....and I think this is a terrible idea. Thailand already has a rather bad reputation for being a party country with loads of drugs and prostitution, to the point where any time I tell people that I live here they kind of chuckle about it thinking that this is all the country really offers.
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There is a lot more to Thailand than just partying, ladyboys, and prostitutes, but this is what most people think of when they hear about Thailand. You could say that the country embraces this label, and in a way they kind of have to. If you go to places like certain parts of Bangkok like Soi Cowboy, Nana, Patong in Phuket, or basically any of Pattaya, you can easily see that the debauchery that is described about Thailand around the world is very true. However, this is limited to these specific areas, unless we include the famous Full Moon Parties on Koh Phangan and those basically just go on for days even though it is against the law for them to do so.
I have been to a Full Moon Party and left after one day. I am no puritan, but seeing people wandering around like drug-addled zombies is not a good look for a country, and the reason why this isn't so much of a factor in other parts of the country is because the cutoff time for partying is legally midnight, although certain places are able to extend this to 2am.
This limits the amount of drunken zombies wandering around, causing problems, and basically making these areas seem like a very unfriendly place for families and caters almost exclusively to sex tourists.
If they were to enact this 4am cutoff point for partying, this would leave only a 4-hour window of opportunity for people to sober up before booze can legally be sold again at 8am. You can bet your bottom dollar that certain larger and richer bars would pay off the police to simply be allowed to be open 24-hours a day. The reasoning behind these parts of the country for petitioning the government to allow for later booze-selling hours is claimed to be to increase tourism revenue, but here's the thing: This rule change would likely only affect the larger establishments that are already taking a lion's share of the profits anyway.
I found it ironic that the president of the Pattaya City Night Business Association is someone named Lisa Hamilton, which is likely a foreigner. I also found it a bit silly that in the same statement about increasing tourism revenue, she also stated that the government should focus more on making Pattaya be a more "family-friendly" destination. I've been to Pattaya a couple of times and can see no real reason why anyone would ever want to take their family there. Once you arrive you can tell almost immediately that this city's focus is on prostitution. There are entire streets obviously dedicated to exclusively this industry even though technically the practice is against the law.
When I go out at night, I rarely stay out past midnight and know from the few stories that I have heard about after-hours clubs that it is extremely rare that anything good actually happens at these places.
Even though I am not an old man who thinks that everyone should be in bed by 9pm, I think that if you give drunks the ability to stay out even later, that is exactly what they are going to do. This will lead to more fights, vandalism, and silly things like people passing out in the streets. This is almost never a good look for a country that relies very heavily on tourism.
The people who are petitioning for this to happen are very wealthy and powerful people so it wouldn't surprise me if their friends in the government go ahead and push this through and allow it. It's very short-term thinking on their part and in the end I believe it will turn these areas into even messier hellholes than they already are.