Hundreds of cannabis entrepreneurs, farmers and activists rallied in Bangkok and threatened legal action against the Thai government as it pushes ahead with a plan to reclassify marijuana as a narcotic just two years after decriminalizing it.
At Tuesday’s rally in front of the United Nations’ regional headquarters in the Thai capital, nearly 2,000 signatures were collected in support of a legal petition to stall the government’s move. Cannabis advocates held posters with messages like “stop villainizing cannabis.”
The petition would be filed with an administrative court against Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, said Jerawat Tanyaprirom, a cannabis business owner who collected the signatures. The forms required petitioners to specify any financial losses they would suffer if the government goes ahead with the u-turn.
“If the government backed down, we wouldn’t need to file this petition. But we want to have this as an ammunition,” Jerawat said.
A complete re-criminalization ordered by Srettha earlier this month has thrown the local cannabis industry into fresh uncertainties. Srettha said Thailand would put cannabis back into the list of “category five” narcotics — which would make it a crime to “produce, sell, import, export, or possess” the plant and use it — after the Southeast Asian nation became the first in Asia to decriminalize the plant in 2022.
H/T: www.bloomberg.com
