Big surprise! Thailand is now cracking down on weed dispensaries

When they legalized this stuff across the board a few years back I was one of the people that was talking to others and saying that the populations is going to go absolutely ape-shit wild with this. When I say that I dont' mean that everyone will be wandering around stoned and zombified but that these businesses, if left unchecked, were going to be everywhere and probably too many places.

That is exactly what happened when everyone and there grandma all of a sudden had weed for sale.

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For someone like me that doesn't want to smoke weed for the most part, legal or not, the fact that it became legal had zero impact on my life. It was supposed to help the Thailand tourism numbers and maybe even attract some new tourists.

But let's imagine you are sitting on that board making these sorts of tourism decisions. Do you really want to be the country that people are going there because they can legally get stoned all the time? I know Amsterdam manages to keep this feeling a bit like it is glamorous but in Thailand it became kind of scummy almost overnight.

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While I am not going to call any shop in particular out I recall when I was visiting this little coffeeshop and pub that I stop by every now and then, I noticed there were large jars with various buds in them. I asked "do you have to have a permit for that?" and the owners said "I don't know."

The country just went wild with it and the next thing you know tourism hasn't gone up, and Thailand is discussing banning weed again. They really should just leave well enough alone.

I read something the other day where Thailand's tourism numbers are down 3% on the quarter of 2026 and you can be guaranteed, if the government is telling you it is down 3%, it's probably more like 10%.

The government doesn't seem to realize that the reason why tourism is struggling is because the government themselves keep fiddling with it. Back when you could basically come to Thailand and stay as long as you want to business was booming in all sectors. Now it seems as though all of the mare failing, high end, low end, and backpacking is basically dead in the country as well.

Weed maybe helped maybe didn't but now the government is going after individual shops as they revoked around 100 licenses in Phuket, which is the most popular beach destination in all of Thailand.

That might seem like a lot but I want you to understand this. Phuket is not a super huge island. The island isn't a baby but it isn't like Hawaii large either

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You can tell by this map that it is only about 10km across and at its furthest point 30km north to south or thereabouts. Even with them cutting the licenses of 100 places there are still over a thousand weed shops on the island.

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There is also the very real possibility of something else going on here. The weed shops that get shut down might not be connected to the "correct people" and by correct I mean something that is connected to government officials. This weed thing has been a huge money-maker for Thailand, something like a billion USD annually, but when that happens you only need to wait before the very rich want most of that money to be flowing to their pockets.

I wouldn't count on this making much of a splash in the news. To me this seems like politicians attempting to create the illusion that they are doing something just in time for elections.

The reality is that weed was everywhere before these shops existed, it's just a lot better quality now. As far as tourism is concerned I think that Thailand's rulers need to look at their track record and at least admit the possibility that a lot of this decline might be their own fault.

Maybe sit this one out?