Bangkok, Thailand – Even on the Nana intersection, a pulsating mecca of this megacity’s seamy nightlife scene, the Wonderland hashish store is difficult to overlook.
Its sprawling, ruby-pink signboard screams throughout the busy crossroads, broadcasting the wares inside with the assistance of neon lights twisted into luminescent marijuana leaves.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and enterprise must be good. However it’s not.
Simply days earlier, Thailand’s authorities imposed new rules sharply curbing the sale of cannabis, solely three years after decriminalising the plant with a lot fanfare and unleashing a billion-dollar enterprise within the course of.
All gross sales of hashish buds should now be accompanied by a physician’s prescription – a stipulation aimed toward choking off the leisure market, the mainstay of many of the 1000’s of dispensaries that now dot the nation.
Public Well being Minister Somsak Thepsuthin has additionally introduced his intention to put the plant again on the nation’s managed narcotics listing inside 45 days, placing it within the firm of cocaine, heroin and meth.
Nanuephat Kittichaibawan, an assistant supervisor at Wonderland, mentioned his store used to serve 10 or extra clients an hour most afternoons.
Now, even with an in-house physician to jot down prescriptions on the spot, “it is only one or two”, he advised Al Jazeera.
“It’s extra sophisticated than it was once, and for some folks it will likely be an excessive amount of,” he added.
Like many within the enterprise, he worries the brand new guidelines might even drive him to close down, placing him out of labor.
“If we observe the foundations, we may [have to] shut,” he mentioned. “I do fear about that. Lots of people have this as their fundamental job, they usually want it to outlive.”
Faris Pitsuwan, who owns 5 dispensaries on a few of Thailand’s hottest vacationer islands, together with Ko Phi Phi Don and Phuket, is nervous, too.
“Yesterday, I couldn’t promote something,” he advised Al Jazeera. “I hope my enterprise will survive, however too quickly to say.”
Whereas asserting the coverage U-turn final week, Somsak mentioned the brand new guidelines would assist comprise Thailand’s hashish business to the medical market, as meant when a earlier administration, and a distinct well being minister, decriminalised the plant in 2022.
“The coverage should return to its authentic objective of controlling hashish for medical use solely,” authorities spokesman Jirayu Houngsub mentioned.
Since a brand new administration took over in 2023, the federal government has blamed decriminalisation for a wave of issues, together with a spike in overdoses amongst youngsters and adolescents and elevated smuggling to international locations the place hashish remains to be unlawful.
A survey by the federal government’s Nationwide Institute of Improvement Administration final yr discovered that three in 4 Thais strongly or reasonably agreed with placing hashish again on the narcotics listing.
Smith Srisont, president of Thailand’s Affiliation of Forensic Physicians, has been urging the federal government to relist hashish from the start, largely due to the well being dangers.
Smith notes that multiple research has discovered a fivefold to sixfold spike in cannabis-related well being issues amongst youngsters and adolescents since legalisation.
Though outlets have been forbidden from promoting to anybody beneath the age of 20, Smith says it has been too onerous to implement as a result of the job falls totally on well being officers, moderately than police, and Thailand doesn’t have sufficient.
“So, they will’t … take a look at each store,” he advised Al Jazeera, however “if hashish is [treated more] like methamphetamine … it will likely be … higher as a result of the police can [then get] concerned” instantly.
Many farmers and store homeowners, although, say the blowback from legalising hashish has been exaggerated, and scapegoated by the main Pheu Thai Celebration to punish the Bhumjaithai Celebration, which deserted the ruling coalition two weeks in the past over Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s alleged bungling of a border dispute with Cambodia.
Somsak has denied the declare.
Bhumjaithai had led the push to decriminalise hashish and was tussling with Pheu Thai for management of the highly effective Ministry of the Inside within the weeks main as much as its cut up from the coalition.
“As quickly as one occasion steps down from the coalition, this occurs. The timing simply couldn’t be any extra good,” Chokwan Chopaka, who opened a dispensary alongside Bangkok’s bustling Sukhumvit Boulevard quickly after Thailand legalised hashish, advised Al Jazeera.
“I perceive that hashish does create points,” she mentioned, “[but] I really feel that these points may have been a minimum of mitigated if the federal government have been really implementing the foundations that [did] exist within the first place.”
Chokwan mentioned she needed to shutter her store a number of months in the past as a result of she may now not each observe these guidelines and compete with different dispensaries within the neighbourhood that have been getting away with breaking them.
She expects that the majority dispensaries will find yourself closing if the brand new guidelines are enforced diligently, lots of them earlier than recouping the investments they made to rise up and operating.
“Lots of people are very stressed. We’re speaking about folks which might be borrowing cash into this. That is their final breath, their final lot of financial savings, as a result of our financial system hasn’t been effectively,” Chokwan mentioned.
The Thai authorities mentioned in Might that the nationwide financial system might develop by as little as 1.3 p.c this yr, dragged down partially by slumping vacationer arrivals.
The federal government has blamed the freewheeling hashish scene of the previous three years for placing some vacationers off Thailand – one more reason, it argues, to tighten the reins.
Shah, on his second journey to Thailand from India previously yr, mentioned the brand new guidelines may do extra hurt than good by pushing vacationers like him and his pal away.
“One of many causes that we do come right here is in order that we are able to smoke good weed,” Shah, who requested to be referred to by his final title solely, advised Al Jazeera.
Having landed in Bangkok solely hours earlier, Shah and his pal have been leaving a Nana neighbourhood dispensary with their buy.
A self-avowed leisure person, Shah mentioned the store wrote him a prescription with few questions and no fuss.
But when the federal government does get severe about implementing the brand new guidelines, he added, “perhaps I’ll assume twice subsequent time and go elsewhere.”
Hashish farmers are fretting concerning the new guidelines, too.
To maintain promoting their buds to native outlets, each farm will quickly want a Good Agriculture and Assortment Follow (GACP) certificates from the federal government.
It certifies that the farm has met sure high quality management requirements.
Chokwan, who additionally leads the Writing Thailand’s Hashish Future Community, a hashish advocacy group, mentioned solely about 100 hashish farms throughout the nation at the moment have GACP certification.
Getting farms prepared and examined may be costly, she mentioned, whereas forcing it on all farmers will weed out 1000’s of “little guys”, leaving the biggest farms and the firms backing them to dominate the market.
Coming in at lower than 300 sq. metres (360 sq. yards), below banks of LED lights inside an unassuming beige constructing on the outskirts of Bangkok, the Thai Kush hashish farm simply qualifies as one of many little guys.
Proprietor Vara Thongsiri mentioned the farm has been supplying outlets throughout the nation since 2022. His fundamental gripe with the brand new guidelines is how immediately they got here down.
“While you announce it and your announcement is efficient instantly, how does a farm adapt that shortly? It’s not possible. They didn’t even give us an opportunity,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Vara mentioned he would apply for the certificates nonetheless and was assured the standard of his buds would assist his farm survive even in a smaller, medical-cannabis-only market, relying on how lengthy the applying takes.
“My farm is a working farm. We harvest each month … If the method takes three months to 6 months, how am I going to final if I can’t promote the product I’ve?” he mentioned.
“As a result of a farm can’t final if it could actually’t promote.”
Rattapon Sanrak, a hashish farmer and store proprietor, is crunching the numbers on the brand new laws as effectively.
His small farm within the nation’s fertile northeast provides his two Highland Cafe dispensaries in Bangkok, together with one within the coronary heart of town’s Khao San quarter, a warren of bars, golf equipment and finances lodging catering to backpackers.
“I may keep open, however as [per] my calculation, it might not [be] well worth the enterprise. It’s not possible any extra because of the laws, the rental and different prices,” he advised Al Jazeera.
“It’s not well worth the cash to speculate.”
Rattapon and others imagine the federal government may have prevented the most recent coverage whiplash by passing a complete hashish management invoice both earlier than decriminalisation or quickly after.
Like others crucial of the federal government’s method, he blames political brinkmanship between Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai for failing to take action.
Proponents of such a invoice say it may have set completely different guidelines for farms primarily based on their dimension, serving to smaller growers keep in enterprise, and higher laws to assist head off the issues the federal government is complaining about now.
Though a invoice has been drafted, Somsak has mentioned he has no intention of pushing it ahead, insisting that putting the plant again on the narcotics listing was one of the simplest ways to regulate it.
The Writing Thailand’s Hashish Future Community plans to carry a protest in entrance of the Ministry of Public Well being on Monday in hopes of fixing the minister’s thoughts.
Rattapon mentioned he and a whole bunch of different farmers and store homeowners additionally plan on submitting a category motion lawsuit towards the federal government over the brand new guidelines.
Within the meantime, Rattapon and others warn, the federal government’s try at confining hashish to the medical market won’t merely make the leisure provide chain vanish.
Rattapon mentioned many producers, having poured in thousands and thousands of {dollars} and put 1000’s of individuals to work, will go underground, the place they are going to be even more durable to regulate.
“Think about you’ve an organization, you rent 10 folks, you make investments 2 million baht [$61,630] for that, you’re working your online business, after which sooner or later they are saying that you simply can not promote it any extra. And within the pipeline, you’ve 100 kilograms coming. What would you do?” he mentioned.
“They’ll go underground.”
Faris, the dispensary proprietor, agreed.
He mentioned lots of the outlets and farms that depend on the leisure market will shut below the brand new guidelines.
“However as time goes by,” he added, “folks will discover a means.”
