisure services must offer them hail-riding services.
TPN says that these are just ideas and that it’s not clear how they would be put into action.
In addition, Cholnan said that the owners of the entertainment venues will be looked at more closely to see if they have the power to do an alcohol test and not sell alcohol to drunk people under current rules.
