The effluvies of the dúrio or grilled alligator have 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 shops dedicated to cannabis have opened in every corner, without waiting for the regulation of the sector, which has not yet arrived, but the new Prime Minister Srettha warned last week that “before six months” there will be a restrictive turn.
The sector does not have a pulse. “The industry has come so far that it can no longer be illegal”, says Wi, at the head of a stylized boutique of Indian cannabis derivatives in Khaosan, the street in Bangkok that was the mecca of surgeons. “There may be a lack of control of online commerce, but not in stores like ours, which have obtained a license and pay taxes.”
“Out of control?” Blake, a young British practitioner of Thai boxing, is indignant at the vendor next door. “Descontrol is what they offer you in the street from nine o’clock, not this”.
For the Anglo-Saxons, accustomed to a television genre specializing in prison dramas of their fellow citizens caught up in drugs in Southeast Asia, Thailand’s 180-degree turn has left them unsettled. 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 headwinds are blowing and the leader of the Bhumjaitai party, who once lobbied for legalization to the point of becoming 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 change. “It has been hasty and has not been accompanied by disclosure about the effects of the drug”, says expert Gloria Lai. “The economic mobile seems to have been the only one”. Some fear that regulation seeks nothing more than to favor large domestic and foreign investors.
In some areas it is starting to be easier to buy marijuana than to make a beer. Restaurants are being replaced by sellers of this drug, sometimes with clinical presumptions – medical use was approved three years earlier – and almost always with better design and marketing than any other store.
Foreign capital leaps into view and is expanding the market in a frightening way. Some restaurants already believe that it is necessary to announce that they do not use cannabis in their dishes.
On the other hand, the beneficial effects for local agriculture are not what they promised. The importation, 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 on its way to becoming a monoculture where everything revolves around cannabis. But the same can also be said of more streets, not necessarily foreigners’ claim. The normalization of these businesses, as if they were as innocuous as coffee shops, is starting to take its toll. They only ask to be over twenty years old and, for women, not to be pregnant.
It is doubtful that this tolerance will attract many more tourists. Although a Japanese couple, Kiho and Ken, who have designed a vending machine designed for their compatriots in pink panties, reveal 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 joint.
His shop, in addition to already rolled joints, sells marijuana with suggestive names, with a precise indication of its THC (active principle), whether it is more “indica” or “sativa”, whether it tastes like “diesel” or of “pine” and its effects: “concentrated”, “soaked”…
There are everything from shampoos to sleeping pills, and from biscuits to dog products. All with a common denominator. In the flower shop, the main plant is clear. “Up to 18 pots is legal”, explains La Porn, a clerk who says she has tried everything she sells. Two Welshmen, Owen and Zek, have just arrived from a motorbike tour through Vietnam: “This is a bit excessive. Not even in Amsterdam.”
