The Five-Year Plan to decriminalize cannabis and return it to its status as a traditional medicine of Thai culture – initiated in 2018 by Thailand’s Minister of Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul – comes to a close with an impending Parliamentary discussion and vote over new regulations concerning the plant.
Anutin and his party, the Bhumjithai, gained seats in the previous election riding cannabis decriminalization on their platform. Anutin cast his vote wearing a shirt printed with pot leaves.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic intervened. It’s bad. They’re not back. Thailand’s economy tanked, and the election in May last year saw a new coalition government put in place by a nation in an economic depression.
The Thai economy, which relies heavily on tourism, had shown robust growth for several years and by 2019, was around 7% annually. It fell to under 2% in 2020, and ended the calendar year 2023 having grown less than 2.5%.
The cannabis industry has been estimated to have garnered $80 million in 2021, a relatively small figure, but is projected to bring in as much as $1.5 billion by 2025 and more than $10 billion by 2030.*
Sometime soon, possibly this month, the new cannabis rules will be published in the Royal Gazette and become law. There is wild speculation about what will happen.
Many believe the herb will return to the quasi-legal state it has in other nations, restricted to medicinal use only.
Others believe the recreational marketplace has grown too large to curtail because cannabis income has become a necessary part of Thailand’s post-pandemic pursuit of the return of tourism.
The election last year threw the matter into further confusion. Though new Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin publicly supports returning cannabis to only medical licensing, coalition governance has allowed Anutin to be kept on as Minister of the Interior and Thammanat Prompao, who served as a deputy agriculture minister during decriminalization, to serve as the new Minister of Agriculture.
There is good reason to believe in a measured continuation to Thai policy liberalizing the production and sale of cannabis, but … the recreational free-for-all could come to an end as swiftly as it started.
Alex Haze, a Thai journalist says: “When they legalized it, nobody saw it coming. It happened in one night. (But) the same thing happened with Kratom, thirty or forty years ago. One day. Then, it only took them one day to end it. They just said, ‘It’s illegal, put them away. We’re clearing everything out.’ They can put it back.”
It is apparent Thailand is producing cannabis in volume with intention to export. They’re propagating huge quantities of high quality cannabis they’ve grown using the best strains from California and around the world at low cost. After all, they can sell abroad even if they return to legalizing it solely for medicinal purposes … that’s what England does.
The export value is immeasurable.
It’s a market other nations are leaping into and in which California cannot possibly compete – despite having the highest quality product – because current cannabis export license fees are absurdly high due to the lack of a federal policy on cannabis in the USA.
Smuggling is an inevitability of the economic circumstances. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Thai authorities, led by Anutin Charnvirakul, based the new policies of the Thai FDA on the medicinal value of cannabis as supported by Thai culture and a long history of cultivation and use. Ganja, as such, has been used in traditional medicine here for more than 2500 years, as evidenced by remedies prescribing the herb found sculpted into ancient temple walls.
The shift in perspective from ‘harsh penalties against possession of a narcotic’ to ‘establishing production of a medicinal herb’ seeks to make Thailand a cannabis hub in Asia.
The Public Health Ministry plan under Anutin progressively ended prohibition of cannabis in stages:
They first decriminalized the production of hemp in 2018, then CBD for medicinal purposes in 2020. Since June of 2022, THC has been legal for both medicinal purposes and general sale, making Thailand the third country, after Canada and Uruguay, to decriminalize cannabis nationwide.
The Thai FDA began by promoting growth of cannabis for medical research. They gave Thai farmers one million seedlings and, with the aid of experts from abroad, taught Thai farmers how to propagate and cultivate them.
Thai culture has always used ganja, but Thailand began conducting medical research on the health benefits of the plant, first focusing on CBD, then, by removing THC from the schedule of narcotic, Thai public health officials spent the last year and a half investigating what it means to allow marijuana to be sold by farms on the open market.
All of this led to the emergence of cannabis agriculture in a recreational-use consumer marketplace that has rapidly grown oversaturated and filled with foreign product.
Through both legal acquisition and the smuggling of dozens of strains, infusions, vapes and oils from Northern California into Thailand, the highest strength product from California is now available at most dispensaries in Bangkok.
California farmers who had nowhere to ship their surplus product from our own oversaturated marketplace, found a perfect venue. Smuggling has ensured the world knows NorCal still has the best – Emerald Triangle.
Thai farmers complained that decriminalization brought a lax attitude toward smuggling, resulting in more potent varieties from NorCal and elsewhere selling better than the marijuana grown by the nascent Thai industry.
As I write this in December of 2023, the Thais are on their second or third cycle of outdoor (greenhouse) cultivation and third or fourth cycle of indoor production.
They have been successful at propagating clones from California, Oregon, Colorado and Vancouver because of the ideal climate and rapid free-marketization that led to competitive aggressiveness by farmers who would come to Bangkok and see a gram of the material selling for up to a thousand baht ($35).
It is reasonable to believe that product here will soon match or exceed California’s in strength and variety.
“When it was legalized a year ago, June, there was about 90% imported, 10% local,” a 72-year-old, licensed medical marijuana patient told me, “Now it’s up in the neighborhood of 90% local and 10% imported – and the imported is only specialties.”
They have been so successful at farming cannabis in such a short amount of time, that Thailand has begun producing high-grade product in volume for export.
The Thais are producing tons of cannabis, and cannabis exports are a growing economy around the world. Uruguay, the first nation to legalize cannabis, now exports millions of dollars worth of hemp – primarily to Portugal, Switzerland and Israel, but also to the United States.
Remarkably, since 2019, the United Kingdom now leads the world in cannabis exports. Despite that it only legalized medical marijuana, the majority of the export material from the U.K. is high-percentage THC, around 60%.
Namwan, a budtender in Bangkok reported that, “The first two days after cannabis was legalized one of the most famous seed banks from Europe, the Royal Queen, opened their shop. Within 48 hours of the law. They had everything set up.”
That’s the market the Thais seek to enter, knowing they can export high grade medicial cannabis product globally, unburdened by the steep cost of the export license faced by California producers.
The glut in the cannabis economy here in California led to a downturn in income for the state and the recent return of illegal cannabis farming and smuggling. This is the direct result of an inability to inexpensively export California product.
We urgently need to lower fees for export licensing.
Exportation requires meeting international standards and the Thai government knows it. They have prioritized the importance of testing throughout their legalization process. Testing and reporting of cannabis properties has proved to be excellent.
Thailand is about to undercut everybody in one of the fastest growing sectors of the global health economy.
It has only been a year and a half. The rapid, orderly progress of the Thai government on this issue and the agricutural expertise Thai farmers have brought to pivoting to cannabis production and sale is an astonishing turnaround. They are taking it seriously, conducting their own research and development, and producing high quality material in Thailand.
The world awaits the regulations these five years of research will bring. In a flip, California, the rest of the USA and India could learn a good deal from the Thais.
This age-restricted playlist contains an hour of my documentary footage from Thailand on cannabis decriminalization:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6MLenCfGOlRJ1jUL9txJxxsDv3YzTn0W&si=RU9shZ5MbsF8_aeP
* “The Thailand legal cannabis market size was valued at USD 80.3 million in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 58.4% from 2022 to 2030. The growth can be attributed to cannabis legalization and its rising usage for medical purposes.” – source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/thailand-legal-cannabis-market-report
MTK The Writist 