Thai Govt Moves to Recriminalise Recreational Cannabis Use

This will affect 18,000 businesses as cannabis dispensary shops, and countless more farmers invested in the cannabis crop.

Photo Credit: Bangkok Post

Via Bangkok Post:

"It feels like we are caught in limbo," Mr Somkiat said. "The new rules require us to upgrade from GAP [Good Agricultural Practices] to GACP [Good Agricultural and Collection Practices] certification, which costs hundreds of thousands of baht and takes months. For a small farm like ours, it's almost impossible."

In a bill yet to be fully codified into law, the Govt is seeking to have weed shops request medical certificates from customers, with speculation these will cost up to 750 baht for a 12 month certificate ($27 USD) from 'licensed clinics' - is this a ploy so that Govt bureaucrats can get a slice of the pie, by teaming up with / controlling which clinics can issue the certificates?

Since the decriminalisation of cannabis in June 2022, all weed shops were supposed to collect KYC on their customers - copies of passports and names recorded in logbook / database - but of course nobody did that.

Now the new reclassification rules would require extreme KYC + a medical consent form, example:

Here is an example of what a medical cannabis card could look like:

It is sad to see the Govt destroying this cash crop for the Thai people, who finally had their native herb given back to them after years of demonisation, harsh penalities, and propaganda campaigns. It looks like the old dinosaur guard is still thrashing around. This will hamper tourism and further decimate an already fragile economy. Many cannabis shops in Sukhumvit and Khao San Road have (temporarily?) closed down until the legalities are clearer - other shop owners were raided and had to pay large fines - I have heard anecdotally from people in the cannabis industry.

It looks like this reclassification is to be pushed through and published in the Gazette, making it law, within two weeks.

I predict that once the first high profile case of a tourist buying cannabis from a more ‘underground’ shop or a place where they are not enforcing the new ‘rules’, leads to said tourist getting fined and / or arrested…this will be very bad for tourism.

A mass rally by cannabis advocates is planned for 7th July at the HQ for the Ministry of Public Health to protest against the government’s campaign to recriminalise the plant three years after it was removed from the national narcotics list.

Link to article.

In the meantime, enjoy this montage of what could well have been the last ever Highland 420 weed festival from earlier this month in Bangkok!

There was lots of free merchandise being given away by the promo-girls. There were also games to win things like cannabis flower, edibles, and smoking paraphernalia.

They had some cracking live Thai bands - my favourite was called ‘Kiki’ - in the video at the end. Mike Tyson rocked up to promote his own edible gummies brand ‘Mike Bites’ - gummies shaped like human ears with a bite taken out of them. People queued for hours to get a selfie with Tyson, but apparently he bailed after just 5 minutes, with the organisers making excuses about him missing his flight. A friend of mine queued for 2 hours to meet Mike Tyson but was left disappointed.

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Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok based writer. If you would like to donate a virtual coffee or crypto or become a paid subscriber to support this work, it would help to keep the lights on.

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