The Thai Government Wants Everyone to Grow Cannabis… But Not to Smoke It

The Thai Government Wants Everyone to Grow Cannabis… But Not to Smoke It

“Within Thailand, there's a lot of confusion and I don't know who we can trust right now.”





At a man-made beach tucked away in a small town just outside of Bangkok, an annual cannabis festival takes place within a pocket of legal limbo, just days after the partial legalization of cannabis in Thailand.

A dank smell wafts through the air as local musicians serenade the crowd, surrounded by booths selling cannabis products. As people stream in and cops patrol the area, they seem to ignore those who are outright puffing on joints, even though blazing up in public remains technically illegal despite the country’s recently-passed cannabis laws.

“Everyone smokes in Thailand. They’re just hiding,” Wathinee Belllomo, a festival goer, told VICE World News on Saturday. Like many others who gathered at the beach in Nakhon Chai Si district to celebrate the legalization milestone, Wathinee isn’t sure what the future holds for cannabis users in the country.

“The rules in Thailand, they change all the time,” she said.

Growing Cannabis Is Officially Legal in Thailand


Thailand has attracted global attention over the past 18 months for passing Asia’s most progressive weed laws, culminating on Thursday with the removal of all parts of the cannabis plant from the country’s narcotics list. Weed enthusiasts rejoiced at the milestone, and businesses immediately began cashing in on the opportunity, with shops selling cannabis buds and novel cannabis-based products.

But the reality on the ground is far less clear, confusing even, for cannabis users. While the government hands out a million free cannabis plants and people are free to grow unlimited amounts at home and purchase cannabis buds from stores, smoking a joint in public could land an offender with a public nuisance charge. Meanwhile, the sale of cannabis products with more than 0.2% THC (its main psychoactive compound) remains prohibited.

This is all part of a delicate balancing act, in which the military-aligned conservative government peddles the medical and economic benefits of cannabis—aiming to grow an industry potentially worth $661 million by 2024 to aid Thailand’s economy—all while discouraging the growth of a liberal culture around recreational cannabis use.

“We rushed into something without thinking,” said Sarana Sommano, an agricultural studies professor at Chiang Mai University who has researched cannabis cultivation in Thailand.

“Within Thailand, there's a lot of confusion and I don't know who we can trust right now.”

While festival goers partied away at a beach near Bangkok over the weekend, a more sober affair showing the other side of cannabis in Thailand was taking place about 300 kilometers away.

A government expo was held in the northeastern province of Buriram with the goal of educating the public on cannabis cultivation and its uses. Exhibitors displayed various cannabis products, ranging from standard CBD oils to the more adventurous cannabis-infused kimchi and ice cream, while the local government handed out 1,000 free cannabis seedlings.

 



VISITORS TO THE BURIRAM EXPO LINE UP TO COLLECT THEIR FREE CANNABIS SEEDLINGS. PHOTO: BOONYANIN PAKVISAL

In attendance at the Buriram expo was Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul of the Bhumjaithai Party (BP), which has been spearheading the legalization of cannabis as a member of Prayut Chan-o-cha’s military-aligned coalition government. He announced to the crowd that over 2.3 million people have already registered to grow cannabis on the government’s Plook Ganja app, with over 350,000 of these applications already approved.

The location of the expo was no accident—Buriram, a traditionally agricultural province and one of BP’s strongest voter bases, is now positioning itself to become a major player in the country’s burgeoning cannabis industry. It now finds itself in the thick of a green rush, as cannabis is being marketed to residents as a medical panacea and a golden economic opportunity to revitalize the province’s economy.
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Newin Chidchob, a revered ex-governor and the de facto leader of the BP, is at the heart of the province’s cannabis boom. Nan, his daughter, is helping to figure out how local farmers can grow cannabis commercially. Showing VICE World News around her cannabis farm, she said that her team of growers have experimented with different strains since 2019, when Thailand legalized medical cannabis. She hopes to find the best fit for the local climate, so that local farmers don’t have to go through the trial-and-error process themselves.



NAN CHIDCHOB AT HER CANNABIS FARM IN BURIRAM. PHOTO: BOONYANIN PAKVISAL

Cannabis is not a completely foreign crop to Buriram residents. The plant wasn’t criminalized until 1979 and is also traditionally incorporated into local cuisine as a flavoring ingredient.

“The local wisdom here that they have with growing in the backyard is still very much there,” said Nan, adding that some of the growers on her team were drafted from the previously underground cultivation scene.

But while there’s a local buzz in Buriram—with Public Health Minister Anutin saying last week that he’s confident that Thailand’s cannabis industry will “easily exceed $2 billion”—the laws surrounding cannabis use remain plagued with gaps.

With the government taking a conservative stance on recreational use, authorities have repeatedly emphasized that cannabis should only be used for medical and economic purposes, and cannabis products with a THC level above 0.2% remain outlawed. The result is a confusing and seemingly contradictory approach, in which people are allowed to grow tons of the plants at home, but lighting up a single spliff in the same house remains legally ambiguous.


“I think it's a big step towards unlocking recreational use here in Thailand… [The government] can't deny the fact that if you allow personal use, people are going to use it recreationally.”

The government is in the process of clarifying this ambiguity, as lawmakers passed the first reading of a draft bill just a day before June 9, legalization day. The bill, which is still being deliberated, seeks to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding recreational cannabis consumption and sale. There remains no timeline on its passage, however.

“There are gaps that still need to be improved,” said agricultural researcher Sarana. “I don't think that’s going to happen immediately unless [the government is] trying to think about what's going to benefit the nation, not what's going to be beneficial to themselves.”


But while the focus is currently on medicinal use, Nan thinks that recreational cannabis use is on the horizon—“it just takes time for it to get to that point.”

“I think it's a big step towards unlocking recreational use here in Thailand,” she said. “[The government] can't deny the fact that if you allow personal use, people are going to use it recreationally.”

With the help of local cannabis-themed businesses springing up around the green rush, Thai society seems to already be warming up to that fact. In Instagrammable weed shops around Bangkok, cannabis buds—which could yield 15 to 25 percent THC if processed—are already legally sold on shelves since the plant was decriminalized.

Medical Marijuana Is Legal in Thailand, but People Are Sticking With the Black Market


WholeWeed House, a cannabis cafe located in downtown Bangkok, has been cautiously following the shifting regulations while exploring the new business frontier.

Boasting an Instagrammable cafe aesthetic, save for subtle weed references, the shop only sells CBD-infused food and beverages, along with their own brand of cannabis tea—all totally legal.

They understand that there’s still a level of uncertainty surrounding what’s legal and what’s not among Thai consumers. And until things become clearer surrounding cannabis in Thailand, their goal is to put their customers' minds at ease.

“We're very transparent with our customers, like where we got the cannabis from and why we choose to use this type from our supplier,” said owner Pongspat Sukhumalchandr. “We don't want anyone to come here and feel like it's illegal. We don't want people to feel shady.”

Thailand’s half-baked cannabis rule change makes drug legal for children

Thailand’s half-baked cannabis rule change makes drug legal for children
Country rushes to tighten laws that it recently relaxed as they inadvertently allowed young people to buy marijuana. 

“We legalised cannabis for medical use and for health,” he said. “Usage beyond this are inappropriate... and we need laws to control it.”
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Mr Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai Party campaigned on marijuana legalisation ahead of the 2019 election and is a main partner in the ruling coalition.

According to a recent BBC report, Thailand hoped that decriminalisation will benefit from the emerging Asian market of cannabis-based medical treatment and therapies.

It is also hoped that the relaxation of the laws may help to reduce overcrowding in the country’s prisons.




Thailand has hastily tightened its drug laws after a move to decriminalise cannabis caused a spike in its usage – and inadvertently made it legal for children to buy the drug.

Soon after the country became the first in Asia to legalise the growing and consumption of cannabisin food and drink on June 9, businesses began openly selling marijuana, with strains called “Amnesia” and “Night Nurse” on offer from a truck in Bangkok.

Restaurants were allowed to sell cannabis-infused dishes in restaurants, and some Thailanders took to social media to show off the cannabis cakes they had baked.

The rapid rise in cannabis sales sparked concern from Wantanee Wattana, a Bangkok city official. She said that at least one person had died and several were hospitalised last week after consuming or smoking marijuana.

A draft cannabis bill is making its way through the country’s parliament, but it could be months away from becoming law.

Promoters at the Thailand 420: Legalaew! festival in Nakhon Pathom, west of Bangkok, sell rolling papers to revellers CREDIT: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images

“There are no control measures other than word of mouth,” lamented Mana Nimitmongkol, the head of the Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand, in an online post earlier this week.
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This week, Thailand’s government has been issuing piecemeal rules to try to bring some order to cannabis use.

On Friday, new regulations came into effect forbidding all public smoking of cannabis, as well as the sale of marijuana to people under the age of 20, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers. The rules were published in the Royal Thai Government Gazette.

Several other rules included banning the drug from schools, a requirement for retailers to provide clear information on cannabis usage in food and drinks, and the application of a health law that defined marijuana smoke as a public nuisance punishable by jail time and a fine.

Critics said that the government rushed to remove criminal penalties on marijuana before passing a law to ensure that the substance is regulated.

Anutin Charnvirakul, Thailand’s health minister and a leading advocate for cannabis legalisation, defended the government’s approach.

“We legalised cannabis for medical use and for health,” he said. “Usage beyond this are inappropriate... and we need laws to control it.”
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Mr Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai Party campaigned on marijuana legalisation ahead of the 2019 election and is a main partner in the ruling coalition.

According to a recent BBC report, Thailand hoped that decriminalisation will benefit from the emerging Asian market of cannabis-based medical treatment and therapies.

It is also hoped that the relaxation of the laws may help to reduce overcrowding in the country’s prisons.

Latest Cannabis News around Asia

For decades, Thailand was one of America’s most resolute allies in the war on drugs. After zero tolerance policies left the Kingdom with the highest rate of incarceration in Asia and a methamphetamine (ya ba) epidemic that not even the most draconian measures could stop, Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya shocked the nation in 2016 when he conceded that “the world has lost the war on drugs.” Not only did he suggest legalizing methamphetamine, Koomchaya urged his countrymen to view the drug epidemic through the lens of public health, rather than law enforcement. Today, many hope that this new laissez-faire approach will lead to the legalization of the legendary marijuana that was once among the Kingdom’s most famous and valuable exports.

After the United States built military bases in Thailand during the 1960s and stationed tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers there, the marijuana industry exploded and cheap, powerful pot became as readily available as beer.

“They tie together. Put the stick. Make it nice. Sell for GI easy. One, two, or five for one dollar,” recalled a Thai smuggler who got his start selling pot to U.S. soldiers. “Whatever place GI go, it started whenever they need.”

“With an eighty-cent bottle of gin purchased at the PX,” one Vietnam veteran remembers, “you could trade for a pack of twenty Thai sticks.”
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Thai Sticks c. 1974. Photo Michael Ferguson

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The first Thai marijuana to reach the United States came in the 1960s via the Army Post Office. The difference between Thai marijuana and most Vietnamese and Cambodian cannabis, was the difference between bathtub corn whiskey and single malt scotch. In 1967, one amazed DEA agent to called it “the Cuban cigar of the marijuana world.”

“Who can forget the first strange-looking Thai Sticks a decade ago! Dense, seedless, stronger than a bull elephant. Years before sophisticated sinsemilla techniques were incorporated into the crop management of U.S. growers,” wrote High Times magazine, the journal of record for pot connoisseurs, “the Thais were, without effort, turning out a superior product.” What sold for $3 per kilo at the farm in Isan, easily fetched $4,000 a kilo in any city in the United States in the early 1970s.

The foreign demand for marijuana produced a boom in Thailand’s poorest region during the 1970s and 80s. North of Udorn on the banks of the Mekong sits Isan, a plateau as large as many American states (62,000 square miles) that floods during monsoon season and is arid and dusty during the dry season. Although rice fields are hard to irrigate and do not yield much, marijuana thrives thanks to the Mekong River, whose tributaries replenish the region with rich, silty soil. Farmers in Northeast Thailand take the same care with their cannabis plants that French vintners take with their grapevines.ADVERTISEMENT


“They know how to grow so nice, I mean how to take care of the flower, how to take out the male plant,” said one retired Thai marijuana broker. After they harvested and dried the cannabis sativa flowers (buds), the farmers and their families neatly and uniformly tied them to small bamboo sticks and secured them with threads of hemp fiber.

What made the criminalization of marijuana particularly difficult, not just in Thailand, but certain parts of Southeast Asia, was that it was considered little more than a medicinal or cooking herb with little or no local legal or moral stigma attached. The plant had grown in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam for centuries and various preparations were used to treat: migraine headaches, cholera, malaria, dysentery, asthma, digestion, parasites, and post-childbirth pain.

“Almost every corner, every house, they have it in the yard growing. The older people, they will like it. The working heavy guy, he will like it,” said one retired Thai grower, “but they use for medicine also, when you really feel fever. So if you have nothing there, you can get like one branch, and ground it up.”

Under Thailand’s 1934 Marijuana Act, penalties for any amount of the plant could not exceed one year in prison. When criticized by American officials for tolerating cannabis, Thailand leaders were quick to remind them that drug abuse was not part of their culture.

“The United States has been able to send men to the Moon. It has built sophisticated weapons for its own defense. Why can’t it do anything effective about narcotics getting to its shores,” Prime Minister Kriangsak Chamanan said in 1977. He reminded the Americans of the rules of capitalism, “Where there are markets, there is bound to be trade, either legal or illegal.” This point was echoed by Alfred McCoy, in his magisterial study, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, “Driven by myopic moralism, U.S. policy ignores the fundamental dynamics of the drug trade. Over the past two centuries, narcotics have become the major global commodities that operate on fluid laws of supply and demand not susceptible to simple repression.”


During the 1980s, the U.S. government was able to convince and coerce Thailand to partner with them in a war against marijuana. In 1988 alone, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted eight “motherships” that carried 463,000 pounds of Southeast Asian marijuana bound for American shores. However, in the end, the “victory” was Pyrrhic because Thai drug users replaced cannabis with methamphetamine that is today responsible for 90 percent of that nation’s drug arrests.

Recently, there have been signs that the Thai government is softening its stance on marijuana. A research team at Rangsit University received permission from Thailand’s Narcotics Control Board and made a cannabis extract spray for cancer patients. In April, Dr. Arthit Uraitat, the rector of Rangsit University, called on Thailand’s military leaders to legalize medical marijuana.

“Be brave. Let us use medical marijuana legally regardless of the method,” he said in a press conference, “Those who have cancer, they cannot wait. They need the help now, so I think we need to take every shortcut possible.”

Last week, a private company called the Thai Cannabis Corporation announced the start of a five-year cannabis project that will cultivate 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of the plant in the next five years. The Royal Project Foundation will oversee this effort and Maejo University will provide research support. Thai Cannabis Corporation’s objective is to establish a low-cost model to grow, harvest, and process cannabis plants into oils and extracts. Initially, they will focus on breeding high CBD (cannabidiol) cannabis strains that contain minimal amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in order to comply with the laws of Thailand. “The mission of the Royal Project Foundation is to research and develop appropriate technology to sustainably improve the quality of life for Thailand’s highland communities. I quite agree with the Thai Cannabis Project,” said the director of the Royal Project Foundation Dr. Vijit Thanormthin.


The Royal Project Foundation was established and funded by King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 1969. An early advocate of sustainable farming, the king sought to improve the quality of life of Thailand’s hill tribes by replacing opium with other crops and also revitalizing Thailand’s forests and safeguarding their water resources for future generations. Cannabis fits very neatly into the Royal Project Foundation’s mandate given that Thailand’s hill tribes were once the world’s premier marijuana growers. The nation is already exporting packaged food, beverages, essential oils, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and cosmetics. Why not marijuana?

While the Thai Cannabis Corporation hopes to include the marijuana that Thailand was once world famous for in their product line, they will only go as rapidly as the law and Thai government will allow. “The mission of the Thai Cannabis Corporation,” said CEO Timothy Luton, “is to provide an excellent return to shareholders by partnering with Thailand’s farmers and scientific researchers to make, at high volumes and affordable prices, cannabis products that are above reproach.”

Thailand’s slow shift towards marijuana legalization stands in stark contrast to America’s anarchic “Green Rush,” the greatest exhibition of human greed since gold was discovered in California in 1849. Unlike Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, a foreign army has never occupied Thailand and they have staved off foreign invaders for centuries. Generations of Western businessmen have been baffled by their unique and refined Buddhist sensibility that often seems to value mental equilibrium and social grace as much as profit.

However, behind the smile and behind the wai are some of the toughest people on earth. Rapacious western marijuana speculators looking to get rich quick would be wise to heed the words of Townsend Harris, the American envoy to Siam (Thailand), who wrote in 1856: “It is an old saying here [in Bangkok] that those who come here for business should bring one ship loaded with patience, another loaded with presents, and a third ship for carrying away the cargo.”

Thailand cannabis: From a war on drugs to weed curries

Thailand cannabis: From a war on drugs to weed

Image caption, 

Thailand has given away one million cannabis plants to encourage cultivation

Thailand legalised cultivating and consuming cannabis this month, reversing a hard-line approach of long prison sentences or even the death penalty for drug offences. The BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head reports on what's behind the dramatic change. 

Twenty-one years ago, I had one of the more searing experiences of my journalistic career. We were invited to watch, and film, the execution of five prisoners, four of them convicted drug traffickers, by firing squad in Bangkok's Bangkwan prison. 

The look on those men's faces, as they were walked, leg-chains clinking, to the pavilion where the executions took place, is something I shall never forget. 

Other countries in the region have followed the same punitive approach, notably the Philippines after President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. Singapore and Malaysia have imposed the death penalty for drug trafficking for decades. Tourists coming to South East Asia have long been warned of the harsh penalties they face if caught with even small amounts of marijuana.

It's hard to imagine, then, that what we have seen over the past weeks is actually happening in Thailand.

Cafés and stalls have been openly selling all kinds of cannabis products, or showing off jars filled with potent marijuana flowers. The minister for public health, Anutin Charnvirakul - architect of the new law, which now gives Thailand perhaps the most liberal marijuana regime anywhere in the world - was seen sampling weed-laced curries, and being applauded by farmers who hope it will bring them new sources of income. 

There were gaggles of giggling Thai grannies trying lurid-green cannabis drinks, and lining up to collect one of the million free marijuana plants the government is handing out. 

IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, 

A festival celebrating the new law offered people weed-laced popsicles

The new law appears to give Thailand what is perhaps the most liberal approach to marijuana anywhere in the world. For the moment, people can grow and consume as much of the plant as they like, though there are a few limits on how they can market and sell it.

"One thing is clear. You cannot go to jail in Thailand just for using cannabis any more," says Tom Kruesopon, a pioneering entrepreneur who helped persuade the government to change its approach. "You can go to jail for doing other things, like smoking in public, as a public nuisance, or creating and selling a product from cannabis that you did not get approval for from the Food and Drug Administration. But Thailand is the first country in the world where you cannot go to jail for growing or using the plant."

"This is like a dream for us. We never thought we would go this far in Thailand," says Rattapon Sanrak, who began campaigning for legalisation of marijuana after experiencing its medical benefits while studying in the United States. 

Two grandparents, his father and then his mother died from cancer. On rushing back from the US to care for his mother, he tried, and failed, to persuade her to use cannabis products to ease her pain, and found it difficult to get access to what were then illegal substances.

What explains this dramatic turnaround in a country still led by conservative military men who seem unlikely drug law liberalisers?

Part of the reason is politics. Mr Anutin adopted the legalisation of marijuana as his party's signature policy in the 2019 election. The party's stronghold is in Thailand's poor, rural north-east, and the policy appealed to farmers struggling to make a living from growing rice and sugar, and in need of a new cash crop. 

So, he was able to tell the cheering crowds, as he announced the new law in his political home base of Buriram earlier this month, that he had delivered what he had promised. He believes in the medical benefits of legalisation, which he hopes will allow poorer Thais to grow their own treatments, rather than having to pay for expensive chemical drugs.

Image caption, 

Health minister Anutin Charnvirakul has been one of law's biggest supporters

It is also about business. Mr Kruesopon estimates the marijuana business will generate $10bn (£8.1bn) in its first three years, but could earn a lot more from cannabis tourism, where people come to Thailand specifically for therapies and treatments using marijuana extracts. 

He has opened the first clinic in Bangkok that focuses solely on these kinds of treatments. Already some of Thailand's biggest corporations are looking at ways in which they can cash in on the weed bonanza. 

By liberalising the law so quickly and so completely, the government hopes to steal a march on neighbouring countries, many of which may in any case be reluctant to follow the trail blazed by Thailand.

But there is a third factor behind the new marijuana regime - a rethinking of the hard-line approach to drug use, which began seven years ago, surprisingly at a time when Thailand was ruled by a military junta. 

The country has some of the world's most overcrowded prisons, and three-quarters of inmates are there for drug offences, many of them minor. This has not only brought international criticism of the poor conditions in which prisoners have to live, but also cost the government money to sustain them. 

It was a military minister of justice, General Paiboon Kumchaya, who announced in 2016 that the war on drugs had failed, and another, less punitive method of dealing with the use and abuse of narcotics was needed. 

When Mr Anutin presented his marijuana policy, with all its enticing economic benefits, he found he was pushing at a relatively open door - though he says it still took a great deal of pushing to get this far. One other result of the change in the law is that more than 4,000 people on cannabis-related charges are now being freed from jail.

However, the government may not have been prepared for the enthusiastic embrace of cannabis in all its forms seen across Thailand since the new law was passed. 

The plant is showing up everywhere - on ice cream, adorning classic Thai dishes and in new smoothie recipes. Someone is even selling chicken meat from birds which have apparently been fed cannabis. The new law makes pretty much anything related to cannabis legal. 

The government is now drafting additional regulations over its use. Officially its position is that the law only allows cannabis use for medical, not recreational purposes, but it's hard to see how they will enforce that distinction.

Image caption, 

Chidchanok Chidchob tends to her marijuana plants in Buriram

"We all know from studying other markets that recreational use is where the money's at," says Chidchanok Chitchob, a self-styled marijuana enthusiast whose father, a powerful political figure in Buriram, was one of the first to jump on the Thai marijuana bandwagon. "So I think this should be a good step towards that, if we are really thinking of this as an economic crop."

She is experimenting with different strains of the plant to help local farmers cultivate the right kinds for the region.

Mr Kruesopon says he has no issue with further regulation. He advocates sales of marijuana only from licensed vendors, with a prescription, and never to anyone under 18 years old. 

"You don't have to overthink this," he adds. "Whatever you are using for cigarettes, use the same thing for cannabis. There are already laws on the books to help control cigarette use, and alcoholic liquor use - just use the same laws."

This is an uncharacteristically bold step by the Thai government, into a brave new world. The rest of the region will be watching to see if it pays off.