Two separate stories happening across Thailand this year highlight the ongoing soul-searching that the Government is going through on how to deal with drug use.
In April, the head of Thailand’s Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), the primary agency overseeing the execution of national drug policy, affirmed that “drug users are patients” who “should have no criminal record, be able to work normally, and not be stigmatised by society”.
Yet later in September, news emerged from Phuket of the Thai paramilitary Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) – which operates under the Interior Ministry’s guidance – was setting up road checkpoints between villages, forcing traffic to stop and conducting compulsory urine drug tests on drivers and passengers. This was part of a nationwide anti-drug campaign run by the VDC.
However, multiple allegations surfaced of VDC extortion, where members of the force were demanding up to THB 15,000 to release those testing positive for drugs. The Phuket operation was suspended by the island’s governor, and a wider national investigation into extortion began.
For decades, Thailand has committed to deal with drugs as a health rather than criminal issue, with the former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra saying so in 2004. But the reality on the ground remains starkly different. Militarised forces lead drug operations on locals, detaining thousands for drug-related offences: in 2025, 70% of Thailand’s prison population was arrested for drugs; 72% of prisoners serving death sentences were doing so for drug crimes.
How does Thailand continue to arrest and sentence people involved with drugs to death, while simultaneously treat them as supposed patients?
Thailand’s zero tolerance and “patient” approach
Thailand began its zero-tolerance approach to drugs through the Narcotics Act B.E. 2522 of 1979 – a bill amended frequently over decades. Threshold quantities for possession had been mandated from the start. For methamphetamine, which later grew to become the most consumed drug in the country, the limit was set at 20 grams. Above this and it would be assumed you had intention to distribute. A 2002 amendment reduced this by a dramatic 98%: possessing more than a mere 375mg of crystal meth, or 15 yaba (pressed methamphetamine) pills would automatically land you with a sentence of four years to life as a ‘trafficker’.
However, in that same year, the Thaksin government introduced another law that sat alongside its revision of the Narcotics Act, the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act, B.E. 2545 (2002). This legislation enshrined a new principle for the first time: that people using drugs were not criminals, but patients. New threshold quantities were established, and if you were found with less than five yaba pills (or 500mg of any powdered drug), you could be diverted into treatment after assessment by a provincial committee of community leaders and healthcare professionals.
Based on the committee’s judgement, “treatment” could mean many things: it could be in-community treatment of psychotherapy sessions; or it could mean compulsory detention for four months in a rehabilitation facility – the majority of which were run by the VDC and other military forces.
In 2010, 60% of those diverted through the treatment scheme ended up being confined in these facilities, with only 25% released for treatment in the community (and 15% in prison). With harsh pre-detention conditions for those awaiting a decision, as well limited medical oversight and several allegations of beatings and torture within treatment centres, there’s serious doubts about whether this “patient”-first approach was actually a better outcome than before.
The new Narcotics Code
Reform efforts came alive in the late 2010s, with Thailand moving towards a more “balanced” approach to drugs. In 2017, the Narcotics Act was amended to address prison overcrowding, reducing drug penalties and establishing fairer judicial outcomes.
However, it was in 2021 that a new page in Thailand’s drug policy was turned when the second Prayut administration replaced the now 50-year old Narcotics Act with a new piece of legislation, the Narcotics Code B.E. 2564 (2021).
This new statute abolished mandatory minimums: evidence of intent to deal would have to be proven rather than assumed based on quantity in possession; the penalty for possession was downgraded from a maximum imprisonment sentence of 10 years to two.
The “patients, not criminals” principle was restated, with rehabilitation for low-level consumers given priority over criminalisation. This would, however, work differently than under the 2002 Rehabilitation Act, which it replaced. Under the new Narcotics Code, a person found with drugs would have them seized and be directly referred to treatment; there, if they voluntarily enter and complete treatment, all drug charges would be suspended.
The new law also established “social rehabilitation centres” to support people who use drugs to reintegrate back into society. Unlike the previous system, these centres were run by the Ministry of Public Health; they could also appoint local government officials, private or community-based organisations to run these establishments.
The new Code brought some early signs of progress: it introduced “harm reduction” as a term into Thai law for the first time. By 2021, the prison population lowered almost by a third since the 2018 peak. Thailand also took the momentous decision to decriminalise cannabis in 2022; while this change has been partially rolled back, it then meant freedom for over 4,000 prisoners.
Then, in 2024, a major reversal took place. The government, controlled by former-PM Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party, reintroduced thresholds for possession, supposedly so that the boundary between ‘consumer’ and ‘dealer’ would be clearer. A limit of five yaba pills was quickly reduced to a one-pill limit that same year: breaching this limit meant you would no longer be deemed suitable for rehabilitation, and went back to being treated as a criminal. No surprise then that, after a hard-fought decline, the number of people in prison for drug offences came back up in 2025.
How forced can treatment be?
Through all these legislative changes, what treatment looks like has remained controversial, with its ideals often differing massively from its practice.
Speaking to Unchisa Eaimtong, Asia Programme Officer for the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), she confirmed that the new Narcotics Code of 2021 was certainly progressive by having the Health Ministry deal with drug treatment.
“We saw that people weren’t really given a voluntary option. We can see that there have been efforts to develop community monitoring programmes where people don’t have to be institutionalised. But everything is abstinence-based, and there are monitoring visits where urine tests are taken”, she told TalkingDrugs.
Eaimtong highlighted that, while treatment was no longer happening in military-run establishments, conditions were still just as stark: supposed health “specialists” were running treatment centres with no medical qualifications; there were even reports of patients in private centres being shackled, kept in isolation and physically assaulted as part of their “recovery”.
“The National Human Rights Council has been monitoring these facilities. In some cases, they’ve reported that people are being chained and are even made to pay for their own chains”, Eaimtong told TalkingDrugs. The best rehabilitation centres tend to be the privately operated ones, she said.
In an understandable bid to avoid this fate, Thai people end up with the scenario mentioned earlier in Phuket: bribing officers when caught with drugs to avoid being treated as a “patient” in treatment centres.
The introduction of the thresholds for possession in 2024 was regressive, a move that reasserted criminalisation over support. “They used this idea that ‘users are patients’, that they didn’t want to put people in prison for drugs. But we’ve seen an increase in drug-related arrests since the introduction [of the thresholds]”, Eaimtong said.
“There’s a lack of accountability for the processes that police are meant to be following” she said, with plenty of instances of people caught in possession being charged with conspiracy to sell, meaning “people using drugs are still being criminalised, something that is against the original goal and objective of the reforms”.
Where will Thailand’s drug policy go now?
The balance of Thai drug policy seems to be shifting back towards punishment. In July 2025, the Pheu Thai government announced a fresh crackdown entitled “No Drugs, No Dealers”: the campaign hopes to reduce “drug-related issues” through law enforcement activity and suppress drug use across the country. Aside from usual promises to eliminate trafficking networks, there was also an emphasis on eradicating “small scale dealers”.
In October 2026, Prime Minister Anutin (the same one who brought in the one-pill limit for yaba possession) put forward an amendment to the Narcotics Code to extend how long police can detain someone for suspicion of drug-related crimes from three to seven days; critically it would also redefine drug possession of any amount as drug trafficking. Anutin argued that such changes would strengthen drug suppression and improve access to rehabilitation.
At the same time, the Ministry of Public Health has also suggested removing threshold quantities for Category 1 substances, which includes methamphetamine, to facilitate law enforcement operations. This would have a similar effect as any change to the Narcotics Code, effectively eliminating a distinction between consumer and trafficker in law. There’s a risk that this might happen quickly as it is an amendment to a ministerial order, requiring no parliamentary assent.
Eaimtong said that IDPC and other Thai civil society organisations are concerned that these changes could “undermine the balanced strategy built up over the five years of the Narcotics Code’s implementation”, which despite “all of its problems…remains a positive step”.
The uncertainty in distinguishing between “dealers” and “consumers” given the narrow possession limits, and the way that the law is unevenly enforced (not to mention that many people may engage in low-level dealing to fund their use), seems to be moving Thailand back into a criminal-led situation, where all hard-earned progress on health over punishment is lost.
The fact that harm reduction is enshrined in the law is positive, as is the fact that civil society groups were allowed to become partners in the state’s approach to drug use, taking on roles that government is failing to fulfil (for example, by running needle exchanges).
“There are a lot of people in government agencies genuinely trying to oversee a health and human rights-based response” Eaimtong told TalkingDrugs, but “the tone of high level politics can be a real barrier”.
With the number of people incarcerated for drugs spiralling out of control, it’s clear that Thailand needs another push to balance drug control again away from punishment – an uphill battle in the country’s current environment.
