How to Get a Cannabis Prescription in Thailand (PT 33)

If you last visited Thailand before the middle of 2025, the thing you remember is gone. You cannot walk into a shop, point at a jar and pay. Since 26 June 2025 cannabis flower is a controlled herb, and a prescription is the price of entry.

The good news is that it is a genuinely small hurdle. It is a half-hour conversation, not a medical ordeal.

What a PT 33 actually is

A paper prescription issued by a licensed practitioner, naming what you are prescribed, the dose and the duration. Shops and customers both call it a PT 33 after the form.

Three things about it surprise people:

• It is single use. No refills. Next time is a new prescription.
• It covers a maximum of thirty days’ supply. The practitioner decides what that means for what they have prescribed.
• The shop keeps it. A licensed dispensary has to retain the prescription and produce it if it is inspected, for at least a year.

Who can write one

Seven categories of practitioner, which is wider than most people assume:

• Medical doctors, practising from a clinic or hospital
• Thai traditional practitioners
• Applied Thai traditional practitioners
• Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners
• Folk healers
• Pharmacists
• Dentists

In practice most dispensaries either have an arrangement with a practitioner or can tell you where the nearest one is holding consultations.

If you are a tourist

You can get one. Nothing in the rules restricts eligibility by nationality, and there is no separate track for long-stay visa holders either. You see a Thai practitioner, in Thailand, and they issue it.

Two things to be clear about:

A prescription from home does not work. A foreign prescription is not recognised. Whatever you have from your own doctor, you still need a Thai one.

Bring your passport. Shops ask for photo ID and a passport is the thing every foreigner has. This is standard practice rather than something written into the notification, but turning up without it will waste your trip.

What happens in the consultation

You will be asked what you are looking for and about anything relevant in your medical history. Sleep, pain, appetite and anxiety are the common reasons people give and none of them raise an eyebrow.

Do not invent symptoms. The practitioner is making a clinical judgement and writing their name on it, and a bad consultation is the one where somebody has decided in advance what they want to be told.

If you take other medication, say so. Some interactions matter.

How long it takes and what it costs

Around thirty minutes for the consultation itself. Most people who message a shop in advance are seen the same day.

Fees vary and change, so ask when you book rather than trusting a number you read online, including this one.

The bit worth planning for

Because a prescription is single use and capped at thirty days’ supply, it is not a permit you carry around for the rest of your trip. If you are here for a fortnight and you buy twice, that may well be two consultations.

Worth asking the practitioner directly at the time: what have you written, and what does it cover. You want to know that before you travel on to the next town.

What might change

On 22 September 2026 the Cabinet approved a draft Cannabis Control Act which would put cannabis on a medical and health footing only. It has not passed the House and it is not in force, so it changes nothing about the process above today.

If it does pass, the direction of travel is towards prescriptions signed by doctors and a more clinical setting generally. That is a reason to ask a shop what is current rather than rely on a page like this one, however carefully it is dated.