Thailand's government legally designates Asalha Puja, along with several other major Buddhist holy days, as a day on which the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited nationwide, a statutory restriction enforced against retailers, bars and restaurants across the country regardless of an individual business owner's own religious observance, reflecting the day's status as a significant Buddhist holy day recognised directly in Thai civil law rather than left purely to individual or communal religious choice.
The restriction extends to the following day as well, since Asalha Puja falls immediately before the start of Vassa, the rains retreat, and Thai authorities treat the pair of days together as a period warranting the alcohol sale ban, a specific and enforceable civic expression of Buddhism's close relationship with the Thai state that has no real equivalent in how most Western countries treat their own major religious holy days, where such restrictions, when they exist at all today, have generally been relaxed or repealed over recent decades.
In Sri Lanka the same full moon is kept as Esala Poya, a public holiday marked with alms-giving and temple observances distinct from the specific alcohol-sale restriction Thailand imposes, and it falls within the same lunar month, Esala, that gives its name to Kandy's great Esala Perahera procession of the Sacred Tooth Relic, though the multi-day Perahera itself is a separate observance from the Poya day commemorating the Buddha's first sermon.