Let’s call it what it is: Thailand’s retreat on cannabis isn’t about public health, decency, or the illusion of national dignity. It’s a craven lurch back into the arms of self-imposed ignorance—a grotesque puppetry performed for the global narcotics bureaucracy, moralistic social conservatives, and finger-wagging ‘respectables’ who’d sooner see people caged than free.

Are we honestly supposed to believe cannabis—the same plant that built a $1 billion industry practically overnight and put money into the hands of everyday Thais—suddenly constitutes public menace, worthy of police crackdowns and destroyed livelihoods? Pull the other one. Had Thailand’s government discovered that cannabis threatened not its citizens’ health, but the steel grip of the old guard and its army of would-be gatekeepers?

Let’s get uncomfortable. The world applauded as Thailand stepped, shakily but bravely, into the realm of sanity—legalizing cannabis, and with it, hope for farmers, small business owners, cancer patients, and anyone yearning for more than dogmatic, draconian drug policies. Overnight, fortunes were built, arrest records stopped ballooning, and a new story for Thailand beckoned: one not built on colonialist vice laws and Western hypocrisy, but on agency and economic revolution.

But that dream is inconvenient for the fossilized elite. They howl about children getting high, about social decay, about being ‘responsible’ members of the international order. What they mean: ‘we are terrified that ordinary Thais—rural, urban, and restless—might have a sliver of autonomy.’ Come off it. The hypocrisy staggers. Do we recall the alcohol-soaked ‘sophistication’ of Thailand’s upper crust, their casino splurges, or the hush-money paid after a rich teen’s coke-binge crash? Doubtful. Those vices remain invisible, anesthetized by wealth.

Now, with a signature and a sneer, the government will put thousands of small businesses back in the crosshairs—families who risked everything in a rare dance with prosperity. Cops will turn back into predators. Investors will flee. Meanwhile, the opioid cartels—who look at cannabis as an annoyance—will rub their hands in glee.

But worst of all? The ‘good citizen’ will avert their eyes, muttering about public order, with their own shaky hangovers ignored. The world will mourn a ‘lost investment’ and move on. And the cycle of guilt, shame, and economic cluelessness will once again be Thai law’s most reliable harvest.

How much longer will societies destroy themselves to preserve the illusion that moral panic is virtue? Will you cheer this regression, pretending it keeps anyone safe? Or will you finally admit: the real danger is cowardice in the face of progress?

This article was inspired by the headline: 'Thailand moves to recriminalise cannabis, shaking $1 billion industry - Reuters'.