In the dark, trippy Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach, a major subplot revolves around a conflict over a weed field between a freeloading, hedonistic commune and a gang of Kalashnikov-wielding bandits, to whom the field actually belonged. It was a rather fanciful vision of what the Thai ganja trade was actually like – back then, it was mostly peaceful.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and for an all-too-brief three years, getting stoned in Thailand became ridiculously easy – no more sneaking through remote island plantations patrolled by armed guards. From 2022, when Thailand became the first Asian country to de-facto legalise the plant, everywhere you looked in tourist traps like Koh Pha Ngan – bars, lounges, restaurants – someone was rolling or lighting a blunt. All you had to do was walk inside a dispensary and ask to see their menu of Purple Kush and pre-rolled giggle sticks.
That golden age may now be over. In late June, health minister Somsak Thepsutin declared that from now on, kancha (as cannabis is called in Thai) would be for medical use only. Dispensaries would have to become clinics, with a registered doctor on-site. Since most of the coffeeshop clientele are not recovering chemo patients or about to suffer an epileptic fit, this essentially spells doom for thousands of cannabis businesses that have sprung up across the country. Breaking the new rules will be punishable by up to a year’s imprisonment.
“You need a prescription if you’re going to purchase at the dispensary,” explained cannabis advocate Chokwan ‘Kitty’ Chopaka.
“Using is still legal, because it’s still not a Schedule 5 narcotic… The only thing that they will have issue with is if you are distributing; distributing also equals to sharing with your friends. But if you’re doing it at home, how are they going to know?”
However, Somsak has threatened to re-criminalise ganja as well.
Thai activist Chokwan ‘Kitty’ Chopaka. Source: Facebook
The announcement has thrown the billion-dollar industry into disarray, with many pot shops already taking losses or closing, although the government has reportedly promised a 30-60 day grace period for ganjapreneurs to adjust.
“When the [health minister] signed that new regulation, we had to pull the cannabis off the shelf because we cannot do anything that’s not proper – that’s where we’ve stood since the beginning,” grumbled Arun ‘Max’ Avery, proprietor of the Highland Café in Bangkok.
Under the new rules, the cannabis has to be sourced from a certified farm, of which there are only a handful in the country.
“It’s a shit-show right now,” Max continued. “But because the minister of health got such a huge backlash – ‘oh wait, we shouldn’t have done that, it could actually hurt us right now’ – even though on paper now it’s medical-only, they gave 60 days to cool down a little bit. Some of the shops have come back and started selling again, but everyone’s still on their tiptoes right now.”
The situation on the streets of Bangkok is one of confusion.
“[The government] is definitely with Big Pharma,” said Ing, an artist and film director.
“It’s all-out war now in Thailand. I’m not fucking going back to the closet [smoking in secret]. I’m going to buy some weed today. I’ll tell you what happens.”*
[* She did not – hopefully she’s happily stoned.]
“I just got back from a while in Hanoi, and I noticed that higher-end stores don’t do pre-rolls or edibles now,” added Ben, another Bangkok resident.
“But then, three stops away on the train from the central area, it’s business as usual…. I’m stocking up!”
“It kind of almost seems like they’re trying to gather all of this into a nice little basket, and then handing it over to someone, like a little monopoly present,” Kitty remarked.
“This is like, they have us do market research for three years, and now they’re like, ‘oh yeah, we’ll take that, thank you.’”
A brief history of getting high in Thailand
Kancha has been a part of Thai culture since roughly the 6th century when it arrived from India. It was famously used as a condiment for the “boat noodles” served in Bangkok’s floating markets, as well as folk medicines to treat sleeplessness, nausea and lack of appetite. It was used recreationally, too, with the world-famous Thai Stick wafting its way into stoners’ lungs all across the globe. But pressure from American officials eventually forced the Land of Smiles to enlist in their war on drugs in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Kitty’s been one of the kanchachon (“ganja people”) for two decades now. She got into activism after encouragement from her hippy mother, leaving her stressful job at her father’s law firm to join the Highland Network, Thailand’s answer to High Times magazine, along with Max Avery. Though they eventually parted ways, their efforts seemed to pay off on June 9th, 2022, when Thailand struck cannabis off its list of banned substances. At first, it seemed like the Buddhist kingdom was doing everything very right indeed, even releasing thousands of prisoners languishing in its jails that very day. However, the enthusiasm proved short-lived.
“By 11 am someone from, I think it was Michigan or somewhere in the US, called and said, ‘Kitty, I have like 100-200 kilograms of weed, good quality, US-grown, blah-blah-blah-blah, at this price, are you interested?’ And I just went, ‘but we can’t import it.’ And he goes, ‘It’s already in Thailand.’ And that’s when I felt like I couldn’t just stay happy now. The problem has already started, right? And I was so pissed off.”
The irony was rich. In the 1970s, smugglers would ship bales of Thai grass to the United States. Now that it was legal in many states, with the most advanced growing technology in the world, it began going the other way round: high-grade California chronic was being smuggled into Thailand, hidden inside furniture and fruit or vegetable containers to sneak it past customs, undercutting Thai growers and vendors.
The situation soon corrected itself as oversaturation plunged prices and Thailand again became a source of illicit exports, including to the UK, where 800 couriers were busted with Thai weed in their suitcases last year. It’s possible this embarrassed the Thai government enough to reverse course.
The green grey area
There were a myriad of other headaches as well, mainly stemming from the fact that kancha had not actually been properly legalised and regulated, creating a chaotic free-for-all. Since many ganjapreneurs, Thai and farang (foreigner) alike, had no idea what they were doing, your weed could be infested with mould or toxic chemicals. This uncertainty stirred public anxieties that anyone could sell anything to anyone, including kids.
“Shop owners are not always educated in cannabis itself, so things can be potentially quite dangerous,” said Kitty.
“A lot of the weed vapes that exist here in Thailand are actually HHC. The gummies that come from China illegally are usually HHC, not THC at all. There are all of these things that, unless you’re within the industry and constantly have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on. These things need to be, in a sense, controlled. And now this is like the whole issue of Thailand is not going to do that because they feel like it’s too dangerous, so we’re just going to make it illegal.”
Every year since the reforms, another killjoy lawmaker or official seeking political clout would threaten a return to prohibition. A proposed ban last year was met with fierce resistance, with protesters camped outside government offices even going on hunger strike.
Politics and punishment
This time, the situation is different as Thailand enters one of its periodic political crises. The party which spearheaded the quasi-legalisation, Bhumjaithai, pulled out of the ruling coalition over a leaked phone call between prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Cambodia’s strongman leader Hun Sen, in which Shinawatra seemed to suck up to Hun, even calling him “uncle”, while their two nations were locked in a deadly border stand-off. The call confirmed suspicions about the Shinawatra and Hun families, long-known to be close, and Shinawatra was forced to step down as public anger simmered. Health Minister Somsak, who belongs to Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party, then imposed his weed ban to punish the Bhumjaithai for weakening the coalition.
It’s kind of weird… stoners are asking for rules. Because when there’s no rules, there’s a lot of fuck-ups
The conservative Bhumjaithai has now joined forces with the progressive People’s Party against the Shinawatra government, and Max hopes that the political turmoil will create an opening for a Cannabis Act to be written into law and finally regulate the industry.
“Now the shit’s hit the fan the Blue [Bhumjaithai] are with the Orange [People’s Party] and everyone’s just basically telling the Red [Pheu Thai] to fuck off and go to Cambodia, it seems like the Cannabis Act is really gonna happen,” he said.
“There’s gonna be a little bit of regulation in terms of where the cannabis comes from and the legitimacy of the origin of the cannabis itself, because there’s a huge problem now with illegal crops funded by Chinese and Vietnamese gangster money and ruining the price of the Thai cannabis market.”
Fighting back
The grassroots haven’t given up, either. On Monday, hundreds of protestors led by the group Writing Thailand’s Cannabis Future set up camp outside Somsak’s offices at the health ministry. Many of them were business owners who’d poured time and money into the government’s promises three years ago, but also included elderly people suffering from lymphoma who felt cannabis oil was the only affordable treatment that worked.
ม็อบกัญชา บุกกระทรวงสาธารณสุข
7 กรกฎาคม : เครือข่ายเขียนอนาคตกัญชาไทยชุมนุมเรียกร้องให้ นายสมศักดิ์ เทพสุทิน รัฐมนตรีว่าการกระทรวงสาธารณสุข ยุติการดำเนินการใดๆ ที่จะนำกัญชากลับสู่บัญชียาเสพติด เพราะจะเป็นการผูกขาดกัญชา ทำลายคนทำกัญชาเสียหายทั้งประเทศ โดยมอบหนังสือผ่าน… pic.twitter.com/lh0ikvZ75W— Thairath_News (@Thairath_News) July 7, 2025
“We hope that we can get the announcement reversed and then go back to what the rules were and maybe have them enforce those rules and have people fully understand what they are before they make sudden changes that would wipe out 95% of the board,” explained Kitty, who attended the protest, handing Somsak’s secretary a letter outlining their demands for a Cannabis Act.
“It’s kind of weird,” Kitty observed. “Stoners are asking for rules. Because when there’s no rules, there’s a lot of fuck-ups – that’s what is actually happening right now.”
