After weeks of speculation and at times outright denials, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has finally made changes to his Thai cabinet as of yesterday, April 28th, 2024.
There is plenty to talk about but we are only going to focus on one change for this editorial and that is the removal of Public Health Minister Cholnan Srikaew and his replacement, former Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin.
Cholnan had been, regardless if he wanted to be, the “face” of an increasingly passionate and polarizing debate over legal cannabis in Thailand, which was decriminalized in 2022 by then Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who remains the powerful Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister.
Somsak, the incoming health minister, was the justice minister when cannabis was decriminalized in 2022 and had stated multiple times that he supported that move at the time as it had over filled prisons with non violent drug users and offenders. He has also recently said he supports moving forward on the cannabis draft act, which officially is for medical reasons only but as stated has been stuck in debate for years due to some groups wanting dramatic changes.
One particular sticky point is proposing to ban recreational use entirely and implement up to 60,000 baht fines for being caught doing so. This has caused major anger with cannabis activists who claim this rule would be abused by corrupt officials to mainly extort foreigners for cash, like vaping previously. They also claim it is too vague in defining what medical use is versus recreational use.
And recently Thai PM Srettha Thavisin publicly said in a foreign tv interview he personally wanted to make cannabis a narcotic again, which caused major disruption and outrage from cannabis supporters. This would essentially make anyone who used cannabis a criminal and reimplement major fines and jail time. Srettha felt cannabis had caused major social issues and problems, especially for youth, with limited economic benefits. He did not, however, provide specific examples or peer reviewed data of these claims.
Read the full editorial at
