Perhaps we're all missing the point and the Thai government aren't so daft after all as perhaps they're working off that well trotted out "fact"? that there's MUCH more profit on soft drinks than there is on alcohol and in fact bar owners would and should be delighted if we were all sitting drinking nothing but Coke all night ( personally I doubt that whole more profit thing and who wants to drink 6 pints of coke on a night out .....but still)
So MAYBE this is their serious attempt at quickly and vastly increasing the profits in all of the tills in the bars they had to close right across Thailand !
( note my tongue is firmly lodged in my cheek as I type this as the phrase piss up and brewery and couldn't organise comes to mind quicker perhaps )