Are things changing?

I saw a message today in Thai in a private chat group run by a local cannabis shop I’ve bought from in the past, although most of its customers are locals. It started out as what seemed like a normal announcement, offering to help anyone who wanted to obtain a medical cannabis certificate through the shop.

Then the tone changed.

The second part of the message said that if you travel around Thailand carrying cannabis, they now recommend having a medical certificate because the police are becoming stricter about stopping and inspecting people. That was the first thing that caught my attention.

The second thing I noticed was that they weren’t saying you needed a certificate to buy from them. Instead, they were recommending only that people have one for their own protection.

The only other time I remember them mentioning medical certificates was back in late June 2025, when the government first announced that people needed them. As I recall, starting on 26 June they required certificates for purchases, and that policy lasted for about a month, but they weren’t warning people about the risks of carrying cannabis. After roughly 30 days, they dropped the certificate requirement, presumably because it no longer seemed necessary. They haven’t mentioned it since then.

This latest message feels different. Instead of presenting certificates as a shop policy, it comes across as a safety warning. It makes me wonder whether the authorities are planning to enforce the “medical use only” rules more actively against users, and whether people without a medical certificate could start getting into trouble with the law for carrying even small amounts of cannabis.