Sawadee Everyone,This week marked the 90th day since Thailand legalized cannabis. How are things going so far? While there are a few reasons to be dissatisfied at where the market is currently (mostly in relation to price and product quality), Thailand has actually performed pretty well. Other countries are actually citing Thailand as a successful legalization model. After an initial rush of anti-cannabis articles in the media where anybody that consumed cannabis and had any sort of health issue was splashed across front pages as evidence of how dangerous cannabis is, the scaremongering died out fairly quickly. That was in large part because the evidence didn't support the fears.And just recently the Thai Ministry of Public Health reported that they've seen no increase in cannabis-use disorders since legalization and that the numbers have actually remained pretty steady for the last five years. The Thai government seems to have used just the right touch of commonsense guidelines to satisfy the concerns of many Thais while also allowing the industry to flourish.That's a big positive for Thailand's cannabis industry as the Thai public seems generally supportive of cannabis for medicinal use but they also have valid concerns about cannabis being used by minors and have potential issues with widespread recreational use. Unfortunately, not everything is perfect in the Land of Sativa. Dispensaries have flooded the market and are quickly reaching an over-saturation point. I've spoken with several dispensary owners and the thing that keeps them awake at night is not when supply inevitably catches up with demand and prices begin dropping, rather it's the never ending number of dispensaries opening up near them. While sales should pick up as tourism begins to recover, the biggest industry problem at the moment seems to be that markets are becoming so saturated that even though, overall, sales are great, there's simply not enough business to go around to everyone. Adding to the problems facing the industry is that currently Thai cannabis quality simply isn't on par with other countries with legalized cannabis (yet). It's created a strange dynamic where dispensaries are overpaying for inventory because of the large number of new dispensaries opening that need product to sell but the growers are producing inferior quality product which results in the worst of both worlds, poor quality and high prices. Fortunately, both of these issues are likely to eventually self-correct. If Pareto's Principle holds true 80% of sales will go to just 20% of the dispensaries which will eliminate many existing dispensaries from the market. And with each new crop, Thai farmers will become more skilled at growing a quality product. It will be interesting to see how this plays out of the coming months and years but Thailand's cannabis market, while experiencing some hiccups, seems to be doing very well and is set up to succeed even further. Polling ResultsLast week we asked you how you prefer to smoke cannabis. A whopping 50.3% of people said they prefer joints, blunts, and spliffs. Next was dry-herb vaping which took 27.4% of the vote and 17.1% of you said you like to take a big old bong rip. Sadly for pipe aficionados, only 5.1% of you like to smoke from a pipe. This week's poll asks how many grams of cannabis you buy a month. Thailand's First Weed Price Tracker is LiveLast week we posted a chart from the Thai Weed Price Tracker showing how the average price of cannabis has changed since legalization. As I'm writing this the Thai Weed Price Tracker the average price of a gram of cannabis in Thailand is 635 baht. The Thai Weed Price Tracker samples the prices of 62 different dispensaries throughout Thailand and tracks almost 500 strains being sold. You can type in the name of any strain you're interested in and get the prices at various dispensaries over the last 30 days. The goal was to create something that would be helpful to cannabis consumers but also to cannabis dispensaries that wanted to better understand market prices at other dispensaries. That's it for this week. Until next week . . . Cheers,u/CannabisThailandMod
r/CannabisThailand Newsletter - Issue #10
Sawadee Everyone,This week marked the 90th day since Thailand legalized cannabis. How are things going so far? While there are a few reasons to be dissatisfied at where the market is currently (mostly in relation to price and product quality), Thailand has actually performed pretty well. Other countries are actually citing Thailand as a successful legalization model. After an initial rush of anti-cannabis articles in the media where anybody that consumed cannabis and had any sort of health issue was splashed across front pages as evidence of how dangerous cannabis is, the scaremongering died out fairly quickly. That was in large part because the evidence didn't support the fears.And just recently the Thai Ministry of Public Health reported that they've seen no increase in cannabis-use disorders since legalization and that the numbers have actually remained pretty steady for the last five years. The Thai government seems to have used just the right touch of commonsense guidelines to satisfy the concerns of many Thais while also allowing the industry to flourish.That's a big positive for Thailand's cannabis industry as the Thai public seems generally supportive of cannabis for medicinal use but they also have valid concerns about cannabis being used by minors and have potential issues with widespread recreational use. Unfortunately, not everything is perfect in the Land of Sativa. Dispensaries have flooded the market and are quickly reaching an over-saturation point. I've spoken with several dispensary owners and the thing that keeps them awake at night is not when supply inevitably catches up with demand and prices begin dropping, rather it's the never ending number of dispensaries opening up near them. While sales should pick up as tourism begins to recover, the biggest industry problem at the moment seems to be that markets are becoming so saturated that even though, overall, sales are great, there's simply not enough business to go around to everyone. Adding to the problems facing the industry is that currently Thai cannabis quality simply isn't on par with other countries with legalized cannabis (yet). It's created a strange dynamic where dispensaries are overpaying for inventory because of the large number of new dispensaries opening that need product to sell but the growers are producing inferior quality product which results in the worst of both worlds, poor quality and high prices. Fortunately, both of these issues are likely to eventually self-correct. If Pareto's Principle holds true 80% of sales will go to just 20% of the dispensaries which will eliminate many existing dispensaries from the market. And with each new crop, Thai farmers will become more skilled at growing a quality product. It will be interesting to see how this plays out of the coming months and years but Thailand's cannabis market, while experiencing some hiccups, seems to be doing very well and is set up to succeed even further. Polling ResultsLast week we asked you how you prefer to smoke cannabis. A whopping 50.3% of people said they prefer joints, blunts, and spliffs. Next was dry-herb vaping which took 27.4% of the vote and 17.1% of you said you like to take a big old bong rip. Sadly for pipe aficionados, only 5.1% of you like to smoke from a pipe. This week's poll asks how many grams of cannabis you buy a month. Thailand's First Weed Price Tracker is LiveLast week we posted a chart from the Thai Weed Price Tracker showing how the average price of cannabis has changed since legalization. As I'm writing this the Thai Weed Price Tracker the average price of a gram of cannabis in Thailand is 635 baht. The Thai Weed Price Tracker samples the prices of 62 different dispensaries throughout Thailand and tracks almost 500 strains being sold. You can type in the name of any strain you're interested in and get the prices at various dispensaries over the last 30 days. The goal was to create something that would be helpful to cannabis consumers but also to cannabis dispensaries that wanted to better understand market prices at other dispensaries. That's it for this week. Until next week . . . Cheers,u/CannabisThailandMod