, so to speak, is now in serious recession, while the latter has been given a long overdue boost. And it has ramifications for tourism. How fortunes can change. The most recent rule change was the one regarding alcohol sales, specifically the hours when retailers and restaurants could sell it. Thailand’s domestic consumers and tourists had long been flummoxed by the country’s weird restrictions on trading hours, which, for the past 53 years, had been banned between 12pm and 11am and again between 2pm and 5pm daily. There was no actual legislation behind this; instead, it was simply a decree issued by the then-ruling military junta in 1972. Thanom Kittikachorn, the junta’s leader, held the rank of Field Marshal, and he was very clear about his likes and dislikes: among the latter were communists, anyone who disagreed with him, and government officials who boozed on the job. He thought that the government pen-pushers would be more productive if they couldn’t buy the stuff in the afternoon. Finally, after years of rumours about review and liberalisation, it has finally happened, for a while anyway. For 180 days, alcohol sales are now permitted throughout the afternoon, meaning supermarkets and convenience stores will no longer need to rope off large sections of their floorspace. Bizarrely, the news came just days after the rules on consumption were tightened (yes, Amazing Thailand again), which attracted such a backlash that the embarrassed regulators had to backpedal with unseemly haste. The liberalisation isn’t unambiguously good news for everyone. Thailand’s modern retail chains pretty much all abided by the old rules and will benefit from the liberalisation, but hundreds of thousands of mum-and-pop retailers won’t be thrilled, as many had profited under the old decree by selling outside the legal hours when the big boys couldn’t. Since many are small rural or marginal-urban businesses that are strongly integrated into their local communities, enforcement was very difficult. Now, however, the playing field has been levelled, at least for now, and tourists will no longer be annoyed at not being able to buy a beer at a minute past two in the afternoon. In all fairness, the Thai Health Ministry’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Committee had some justification for dragging its feet on liberalisation. Drunk driving is a key reason for the bloodthirsty reputation of Thailand’s roads, where fatalities average 50 per day.   Meanwhile, cannabis sales are crashing While the alcohol laws are being gingerly liberalised, Thailand is now about six months into its reining in of recreational cannabis use, which flourished after cannabis was delisted as a narcotic in mid-2022 and gave rise to a goldrush of investment in plantations, processing facilities and front-end retail distribution. No one knows for sure how many weed shops sprang up, but estimates go as high as about 18,000, many with racy shopfronts and lounge furniture inside for customers to kick back and consume the wares. Now, purchases can only be made with a doctor’s prescription and thousands of shops have folded. It is likely that when the attrition process has played out, fewer than a quarter of those shops will still be in operation. Some are surviving by having a doctor on-site scribbling prescriptions, but it isn’t always economical for the weed retailers to do that. Breaking the law incurs very significant fines and possibly jail time, and Thai jails are not world-famous for their comfort. An industry estimated to be worth well over a billion dollars annually is being decimated.   The impact is not only being felt by the retail industry and the landlords who own the property out of which cannabis was being sold: tourism is also taking a hit. During the growth months, the weed became a magnet for tourists, and now that is finished. A lot of the shops and dispensaries were in the leading tourism destinations of Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and Chiang Mai. Not everyone is unhappy Although some tourists who would have come for the easygoing pot scene will now look elsewhere, there are a lot of potential tourists and certainly local Thais who are not at all unhappy about the changes. The ubiquitous weed dispensaries, weed cafes, weed spas and weed clubs with their exotic shopfronts struck many as offensive. Worse, many tourists lit up joints in the outdoor sections of conventional restaurants, annoying other customers. This was particularly true in the tourist locations where pot smoking also became common on the beaches and other public places. Thailand’s tourism is in decline Tourism was well off the boil in Thailand in 2025, and the new cannabis restrictions were only one factor. Indeed, tourism was already tailing off before the new regulations took effect, and the government says that the number of international visitors in 2025 was approximately 33 million, down by more than 7 per cent from the previous year. Malaysian visitors topped the list, beating the Chinese, who are traditionally big spenders on vacation, into second place. Indian visitors came in third, and Russian visitors came in fourth. Safety issues dominate the factors driving the decline, and neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam have mounted successful marketing campaigns to siphon away tourists from Thailand. It’s impossible to say whether or how quickly Thailand can get the Chinese visitors back. Still, the Tourism Authority of Thailand is looking (very optimistically) for a 50 per cent increase to get the number back to the 2024 level of 6.7 million. Either way, weed tourism is dead, but at least visitors can booze through the afternoon hours without fear of being outside the law. Further reading: Tourist trap: The risks of becoming over-reliant on overseas shoppers