Thailand's weed U-turn: a million free plants, then a prescription pad

On 10 June 2022 Thailand began giving cannabis plants away. The government's target was a million of them, and by the time the giveaway launched more than 300,000 people had signed up on a state app to receive one. The previous day, cannabis had come off the country's narcotics list. Corrections officials said about 3,000 prisoners had been released since the law changed that week.

Four years on, the same country has made cannabis flower prescription-only, watched thousands of shops fail to renew their licences, and sent a draft law to parliament that would limit cannabis to medical and research use. As far as we can find, Thailand has not put cannabis back on the narcotics list, so on paper the plant is still "delisted". In practice, the 2022 free-for-all is over.

That makes Thailand one of the sharpest reversals in the cannabis world, and a case study in order of operations: it removed the prohibition first and wrote the rules afterwards. This is a guide to how it got from there to here, with the state of play as of 13 October 2026. If you are visiting Thailand, the rules have changed repeatedly; check the current ones with the Thai authorities rather than relying on anything you read, including this.

Step one: medicine (2018)#

The opening move was cautious. On 25 December 2018, Thailand's military-appointed National Legislative Assembly voted 166 to 0, with 13 abstentions, to amend the Narcotics Act so that cannabis and kratom could be used for medical purposes, under licence and prescription. Recreational use stayed illegal. Al Jazeera reported it as the first such move in Southeast Asia, a region known for some of the world's strictest drug laws.

Step two: the delisting (2022)#

The big change was political. The Bhumjaithai Party had made taking cannabis off the narcotics list its flagship 2019 election promise, and its leader, Anutin Charnvirakul, became health minister. From 9 June 2022, only cannabis extract containing more than 0.2% THC by weight counted as a narcotic. The plant, its flower and low-THC products did not.

The government's pitch was agricultural and economic: a cash crop for farmers, an ingredient for food and wellness products. Anutin said at the time that getting high was not the point. "Don't use it and sit smiling at home and not get any work done," he said.

The catch was the missing law. A cannabis bill was supposed to follow delisting and did not pass. In December 2022, Gloria Lai of the International Drug Policy Consortium described the result as "a vacuum at the moment".

The boom, and a shop count nobody can pin down#

Into that vacuum came the shops. In December 2022, the online map site WEED.in.th counted 1,750 registered cannabis stores with another 450 awaiting approval, and police and officials raided Bangkok's Khao San Road twice that month. "The barrier to enter the market is so low," one dispensary owner told reporters.

After that, the numbers get slippery, because every source is counting something slightly different:

• February 2024: Health Minister Cholnan Srikaew put legally registered shops at 20,000, per Reuters.
• June 2025: about 18,000 shops held cannabis licences, according to AP.
• 28 December 2025: 18,433 shops had been on the register, of which 11,136 were still operating, per Ministry of Public Health data reported by The Nation.
• 22 April 2026: the Department of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine (DTAM) figures reported by Khaosod English were 18,517 registered and 11,386 operating.

Treat these as different questions, not one trend line (a Nation report on 1 April 2026 even said only about 15% of the original 18,000 shops remained, which no other figure supports). What they do show is a market that peaked at somewhere between 18,000 and 20,000 outlets and then shrank by roughly 40% in a year.

The backlash#

The concern that grew fastest was young people. A study in the journal Addiction (Puetpaiboon and seven co-authors, published online 21 May 2026) used nationwide hospital admission records for adolescents aged 10 to 19, from October 2016 to September 2023, and an interrupted time-series design: it projects the pre-June-2022 trend forward and compares it with what happened. The authors estimated about 25.5 extra cannabis-related admissions a week after legalisation (95% prediction interval 23.5 to 27.2), or 1,762 excess admissions over the next 68 weeks. Stimulant, nicotine, volatile-solvent and hallucinogen admissions also rose significantly, while alcohol, sedative and cocaine admissions showed no significant change.

One caution. This is a single observational analysis of hospital records, so it counts admissions, not use, and cannot by itself prove cause. It measures what happened in hospitals, not whether the policy was worth it.

Ministry of Public Health figures reported by The Nation on 1 February 2026 point the same way: cannabis poisoning cases up 3.5-fold and cannabis addiction cases up 6.5-fold "since the policy change", and, in one major tourist destination the paper did not name, cannabis-related emergency visits rising from zero to more than 90 a month. We have not seen the underlying data, and the report gives no baseline period, so we present them as the ministry's figures. Better recording, and more willingness to seek help once cannabis is no longer a crime, would also raise counts.

Politicians had drawn their conclusion earlier. In February 2024, Cholnan said: "Without the law to regulate cannabis it will be misused."

The flip-flop years#

Pheu Thai, which formed a government in 2023, had promised to relist cannabis. In June 2024 a Public Health Ministry narcotics committee voted to do so. Anutin, by then interior minister in a coalition Bhumjaithai had joined as junior partner, objected, noting that the same committee had voted to decriminalise cannabis when he ran the health ministry. On 23 July 2024, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin dropped the relisting plan and told his health minister to pursue a bill instead, one that would ensure cannabis was used "for medical purposes, research and for certain products".

So the government could not relist cannabis. It went after the shops.

The prescription rule (2025)#

The Ministry of Public Health's Announcement on Controlled Herbs (Cannabis), B.E. 2568 (2025), signed on 23 June and published in the Royal Gazette on 25 June 2025, took effect on 26 June. (The detail here comes from Thai PBS's Thai-language report of the announcement; the translation is ours.) It controls the flower. Anyone who sells or processes it commercially needs a licence. Sales online or through vending machines are barred, as is advertising and selling at temples, dormitories and public parks. And a sale to someone holding a prescription from a licensed practitioner is allowed only for up to 30 days' treatment.

AP, which reported the order in English, added that shops must buy from farms certified by DTAM and declare sources monthly, and that violators face up to a year in jail and a 20,000 baht fine. "Owners are freaking out, a lot of them are scared," said Chokwan "Kitty" Chopaka, a former Bangkok dispensary owner and advocate.

The politics got stranger#

On 18 June 2025, days before the rule took effect, Anutin pulled Bhumjaithai out of the coalition. On 29 August the Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra over a leaked phone call with Cambodia's Hun Sen, and on 5 September parliament elected Anutin prime minister by 311 votes of 490. The architect of the delisting was now running the country that was un-delisting it.

Advocates hoped for a reprieve. "The idea of reclassifying cannabis as a narcotic is unlikely to happen once Bhumjaithai leads the government," Prasitchai Nunual of Writing Thailand's Cannabis Future told Bloomberg. Rattapon Sanrak, a Bangkok dispensary owner, was more realistic: "The change will likely be more about the enforcement climate than the law itself." Bhumjaithai then won the 8 February 2026 election by a wide margin, and Anutin was re-elected prime minister on 19 March 2026. The prescription rule stayed.

Where it stands, as of 13 October 2026#

The market is thinning out on its own. Of 8,636 licences that expired in 2025, only 1,339 (15.5%) were renewed; the other 7,297 shops chose to shut. A Bangkok shop owner told The Nation: "All the money invested now feels lost." (A later DTAM update, reported by Khaosod English in April 2026, put 2025 closures at 7,131; the counts keep moving.)

The ministry kept tightening by regulation while the bill was drafted. A ministerial regulation on licensing for controlled herbs (No. 2), B.E. 2569, published in the Royal Gazette on 29 April 2026 and in force from 30 April, means that when a flower licence comes up for renewal only a medical facility, a premises that makes or sells herbal medicines, or a certified traditional healer can hold one, with trained staff on site and an odour-control system; existing licences run to expiry. (Our reading is from Krungthep Turakij's Thai-language report; the translation is ours.) A separate regulation on cannabis and hemp extracts above 0.2% THC, in force from 26 April 2026, limits those to official, medical, research and industrial use. In August 2026 the ministry said that since October 2025 it had inspected 1,326 premises, suspended 84 licences and revoked four.

The next step is law. On 22 September 2026 the cabinet approved a draft Cannabis Control Act. According to The Nation, farms would have to be registered as small, medium or large so they can be traced; shops that are not medical facilities would have to convert, with a doctor on the premises, to renew their licences; supply would require a prescription; and penalties would be "clearer and tougher". Licensing law firm Silk Legal reports that licences would last three years and sales would be barred to under-20s. Health Minister Pattana Promphat said existing licences expire in stages between 2026 and 2028.

It is not law yet. It goes to the House of Representatives, and as of 13 October 2026 we found no report of a vote, a committee stage or a court challenge. DTAM's May timetable for its draft bill had the Council of State reviewing it around January 2027 before it went to parliament, so do not expect a quick finish.

What everyone else can learn#

Thailand is often written up as a legalisation story. It is really a story about sequence. Canada's Cannabis Act came into force in October 2018 and Uruguay passed its cannabis law in 2013; both put a framework statute first, with licensing and age limits. Thailand did it backwards, under governments that kept changing their minds. The result was four years of whiplash for farmers, patients and shop owners, a measurable rise in teenage admissions to hospital, and a crackdown that fell hardest on the small operators who had bet their savings on the policy.

Australia took the opposite route: no legalisation, a prescription system first. That has its own problems, covered in Australia's green rush, on prescription, and Germany's partial opening has its own, in Germany, two and a half years in. Opening the door is the easy part. You need the room built first.

Fact-checked 13 October 2026. Editor verdict: Pass With Edits.