The effluvia of durian or grilled alligator has had a tough competitor in Thailand. A year ago it became the most permissive country in the world for marijuana, ahead of classics like Holland.
Since then, almost six thousand stores dedicated to cannabis have opened their doors in every corner, without waiting for regulation of the sector. This has not yet arrived, but the new Prime Minister Srettha warned last week that “within six months” there will be a restrictive turn.
The sector’s legs are not shaking. “The industry has come so far that it can no longer be outlawed,” says Wi, running a stylish Indian hemp derivatives boutique on Khaosan, the Bangkok street that was a backpacker mecca. “There may be a lack of control over online commerce, but not in stores like ours, which have obtained a license and pay taxes.”
“A lack of control?”, Blake, a young British practitioner of Thai boxing, is indignant in front of the vendor next door. “Lack of control is what they offer you on the street after nine, not this.”
For Anglo-Saxons, accustomed to a television genre specialized in prison dramas of their fellow citizens caught with drugs in Southeast Asia, Thailand’s 180-degree turn has left them disconcerted. Now they have to be careful with the flight to London.
Even more positive was the surprise for the three thousand camels that were released. But contrary winds are blowing and the leader of the Bhumjaitai party, who once lobbied for legalization until he became Minister of Health, has now asked for – and obtained – the Ministry of the Interior. A visionary.
Conservatives are not the only critics of the legal lurch. “It has been rushed and has not been accompanied by dissemination about the effects of the drug,” says expert Gloria Lai. “The economic motive seems to have been the only one.” Some fear that the regulation seeks nothing other than to favor large national and foreign investors.
In many areas, it is starting to be easier to buy marijuana than to have a beer. Restaurants are being replaced by distributors of this drug, sometimes with clinical pretenses – medical use was approved three years earlier – and almost always with better design and marketing than any other store.
Foreign capital is obvious and is expanding the market in a frightening way. Some restaurants already feel obliged to announce that they do not use cannabis in their dishes.
On the other hand, the beneficial effects for local agriculture are not as vaunted. The import, which is illegal – from the United States and other countries – has halved the price that farmers in northern Thailand received a year ago.
Khaosan Road is heading towards a monoculture in which everything revolves and revolves around cannabis. But the same can be said of many other streets, not necessarily home to foreigners. The normalization of these businesses, as if they were as innocuous as coffee shops, is beginning to take its toll. They only ask that they be over twenty and, for women, not be pregnant.
It is doubtful that this tolerance will attract many more tourists. Although a Japanese couple, Kiho and Ken, who have designed a dispenser designed for their compatriots with pink panties, confess their relief. “In Japan you go to jail for 0.1 grams.” “But there should be more control of minors,” says Bush, his Thai partner, while smoking a firecracker.
His store, in addition to already rolled joints, sells marijuana with suggestive names, with a precise indication of its THC (active ingredient), whether it is more “indica” or “sativa,” whether it tastes like “diesel” or “pine.” and its effects: “concentrated”, “dicharachero”, etc.
There are everything from shampoos to sleeping capsules and from biscuits to dog products. Everything with a common denominator. In the florist shop, the protagonist plant is clear. “Up to 18 pots is legal,” explains Porn, a salesperson who says she has tried everything she sells. Two Welshmen, Owen and Zek, have just returned from a motorcycle tour through Vietnam: “This is a bit excessive. Not even in Amsterdam.”
