Thais get sober message: ban liquor ads

Off Silom Road, down a soi crowded with tourists, past the plethora of massage parlors crowded with ladies in skimpy sequined dresses that leave little to the imagination, Panida Pattantrikul is hard at work in a local pub.

Like thousands of other girls in bars throughout Asia's notorious sin city, the 22-year-old college student acts as a living advertisement for whatever alcohol brandname graces the tight dress she wears on a given night.

But her sexy threads may soon need to be altered. Thailand's military-appointed government is on the verge of passing a law that would ban alcohol companies from advertising various beer and liquor brands. Only corporate logos would be allowed.

"No matter what I wear or what advertising they ban, people are still going to drink," says Ms. Panida, a marketing major who pays for her own tuition and expenses at a respected Bangkok university. "If the government wants people to stop drinking, they should just ban alcohol."

That's exactly what activists like Vironrong Ratanachaya are hoping for. The ad ban, combined with measures to clamp down on "erotic dancing" and jackpot lotteries, are aimed at shoring up the political support of thousands of quixotic Buddhist activists in Bangkok's middle class who want the country to wage war against perceived Western influences.

"I totally agree with the ban," says Ms. Vironrong. "If we have this, then Thai society can start to clean up. We can start with alcohol and move to other things, like shampoo commercials, which show women in two-piece bathing suits," she says. "This is ugly and against Thai beliefs. There is just no censorship anymore – and this is bad."

Vironrong and others helped organize tens of thousands of people last year to protest the listing of Thai Beverage, the country's largest alcohol producer, on the local stock exchange. They see a gush of booze and sex pulling the country's youths away from the temple, and they want the government to take some sort of action.

On this point, the military leaders took a cue from deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose administration launched a social order campaign a few years ago that forced bars to close at 2 a.m. and made nude dancers wear bikini bottoms.

"In a way the pendulum is swinging to the conservative side after five years of open, liberal market forces," says Surichai Wungaeo, who heads the Center for Social Development Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "People like to make money off of vice, but not if it involves their daughters. It's important to open up this debate."

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