Thailand has made it legal to cultivate and possess marijuana.
The stated intention of the country’s public health minister to distribute one million marijuana seedlings, beginning on Friday, has added to the impression that Thailand is turning into a weed wonderland.
Some Thai advocates celebrated on Thursday morning by buying marijuana at a cafe that had previously been limited to selling products made from the parts of the plant that do not get people high.
The dozen or so people who turned up at the Highland Cafe in Bangkok were able to choose from a variety of buds with names such as Sugarcane, Bubblegum, Purple Afghani, and UFO.
A staff member at the Highland Cafe selects portions of marijuana for a customer in Bangkok, Thailand (Sakchai Lalit/AP)
“I can say it out loud that I am a cannabis smoker. I don’t need to hide like in the past when it was branded as an illegal drug,” said 24-year-old Rittipong Bachkul, the day’s first customer.
So far, it appears there would be no effort to police what people can grow and smoke at home, aside from registering to do so, and declaring it is for medical purposes.
For the time being, however, would-be marijuana tourists might want to proceed with caution.
Thailand’s government has said it is promoting cannabis for medical use only, warning those eager to light up for fun that smoking in public could still be considered a nuisance, subject to a potential three-month sentence and 25,000 Thai baht (£580) fine.
And extracted content, such as oil, remains illegal if it contains more than 0.2% of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical that makes people high.
The status of marijuana is still in considerable legal limbo because while it is no longer treated as a dangerous drug, Thai legislators have yet to pass legislation to regulate its trade.
Thailand has become the first nation in Asia to decriminalise marijuana – also known as cannabis, or ganja in the local lingo – but it is not following the examples of Uruguay and Canada, the only two countries so far that have legalised recreational marijuana on a national basis.
A customer views an array of paraphernalia used to smoke marijuana at the Highland Cafe (Sakchai Lalit/AP)
Thailand mainly wants to make a splash in the market for medical marijuana.https://193534174466b5ac70e16e3164b59411.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
It already has a well developed medical tourism industry and its tropical climate is ideal for growing cannabis.
“We should know how to use cannabis,” public health minister Anutin Charnvirakul, the country’s biggest marijuana booster, said recently.
“If we have the right awareness, cannabis is like gold, something valuable, and should be promoted.”
But he added: “We will have additional Ministry of Health notifications, by the Department of Health. If it causes nuisances, we can use that law (to stop people from smoking).”
The minister said the government prefers to “build an awareness” that would be better than patrolling to check on people and using the law to punish them.
Some immediate beneficiaries of the change are people who have been locked up for breaking the old law.
The first customer of the day celebrates after buying legal marijuana at the Highland Cafe (Sakchai Lalit/AP)
“From our perspective, a major positive outcome of the legal changes is that at least 4,000 people imprisoned for offences relating to cannabis will be released,” Gloria Lai, Asia regional director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, said.
“People facing cannabis-related charges will see them dropped, and money and cannabis seized from people charged with cannabis-related offences will be returned to their owners.”
Her organisation is a network of civil society organisations worldwide advocating drug policies “grounded in principles of human rights, health and development”.
However, economic benefits are at the heart of the marijuana reforms, projected to boost everything from national income to small farmers’ livelihoods.
There is concern over whether the benefits will be distributed equitably.
