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As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question is the alcohol law that is apparently coming into effect here in Thailand a disaster in the making. Initially I thought of making this video after reading a recent Tweet on X under Community post, Thainews, under Personal Thailand @PersonalThailand. Quote: "Today, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act (No. 2) B.E. 2568 (2025) officially took effect, published in The Royal Gazette on 9th September 2025. It repealed the 1972 order Banning alcohol sales between 2 PM and 5 PM in Thailand. The new Act does not establish new hours or fines and transfers authority over alcohol sales to the Ministry of Public Health enabling the MOPH to set sales times. As always drink with moderation." So yeah, okay, that's a fair point. 

That said, moving over here, I thought of that and then I did some further research. Let's go over to the Nation. So yeah, insofar is that is correct on its face, there are no longer these alcohol times, but the 2 to 5 PM thing. By the way, they could have just abolished that and not passed all these new rules, but it looks like they have passed a bunch of new stuff and I don't know that it's going to be great for the alcohol industry. Quoting directly, from the Nation that's nationthailand.com, the article is titled: New alcohol control law takes effect amid concern over missing secondary regulations. So, this is a situation where they are rolling out the Law but they don't have the regulations in place, so we don't exactly know what's going on. That said, quoting directly, and I urge those who are watching this video go check out this article in the Nation; there's more in there. Quoting directly: "The new Alcohol Control Act officially came into force on November 8, sparking concern among business operators and the private sector over the lack of accompanying secondary legislation, which they warned could create legal uncertainty and directly affect business operations." Quoting directly: "Prapawee Hemathas, Director-General of the Craft Beer Trade Association, said the most pressing issue was the missing sub-regulation on advertising and publicity, which plays a key role in modern marketing. The new law allows for publicity but not advertising, two terms that are similar in concept but vastly different in legal interpretation." Quoting further: "Under the old law, businesses were even prohibited from displaying product images or beer bottles on social media, creating fear among small producers. "Without clear secondary regulations businesses will struggle to survive." Quoting further: "Sorathep Rojpotjanaruch, President of the Restaurant Business Entrepreneurs Association, added that government regulations should aim to support and enable people to work and trade smoothly, not to hinder businesses or harm the economy." Yeah, that's another big question and the reason is quoting further: "The new law also reiterates penalties for drinking outside permitted hours. If customers" -- and this is the big thing. This law is shifting the onus on to customers. I don't know if people have been watching this channel for that long. I did a video some time ago talking about why Thailand did not need what are called 'dram shop laws'. They tried to bring in legislation similar to what we have in certain jurisdictions in the United States called 'dram shop laws', where if somebody gets drunk in a bar and then proceeds to go somewhere else and perhaps is driving for example, but it could be other things, and hurts themselves, hurts others, there may be some legal onus that's drugged back to whoever served them in the bar, in whatever establishment they were in that they possibly became intoxicated on. I thought that was a terrible idea for a variety of different reasons; I made it clear at the time. They seem to have kind of abandoned that. Now they're bringing up these new laws but the onus seems to be on the customer, and so let's quote further: "If customers, including foreign tourists -- continue drinking after the legal cutoff (2 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. or 1:00 a.m.) with unfinished beverages, both the venue and the customer could face fines of up to 10,000 Baht." And as they further go into in this article, this could have tremendous negative implications on an industry that Thailand's tourism sector is heavily dependent on. I have serious questions with who came up with this law, why? When you read the article, they start and I definitely respect different people's faith okay, and there are different faiths that have different views on alcohol; some very tolerant, some very stringent. This is a matter of policy and to place the onus, especially on foreign tourists, that they might be able to be fined up to 10,000 baht for having a beer between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in Thailand, is that good policy? Is that going to set us in good stead for tourism here in Thailand?

I understand the need to regulate for what's the purpose of this? What are we trying to stop? What bad act are we trying to; I understand, regulations, to keep those who are underage away from it. I understand regulations for, I don't necessarily agree with it but I understand the argument of regulations to not glamorize alcohol or something of that nature. I can understand that, but this? This is a really bad idea and this could have tremendous negative ramifications across the board for the tourism sector in Thailand alone. And the other thing is as a result of this so what, do you want people to go buy up a six pack of beer at 1:55 p.m. and then sit around outside drinking it? What's the policy thinking behind this? What's the outcome we're looking for other than just Nanny-mindering and "oh you can't drink between 2 to 5 pm. which that was never the original intention behind the original decree, which by the way, I think was promulgated under a military government in the ‘70s. No the thinking was they didn't want you to sell retail spell alcohol between 2 to 5 pm when kids were getting off school; that was my understanding was the underlying policy reasoning. Not alcohol in a hotel, not alcohol in any kind of setting that's a restaurant or an establishment or even a bar. It was for retail sales, again, and the policy thinking was "hey we don't want kids getting off from school and then it's 3 pm and they get a beer from wherever. One, there are already laws in place for that. Kids getting off school aren’t of age to be able to go and buy alcohol to begin with. How about we enforce that rule? But okay, if we are going to treat ourselves like we're a bunch of children who can't enforce that rule, fine. I understood it even in a retail context. I didn't necessarily agree with it but I understood the argument. This! What's the argument? Just we don't want people drinking from 2 to 5 pm? Why? And by the way, people that are on vacation here in Thailand and this other thing of "oh well we can do it through zoning". So what? Now some guy, he gets the luck of the non-draw just because he happened to have rented a place to set up his food and beverage business that's not in a zoned area? He is going to be detrimentally impacted by this arbitrary zoning their setting? How about we just not have this 2 - 5 rule where you can't drink? Especially in the context of again, retail sales I get, but oh now a bar, what? It's just supposed to be teetotal for 3 hours in the middle of the day? How's anybody supposed to run a business that way? And then meanwhile, you have got closing times and all kinds - as they brought up in another, I don't know if it was this article or another article I was reading about this, but it also brings up for the possibility and I'm not saying the police are necessarily prone to this, but it's just an objective fact, it could lead to the possibility of then having people being shaken down to run what theretofore had been a perfectly lawful business. It reminds me of the arbitrary and capricious way they went after the Cannabis folks this past summer without any real legal authority for it. They just went and did it. I get that there is some promulgated law at issue here, but again there are no regulations to it and what we are looking at right now is the situation, I think it was even described, I think it was in the Thai Examiner as Thailand "shooting itself in the foot" with respect to this, or at least it's tourism sector being "shot in the foot" - maybe it's not shooting itself in the foot because I don't think the tourism sector came up with this, nor would have imposed this upon themselves which begs the question, who's doing this? What members of Parliament were for these changes? We want to know going into the next election. Who is doing this stuff and why? What's the benefit to some of this stuff?

Again, I understand not wanting to glamorize alcohol, and not wanting to spread it, but this 2 to 5 thing? I also even understood the argument not doing retail sales between that time period but to come in and stop a small business from being able to sell a beer to somebody at 3 p.m. on a Friday, that has just gotten off of a plane from wherever and wants to relax and be a tourist in Thailand, that's going to have a tremendous negative impact on the overall tourism sector here in Thailand especially if this is nitpickedly enforced by whoever is set to enforce this which apparently now Ministry of Public Health is becoming a new operator in this sort of space. 

Again, a lot of this remains to be seen. I'm hoping we will see cooler heads prevail on this and that we are not going to see this rolled out the way it looks like it's being rolled out. That being said, we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.