r/CannabisThailand Newsletter - Issue #40

Momentum swings both ways

Apr 09, 2023

Sawadee Everyone,

It seems like people’s emotions about legalized cannabis in Thailand are on a rollercoaster ride. One week everyone is talking like legalized cannabis is the greatest thing to ever happen to Thailand and nothing will derail it. The next week a bunch of negative articles come out and people’s moods take a more somber turn.

This week seems to be one of the down weeks. A lot of the media stories that got social media traction this week had to do with the fact that things aren’t as perfect as they were . . . last week?

What changed?

Not much except that some journalists took a more pragmatic look at the industry, the potential for a change of direction if opposition parties are elected, and the fact that some people aren’t thrilled about legalization.

None of that is different from last week or the week before.

Often the political and regulatory process can seem like a sports match. Sometimes the momentum is going for your team and sometimes its not. This week seems to have been a week where the challenger has seen the momentum shift their way a bit.

But let’s take a step back and try to see the big picture.

According to the media, over a million people have registered to grow cannabis for personal use. That doesn’t include all of the entities that have registered to grow commercially. And depending on who is throwing around numbers, between 3,000 and 5,000 dispensaries have opened.

One grower I was just speaking with told me that he just put another 10 million baht into his operations. Other growers I’ve been speaking with are expanding their operations as fast as they can and investing millions of baht.

More and more dispensaries are opening their second, third, fourth (or more) locations. That’s not cheap.

There’s a lot of money pouring into the cannabis industry at the moment and that’s trickling over to everyone from landlords to people that sell plastic ziplock bags.

There’s no denying that hundreds of millions if not billions of baht are flowing through the Thai economy and politicians tend to follow the money.

While I’ve always felt that it was a little premature to say that the genie is already out of the bottle and we’ll never return to prohibition, it does seem like despite this week focusing on the problems that exist in the industry (and there are plenty of legitimate problems), cannabis is still expanding at an incredible pace.

Cheers,

u/CannabisThailandMod

Don’t forget that we’ve partnered with some dispensaries for exclusive deals available to members of this newsletter and the r/CannabisThailand sub on Reddit. Just type “Dank Deal” into the comments of any post and the AutoMod will send you the current discounts being offered.