Thai government declares independent marijuana vendors are illegal

I knew this was going to happen and am just kind of happy about how "cool" the police and government are being about it. When weed was made 100% legal for personal use about a month ago I knew that it was going to be a bit of a shit show of a rollout. Almost immediately, independent retailers started setting up stands all over the city and they even have food trucks of sorts that roam around the city selling their wares like an ice cream truck.

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This was always going to happen because when the government made the drug legal, they didn't give very specific information about the capacity in which it was legal but just simply stated that smoking weed in public is considered a "public nuisance" and was punishable. They didn't state who could sell it and where so naturally the public jumped at the opportunity to be the first on the scene.

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Now the government is stepping in and stating that the only legal places that can sell buds are registered dispensaries and I would presume that this also means that they obtain their product from government approved growers and they tax the hell out of it.

While this isn't exactly the sort of freedom that I was hoping for I suppose it is still a massive leap from what the rules were before. The people who set up these stands and have the trucks are not being arrested or charged but simply warned that they are not allowed to do that and that if they see them there again, their good will be confiscated. This is actually a very nice gesture of the part of the authorities compared to what it has been like in the past.

I think it was a good idea to legalize the harmless plant, but I called it very early on when they didn't specifically designate who was allowed to sell it, when, and where. I suppose they are working it out now. I just hope that this doesn't become like everything else in Thailand where just the already rich are allowed to be in the trade, leaving the common man behind.