Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is most known outside Thailand for two things: his 2026 center-right electoral victory and his advocacy for the legalization of marijuana in Thailand. Those two things will always be related, as recently he warned he might shut down the booming industry due to a rise in cannabis trafficking out of Thailand. “We need to figure out what we should do to prevent other countries from blaming Thailand as being the weak link in this problem,” Anutin warned.
Critical European partners have seen a rise in cannabis smuggling, as Germany recently reported two seizures of 1.2 tonnes with a street value of $13 million, both inbound from Thailand. And the pressure is rising, since the issue may threaten Thailand’s OECD bid.
Internal criticism of Anutin for these failures came right as the Thai leader saw a major drop in public support, from 29.4 percent of the public preferring him as the leading choice for prime minister in a NIDA poll in January to just 21.7 percent in early July. Consequently, Anutin might very well pull the trigger and reverse one of the country’s most significant policy shifts in recent memory – one that he himself advocated for years.
The cost of this, however, would be to doom an emerging industry, and there are other ways of solving the short-term optical challenges facing his government.
