"cannabis control bill" approved by Thai government

They legalized it (for the most part) in 2022. The reclassified it as illegal for recreational use in 2025 - and this simply lead to clinics being established all over the place to get a medical certificate - and now they have basically put things in place to make it illegal again.

How and why? Well, it depends on how much of a cynic you are and how close to it you are.

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When Thailand passed the law legalizing it a lot of people were exciste. I was excited even though I don't really use it and don't care for the buzz. I thought this was a wonderful step forward in freedom. Freedom for you to be allowed to control what you put in your own body, even if it is bad for you.

It makes no sense to me that alcohol is sold like hotcakes while weed was illegal. I find alcohol to be far more dangerous than marijuana.

But this is still Thailand so when they passed the law the government kind of forgot to say in what capacity it would be allowed to be sold. I don't like a great deal of regulation but if Thailand does one thing it would to completely saturate any market until that market cannot be sustained anymore

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Next thing you know, weed shops were literally everywhere to the point of annoyance. People were pushing it on you just walking down the street because competition was so intense in that industry.

Even Lays potato chips had a hemp or marijuana chip of some sort although it didn't get you high. It was just nuts how weed went from being this thing that you asked a bartender at a rasta pub if they could get you any and they would gauge to see if they thought you were a narc, to being something that was being shoved in your face all the time anywhere that you went.

Then 3 years later after the government tried to regulate this and that - which in Thailand means that only friends of politicians get licenses to do it and then the police start selling these licenses as well - they made a decree or law that only medical use was allowed.

Next thing you know clinics started partnering with weed shops so that basically anyone could get a "weed card." Nothing changed other than now you had to do one extra step and pay a cashier at a clinic to state that you "need weed!" to deal with anxiety or something like that, and off you went.

International media stated that "foreigners can't buy it" but this just shows how oblivious the press is. You definitely could and it wasn't illegal at all to do so.

Inspections are expected to increase nationwide, particularly in major cities and tourist areas

This was the government announcement but let me translate this for you: Cops and other government officials are going to shake down businesses that sell weed until only the business owners that have connections and the owners that can afford to pay off the cops will remain. Almost all "laws" in this country operate this way so this doesn't surprise me at all.

For me personally I don't care if weed is legal or not for my own personal life because I don't use it, legal or illegal. But I celebrated Thailand for doing something sensible when they legalized it. It really should be legal.

Making it illegal will not change the availability of it. It was never difficult to get.

This brings about another point involving corruption. While of course nobody has proof of this it is well known that the government and military received payoffs to allow movement of weed and other drugs across borders from Myanmar and Laos into Thailand and with the legalization across the board, these military and government people probably saw a huge drop in their side-income. This, and perhaps diminishing profits from alcohol manufacturers is likely the real reason for the about-face on the legalization of it in the first place.

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A lot of people are protesting this bill and it is yet to pass the Thai House of Representatives. The industry was a big money maker and a lot of regular people are going to be negatively affected by this seeing as how it was the government's idea in the first place and loads of regular people went all in on this only to have the elected and non-elected government officials decide just a few years later that "nah, you can't do that anymore."

I hope the bill fails. It remains to be seen what the public sentiment is about this because Thailand doesn't have a free press. Any article that you can find that is based in Thailand will be heavily censored, and the international coverage will be filled with ignorance and speculation.

We'll just have to wait and see