Bangkok, Thailand – Even at the Nana intersection, a pulsating mecca of this megacity’s seamy nightlife scene, the Wonderland cannabis shop is hard to miss.Its sprawling, ruby-pink signboard screams across the busy crossroads, broadcasting the wares inside with the help of neon lights twisted into luminescent marijuana leaves.
It is Saturday afternoon, and business should be good. But it is not.
Just days earlier, Thailand’s government imposed new rules sharply curbing the sale of cannabis, only three years after decriminalising the plant with much fanfare and unleashing a billion-dollar business in the process.
All sales of cannabis buds must now be accompanied by a doctor’s prescription – a stipulation aimed at choking off the recreational market, the mainstay of most of the thousands of dispensaries that now dot the country.
Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin has also announced his intention to place the plant back on the country’s controlled narcotics list within 45 days, putting it in the company of cocaine, heroin and meth.
Nanuephat Kittichaibawan, an assistant manager at Wonderland, said his shop used to serve 10 or more customers an hour most afternoons.
Now, even with an in-house doctor to write prescriptions on the spot, “it is just one or two”, he told Al Jazeera.
“It is more complicated than it used to be, and for some people it will be too much,” he added.
Like many in the business, he worries the new rules may e …
