BANGKOK — Thai police arrested two people for running an underground sex toy business, seizing over 18,000 items from their home.

Pleasure products are illegal in Thailand.

Pol Col Patpawit Wongpinit, a superintendent at the Technology Crime Suppression Division, announced the arrest of 28-year-old Huang Faling, a Chinese national, and his 24-year-old Thai wife Piyanan. The couple was apprehended in a house they owned in Lat Krabang district, Bangkok, after the execution of a search warrant revealed it was used to warehouse more their inventory.

The couple had registered their business as a “massage equipment” retailer.

According to local press reports, during questioning, the couple admitted to having been in the business for three years, generating 10 million baht (around $270,000) in revenue.

In April this year, Thailand’s Democrat Party (conservative) stated its intention to legalize sex toy in the country, appealing at health benefits beyond sexual pleasure. The Democrat Party also noted that while sex toys are currently illegal in Thailand, they are being smuggled into the country due to demand, the Bangkok Post reported.

Ratchada Thanadirek, executive member of the Democrat Party, “argued that legalizing sex toys would help reduce the rate of sex crimes and the number of products illegally smuggled from overseas, which lack quality control and can sometimes cause infections among users,” CNN reported.

U.S. Politicians Also Have Sought to Outlaw Sex Toys

Conservative lawmakers in the U.S., however, have expressed interest in criminalizing sex toys, or in enforcing the laws already in the books. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), back when he was his state’s solicitor general, infamously wrote a 76-page legal brief defending banning the sale of sex toys.

In a 2007 brief to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cruz and his team “argued that the plaintiffs challenging the law, a group of online retailers and Austin stores that sold sex toys, were not protected under the 14th Amendment’s right to privacy. In fact, he continued, banning obscene devices was in the public interest, and the government should be granted ‘police powers’ for the purposes of ‘discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors.’ Furthermore, using ‘obscene devices,’ the state argued, was akin to ‘hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy,’” Vanity Fair reported in 2016.

Cruz also argued that “there is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”

Cruz’s argument failed and that particular Texas’ anti-sex-toy law was eventually overturned, in a narrow 2-1 decision by the judicial panel.

According to legal experts, several state laws criminalizing sex toys are still on the books, including in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, although enforcement is rare. The Alabama anti-sex toy law is still enforced.

Main Image: Thai police posing with seized sex toys during a 2021 sting operation.