Yes, it's been proclaimed before, raids on the bars have happened, a few yabba users and non-Thais are taken off to a police station - and everything then gets back to normal. But will it this time?

On 21 February 2017, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, the Prime Minister and junta head, announced that he will order the police to uproot Pattaya’s sex industry. He asserted that local authorities always do their best to suppress the industry.
The reason on this occasion seems to be a report in one of the UK's newspaper rags, The Daily Mirror. This claimed that Pattaya was the "world's sex capital" with the "world's highest number of prostitutes."

Prayut was unhappy both at the report appearing in an international journal and at the Thai media following it up!

“You’re the Thai media. Do you believe them? Do the authorities arrest [prostitutes]? Yes, they do. I will order the police to clear them out. And let’s see if there will be any trouble. I don’t support prostitution. I follow the law,” said Prayut. “Instead of improving Thailand’s image, you [media] just keep blaming the government. Why? I don’t get it.”
Will this just blow over as before? In the last three days there have been raids on girlie go-go bars with several ordered to close down. So far as I know, there have been no raids yet in the gay areas.

http://prachatai.org/english/node/6942

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