Immigration police seize 929 cannabis plants at Lak Si grow house
On 29 January 2025 Thai immigration officers and local police raided a four-storey commercial building in Lak Si, Bangkok, seizing 929 cannabis plants and arresting Vietnamese caretaker Nguyen Ngoc Huan, 49, who lacked a work permit; the site had no Bangkok licence to cultivate controlled cannabis.
🇹🇭 Soi Ngamwongwan 32, Thung Song Hong, Lak Si, Bangkok · Thailand
Acting on neighbourhood complaints about smell and unlicensed foreign workers, Immigration Division
1 led a search on 29 January 2025 at a four-storey commercial block in Soi Ngamwongwan 32, Thung
Song Hong, Lak Si district, with Prachachuen police and officials from the Department of Thai
Traditional and Alternative Medicine.[1][2]
Officers found climate-controlled grow rooms on the upper floors and storage on the ground level,
with 929 cannabis plants in various stages of growth plus harvested material.[1][2]They arrested
Nguyen Ngoc Huan, a 49-year-old Vietnamese man who said he had tended the crop for about four months
for 20,000 baht a month from a Thai employer he knew only as Ton, and charged him with working
without permission and processing controlled cannabis for trade without a licence.[2]
Department officials said the building lacked a valid Bangkok cultivation permit although a company
registered elsewhere held unrelated paperwork; legal action against the owner was pending.[1][2]
Photos and video
Cannabis plants inside the Lak Si commercial building raided in late January 2025.Photo details
Thailand's government said 12,279 cannabis shops nationwide hold licences and that inspectors will suspend the licences of those selling without prescriptions, advertising, allowing smoking on the premises or selling online, with revocation for a second offence. Sixty-six appeals against suspension or revocation orders were filed in 2026, including 31 from Bangkok and 15 from Phuket.
Administrative and public-health officers raided an unlicensed cannabis shop on Ratsada Road in Mueang Phuket on 4 November 2026, arresting the 41-year-old female owner. They seized 36 cannabis items, seven other items and 123,290 baht in cash and handed the case to Mueang Phuket police for prosecution.
Immigration police and narcotics officials raided a cannabis storage and packing warehouse in Sam Wa Tawan Tok, Bangkok, on 31 October 2026, arresting 14 foreign nationals. Two Vietnamese suspects faced drug and immigration charges, while 12 other Vietnamese and Myanmar nationals were charged under immigration and work laws.
Immigration police raided a rented three-storey house in Bang Khen after neighbours complained about the smell and found more than five tonnes of cannabis flowers. Five foreign nationals sorting the flowers were detained; the licence the operation relied on had been issued for another province.
