Thailand Moves Toward Full Legalization of Marijuana

Over the past few months, Thailand has further loosened its regulations on the sale and use of cannabis, making it likely to become the first nation in Southeast Asia to legalize the drug later this year.

The country’s new narcotics code, which entered into effect on December 9, no longer lists cannabis and hemp (nor the traditional herb and mild stimulant kratom). And on January 20, the Public Health Ministry’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed that cannabis be dropped from its schedule of prohibited narcotics, lifting the last remaining hurdle to the drug’s full use and commercial sale.

The government’s Narcotics Control Committee agreed to present the FDA’s proposal to the Narcotics Control Board, something that may happen before this article goes to press. If it agrees, Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul will then sign the measure, which will enter into force shortly afterward.

Anutin has been an important driving force behind the legalization push, and his Bhumjaithai Party made legalization of cannabis a key campaign promise at the last election in March 2019. Later that year, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian nation to decriminalize the production and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and to permit its use in food and cosmetics.

Appearing at a “Cannabis Kickoff” event in Nakhon Phanom province in northeastern Thailand in December, aimed at promoting the cultivation of the plant, Anutin promised that the full legalization of marijuana was imminent. “What we have achieved so far is to declare that cannabis stems, roots, leaves, and sprigs are not drugs,” Anutin said. “Starting next year, we will remove everything – stems, roots, sprigs, leaves, buds, flowers, and seeds – from the narcotics list.” 

Critics have pointed out that the right to grow marijuana will still be tightly controlled via a licensing system, and that absent a government license, cultivating marijuana plants would still be illegal. Nevertheless, the legalization push represents a bright light of rationality in Southeast Asia, where most nations have intensely punitive anti-drug regimes that draw little or no distinction between marijuana and harder drugs.

In October, a Singaporean man lost his appeal against the death penalty for importing 1 kilogram of marijuana into the country. Meanwhile, according to Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act, the possession or consumption of cannabis can be punished with up to 10 years of imprisonment, a S$20,000 fine, or both. Under the Act, cannabis is considered a Class A narcotic, alongside drugs including opium, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The same is true of Indonesia’s 2009 Narcotics Law and Malaysia’s Dangerous Drugs Act 1952. In Thailand, cannabis is currently a category-5 narcotic drug, and its possession is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Across Southeast Asia, these severe laws have helped fill prisons with non-violent drug offenders, contributing to a severe overcrowding problem. The region boasts three of the 10 largest prison populations in the world, and three of the 10 most overcrowded prisons.

According to Thailand’s Department of Corrections, the country has 311,000 or so inmates incarcerated in 143 correctional facilities nationwide, compared with the system’s official capacity of 110,000 as of December 2018. While Thailand’s approval of cannabis for medical purposes has brought relief to countless numbers of cancer patients, legalization will also have the collateral benefit of reducing pressure on the country’s prisons, the overcrowded and unsanitary nature of which was demonstrated last year when COVID-19 spread rapidly through the correctional system.

The legalization move is also a surprisingly liberal initiative for a Thai government that has generally been anything but. After coming to power in a coup in 2014, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ruled for five years as a military dictator before prevailing in an election that opponents claim was essentially rigged. Since then, Prayut’s administration has shown no quarter to a wave of youth-led pro-democracy protests that have called for his resignation, a new constitution, and reforms to the power of the monarchy.

This is not an administration that one would have expected to preside over the legalization of marijuana, particularly given Thailand’s existing tight controls over tobacco. Perhaps it’s simply a case of money speaking loudly. As Thai PBS World reported in December, in anticipation of full commercialization of the drug, “Thousands of farmers have already formed community enterprises to grow cannabis, while big companies like JCK International are investing large sums and drawing up solid business plans to exploit this once-illegal plant.”

Anutin has made clear that one of his main motivations for pushing legalization is to stimulate the Thai economy, which has been battered into recession by COVID-19. In December, he revealed plans to turn Nakhon Phanom into Thailand’s “Cannabis City,” a  model for the use of marijuana to boost the tourism and agricultural sectors.

“When the economy is picking up and we don’t have new products as alternatives, people will keep doing the same things and competing with one another,” he said. “But if we offer them a choice, they can learn to build on it, creating new products and business models, which will in turn speed up the economic recovery.”

The legalization of marijuana is long overdue in Thailand, as in the West – but it remains to be seen whether the economic rationale exercises a similar attraction in Southeast Asia’s other capitals.