Cannabis Will Reach Full Legalization In Thailand In 2022

In 2018, Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize cannabis for medical use and research. More recently, government officials announced that Thailand is planning to loosen cannabis laws for full legalization; this would include removing cannabis flower and buds from its list of banned narcotics. 

Anutin Charnvirakul, public health minister and deputy prime minister of Thailand, said at an agricultural event for cannabis cultivation that Thailand’s government has only achieved to declare that “cannabis stems, roots, leaves, and sprigs are not drugs.”

At the event, Charnvirakul added that starting next year, Thailand’s government will remove everything—stems, roots, sprigs, leaves, buds, flower, and seeds, from the country’s narcotics list. He said legalizing cannabis would be a “win-win” for Thais. 

Thailand was impressively the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize cannabis for medical use and research in 2018. Now that the country is heading towards full legalization of the list noted above, Charnvirakul said this was Thailand’s way of helping those who’ve been financially distressed from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Charnvirakul said at the event that when the economy begins to pick up again, and the public doesn’t have new products as alternatives, “people will keep doing the same things and competing with one another.” This way, by offering a choice they can learn and build on by creating new products and business models, this process will hopefully “speed up the economic recovery.”

Thailand’s new narcotics code officially came into effect on December 9, and it thankfully no longer lists cannabis and hemp. There is currently no official date for when cannabis flower and buds will be made legal to use, process, and sell outside of medical and research fields, but 2022 will be the year this takes effect.

According to Bangkok-based cannabis entrepreneur and legalization advocate Kitty Chopaka, she told Vice that this move was “a savvy economic decision that was long overdue.” She continued that if Thailand would fully legalize all parts of the cannabis plant for commercial use in 2022, ” it will still be with a lot of caveats.”

The founder and CEO of Elevated Estate, Kitty Chopaka, added that this move was “a small first step.” She concluded that the ministries are dipping their feet into the waters of the cannabis industry to test how the public would react to legalization. 

Chopaka said that even if they don’t legalize the plant, “Thais will know other ways to go about finding it,” suggesting that the illicit market is still thriving and could be stopped with safe, legal products.