The Thai Cannabis Sector That Reformers Forgot: Urgent Need For Home Cultivation Reform Before Cannabis Act is Submitted
Personal cultivation rights reform is necessary for Thailand to develop a fully integrated and diversified cannabis marketplace in 2025.
Thai cannabis is gonna need a bigger boat.
There is a backlog of cultivation centers requesting inspections for export certification. Only a few companies have managed to enter the international medical cannabis flower market over the past year while at least one American company began manufacturing outside of Bangkok, marketing locally and exporting to Japan.
Other cultivation centers filled with ambition wait patiently for inspectors to audit their operations and certify their inventory, while dispensaries that survived the legally ambiguous first two years of decriminalization have simplified and concentrated their operations and look to the last half of the 20s with great optimism.
Assuming the inspection bottleneck gets unclogged, 2025 could see Thai export cannabis expand exponentially. Meanwhile, domestic consumers in Thailand will continue to be well served - even as dispensaries dissolve by the dozens.
Low-grade weed is getting pushed out, as are its unlicensed suppliers. Not forever; just for now. The strategy appears to be pragmatic containment. If the quality and testing standards of your medical cannabis are high and the price is alright, who needs illegal cannabis?
Another crime-fighting tactic that has proven effective elsewhere is to encourage consumers to grow their medical cannabis at home.
Fixing What Is Broken in Thai Cannabis: Personal Cultivation Rights
Unfortunately, political leaders in Thailand exclude all non-Thai residents from the registration app that home-growers are told they must complete.
Surely prohibiting or simply not vouching for or encouraging Smith’s right to grow cannabis in her home increases the probability of Smith consorting with illegal dealers - as her options have been curtailed.
Never mind asking why Thailand does not bother to let international residents register to grow cannabis. Ask rather: Why is there no glossy ad campaign that speaks to the benefits of growing cannabis at home, along with an introduction to Thai traditional herbal medicine and ancient Thai cannabis landraces?
PlookGanja is the app all are told to register with. The only way to comply is to fill in a Thai ID. Only Thai nationals have Thai IDs. This technical roadblock could cause a great deal of damage to the cannabis marketplace if it is not made to go away before the Cannabis Act is submitted - most likely in January or February.
It is not too late to address this oversight and reinforce Thailand’s unique medical cannabis narrative.
Proposal A: Make PlookGanja Inclusive
To enhance inclusivity in personal cultivation policies, we propose that regulators amend the PlookGanja app to allow international residents to register alongside Thai citizens.
Smart regulators and caregivers understand that promoting the responsible use of medical cannabis should include access to personal cultivation without legal repercussions.
By publicizing this new option aggressively, Thailand can encourage optimal well-being that integrates whole foods, sun, and traditional Thai medicinal herbs including cannabis.
Proposal B: Sunset PlookGanja Completely
Alternatively, we propose reallocating resources from the PlookGanja app to create a "Plook Ganja Newsletter" available in Thai, English, and German. This newsletter would provide multi-level education on cannabis cultivation and foster communication among home growers. Signing up would grant permission for home cultivation without requiring registration on an app that currently excludes many potential participants.
Countries like Canada have successfully created guides and resources that normalize home cultivation practices while addressing safety concerns. For instance, Canada’s old video “Growing Cannabis Safely At Home” is a bit dated but would serve as a good starting point for Thailand.
Canada’s legalization model allows individuals to grow up to four plants per household, contributing to a thriving market for seeds and growing supplies. Reports indicate that over 1 million Canadians are now cultivating cannabis at home.
Thai Cannabis’ Self-Inflicted Wound: Cannabis Freedom Discrimination
It is difficult to quantify the damage caused by forfeiting the chance to grow the cannabis industry’s most loyal and passionate customer base - home growers - because only Thai nationals can register to grow at home.
Even if we had more data, speculation is involved when describing where the industry would be by now if the problem had already been solved home-grow sector had already developed a nascent marketplace and vibrant, information-sharing community.
Without the home-growers’ ecosystem taking shape, the rural and urban cannabis sectors will have far fewer opportunities to interact and come together as one industry. Data strongly suggest that as a cannabis market expands, interest in growing at home increases.
Suppose policy changes can make home growers feel welcome. In that case, they will repay the marketplace by sharing their enthusiasm, knowledge of the plant and its impact on well-being with fellow consumers.
Today, Thailand does not consider foreign residents within the framework of personal cultivation at all.
Two sentences would all but provide a solution - quickly and at virtually no cost. Simply insert into the Cannabis Act something very much like the following:
Under a law that went into effect in —, citizens of — or legal residents who are at least 20 can grow cannabis for medical use if they register. There is a limit of six female plants, with an annual harvest of up to 480 grams.
Uraguay did exactly this, in 2018.
After the new language is inserted, all that’s left is to update the registration app to include all legal residents - or else ditch the app altogether.
The exact number may vary, but there are certainly over 20 jurisdictions worldwide that allow some form of home cannabis cultivation. Thailand is the only country in the group that neither invites nor provides a path for foreign legal residents to join the program.
Two Objections
Cannabis therapy is complicated and makes self-medication dangerous
Rebuttal: Concern about encouraging home cultivation often arises due to the complexity of the plant’s compound structure.
Its medicinal qualities can be patient-specific, requiring trial and error to determine what works best for each individual.
However, cultivators are incentivized to learn how to navigate these complexities to be successful. Some experimenting with various chemovars (strains) to find what works is necessary for newcomers. Decisions are made to go in one direction or another. Home growers often are medical practitioners growing medicine for their patients - you never know.
The objection expresses safety-obsessed fears of outcomes that lack evidence.
Medicating is accomplished by tending to many touch-points: multiple sourcing, listening to advice, reading, talking with other patients, trying different varieties here and there and so on.
The process would be impossible to micro-manage from a distance; in the sam way, it would be impossible to engineer the patients’ behavior with prohibitions.
Authentic medical cannabis requires more freedom for consumers than so-called recreational use, because with medical cannabis the patient has to go through a discovery process to find out which chemovar fits best.
The discovery process can be guided by a practitioner, certainly. Yet it is also certain that if an adult has some knowledge and experience here, he is quite capable of going through the discovery unaided by a professional.
It is not as if one needs a special degree to find the right cannabis therapy. It takes a bit of experience, perhaps some advice from someone you trust and a bit of study about what we know so far.
Thailand might consider couples around the world who are planning for retirement and intend to continue with cannabis. That is why the blind eye strategy seems so inexplicable.
In his latest Substack, 93% Relief: The Surprising Success of Medical Cannabis in Seniors, Dr. Ben Caplan analyzes the very positive results just assembled of a study of Cannabis for pain with Seniors:
1. High Success Rate: A European study involving over 2,700 seniors found that nearly 93% reported improvement in their conditions after six months of using medical cannabis, particularly for chronic pain.
2. Significant Pain Reduction: Participants experienced a notable decrease in pain scores, dropping from an average of 8 out of 10 to 4, indicating cannabis as an effective option for managing chronic pain in older adults.
3. Opioid Use Reduction: Approximately 18% of participants were able to reduce or completely stop their opioid use, suggesting that cannabis may provide a safer alternative in addressing pain management amid the ongoing opioid crisis.
4. Mild Side Effects: While there were some side effects reported, such as dizziness (10%) and dry mouth (7%), they were generally mild. Falls were noted by about 20% of participants, though it's unclear if cannabis was directly responsible.
5. Anxiety Research: A study on CBD for anxiety in women with advanced breast cancer showed no statistically significant results overall; however, there was some indication of reduced anxiety 2–4 hours post-dose, warranting further investigation.
6. Growing Acceptance: From 2006 to 2013, cannabis use among seniors increased by an impressive 250%, driven by greater social acceptance and medical legalization.
7. Considerations for Use: Older adults are encouraged to consult with healthcare providers before using cannabis due to potential drug interactions and the need for personalized dosing strategies.
8. Individualized Approach: The effectiveness of cannabis varies among individuals, highlighting the importance of tailoring treatments based on personal health needs and responses.
The data indicates that medical cannabis is proving to be a valuable resource for seniors, particularly in managing chronic pain and reducing reliance on opioids. While there are some mild side effects and the need for careful consideration regarding use, the overall trend points toward a positive impact on quality of life for older adults embracing this treatment option.
Letting international residents be personal cultivators at home would undermine the dispensary system.
Rebuttal: True, dispensaries have been dropping off the map all year, as forecast; most run out of capital and do not have the inventory to generate appealing specials to cope with the dropping price of cannabis nationwide.
However, the dispensaries that have survived in the big 4 population centers - Phuket, Bangkok, Pattaya and Chaing Mai - now offer the best cannabis you can find in the country. Such, I believe, is the unstated agreement between industry and regulators. “Supply medical grade cannabis, by which we mean fully certified for export, and you can continue to sell over-the-counter as long - as it’s understood that you are selling medical cannabis.”
I predict the agreement will hold and an elite network of dispensaries will rise up in 2025 with the only pressure from the public sector being an insistence on clean, high-quality cannabis.
There will be plenty of space for additional dispensaries with a nuanced understanding of branding for a specific consumer personality that does not fit with the elite network milieu. Price pressure is all downward. Opening up a dispensary in Thailand is now a super high-risk gamble.
The Report, “As U.S. Legal Cannabis Market Expands, Annual Consumer Spending on Homegrowing Could Near $4B by 2030”, explores the burgeoning community of home cannabis growers in the United States, highlighting their demographics, motivations, and the implications for the cannabis industry there.
Key points of the Report:
- Market Growth: Home growers are expected to spend nearly $4 billion on supplies by 2030, indicating a strong investment in this hobby.
- Demographics: Contrary to common stereotypes, most home growers are middle-aged parents, with over half being married and many having children. A significant portion also engages in traditional gardening.
- Motivations for Growing: The primary reason for home cultivation is enjoyment, with 70% of growers citing passion as their main motivation.
Other reasons include convenience (52%) and a desire for higher quality cannabis (around 50%). Most prefer indoor growing methods and often share their harvests with friends and family.
- Impact of Legalization: Participation in home cultivation is higher in fully legal markets (7%) compared to medical (5%) or illicit markets (4%), suggesting that legalization encourages more individuals to grow at home.
- Seed Market Expansion: The global cannabis seed market is projected to reach $6.5 billion by 2031, driven by advancements in seed technology and regulatory changes.
The Report emphasizes that as legalization expands, more people are discovering the joy of growing cannabis at home, contributing to both personal satisfaction and the economy.
The rise in home cultivation underscores the need for tools and educational resources to support this segment of the market.
Toward Inclusive Thai Cannabis
The disconnect between wanting to be a medical cannabis leader while excluding international residents from personal cultivation is counterproductive. It is time to add new language to the Cannabis Act that explicitly allows eligible international residents to register alongside Thai citizens.
Whether through updating the PlookgGanja (literally, “Plant Cannabis”) app to make it inclusive or publishing an innovative personal cultivator newsletter, it is time for Thailand to recognize that a personal cultivator sector is a sign of a healthy industry -where stories are being shared, lessons learned, new solutions tried and industry revenue streams diversified.
Personal cultivator communities have the incentive to bridge gaps between urban consumers and rural farmers while playing a role in preserving traditional landraces and honing in on which trendy cultivars provide what type of relief.
Landraces, Medical Cannabis & Personal Cultivators Belong Together
I predict that 2025 will be the first year that high-tech indoor urban, outdoor rural -and all other quality growers in between - begin talking with each other about new opportunities for exporting, sourcing within Thailand, landrace preservation, seed banking, and educational programs.
The recent enthusiasm for landrace genetics represents a return to a tradition where cannabis in Thailand has been recognized as a medicinal herb for over a thousand years. That’s why suppressing the number of home-growers in Thailand strikes me as fundamentally mistaken.
Environmental and health concerns are causing demand preferences to shift. A new trend is starting to emerge, bringing together home growing, outdoor growing, and interest in/obsession with ancient landraces under pressure, purity and sustainable methods.
Recent interest in Thai landraces and more traditional growing methods coincides with a global cannabis reckoning with the sustainability of its growing protocols and the high levels of product contamination coupled with a new consumer preference for plant medicine grown as nature intended.
I am not suggesting we are at a word-historic moment of a paradigm shift and masses of cannabis enthusiasts are about to move up to the farmlands and protect the ancient landraces.
As consumers become more conscious of the origins and cultivation methods of their cannabis products, these trends are likely to shape the future of the industry, globally and locally, which in Thailand translates to the rise of rural cannabis, not to mention the potential of the home grow supplies sector currently being suppressed.
Published in 2024, Towards A Practical Threat Assessment Methodology For Crop Landraces reflects the public’s recent interest in ancient cultivars, their distinctive medicinal properties and their nearness to extinction. Researchers concluded in 2024 that:
Landrace diversity is increasingly threatened with genetic erosion and extinction by replacement with improved cultivars, lack of incentives for farmers to maintain traditional agricultural systems, and rising threats from climate change. Their active conservation is necessary to maintain this critical resource.
Over the past two years, several Thai cannabis farms have focused on preserving landraces in their areas that go back 1,000 years, at least. Tours have begun. So has scientific research on cannabis from the region.
A few outdoor farms were fully GAP/ GMCP certified in 2024 and at least one other sprawling collection of farms is waiting in the Que.
There is a cluster of Southeast Asian landraces - chemovars (called “strains” by some) that have been domesticated and harvested in the same area over hundreds of years with the same names. Some varieties would have been curated by Thai traditional medical doctors who included cannabis in many herbal therapies and medicinal food recommendations.
According to the Comprehensive Guide To Landrace Origins, published in February 2024:
Cultivated by indigenous groups, landrace strains signify rich cultural heritage. Deeply tied to regions’ history, they offer glimpses into cannabis’ diverse global history.
Landraces are heirloom cannabis strains with rich histories. We explore their origins and qualities. Knowing landraces enhances our view of strains worldwide
Thai landraces, like most others, are threatened by too much attention. They need protection from mega cannabis corporations that want to create all hybrids by breeding the classics with new names that are trending.
Some farmers are determined to save the plant by banking the seeds and selling them only to cultivators who intend to preserve the ancient landraces and learn more about their chemical makeup and various medicinal qualities.
Thailand has the most extensive cannabis landrace conservation programs in Southeast Asia, particularly following its recent decriminalization of cannabis. The Thai government is actively promoting the cultivation of traditional cannabis strains as a means to boost the economy and support local farmers[1][4].
Other countries like Laos and Cambodia also have historical cannabis cultivation practices, but they lack formalized conservation programs comparable to Thailand's initiatives. Local communities and NGOs in these countries may engage in informal conservation efforts, but they are not as structured or widely recognized as those in Thailand.
It is a sad irony that perhaps the most powerful weapon Thailand has to protect its landraces would be the development of a community currently being discriminated against, that is, international residents who would grow cannabis at home.
A powerful quote that supports the argument that cannabis home growers benefit the industry comes from a 2024 report by the Thailand Development Research Institute, The economic benefits of cannabis
“Cannabis cultivation requires investment in greenhouse construction, quality control systems, watering and fertilization, strain selection, and harvesting. It creates an economic value chain through intermediate production activities... Altogether, these expenses could generate returns of up to 3.5 billion baht per year”.
This highlights how home growers contribute significantly to the overall economic ecosystem surrounding cannabis production, benefiting not just themselves but also the broader industry.
A Final Objection
“If saying nothing solves the “recreational use” puzzle in The Cannabis Act, why can’t silence also solve the no-registation-for-international-residents problem?”
The legalization regime in Thailand has positioned the cannabis market for growth by avoiding outright bans on recreational use, pushing all cultivators to achieve a level of quality that would qualify the product for export.
That certification - GMP and or GAPC - is also seen as evidence that the harvest is medical-grade cannabis.
The Cannabis Act has omitted discussions about prohibition, effectively keeping cannabis delisted without formally legalizing recreational use.
This unique approach implies that “recreational use” is neither promoted nor prohibited but ignored in policy and shamed in public. In this way, Thai cannabis can avoid the legal wrangling that has clogged revenue streams in cannabis sectors wherever the concept has been operative.
I have argued this is a more authentic and market-driven stance compared to the false dichotomy often seen between recreational and medical use. Honesty is the best policy.
Unlike “recreational use”, personal cultivation is not an abstract concept virtually unheard of in ordinary language. Dropping “recreaationl use” out of the regulatory vocabulary off-loads jargon standing in the way of the unfolding of the unique Thai cannabis narrative of over-the-counter medical cannabis.
Everyone who knows anything about growing cannabis at home in Thailand since June 2022 knows that no one bothers about a few plants kept out of sight, registered or not.
It is unfair to put a cannabis patient in a setting in which the activity of growing her cannabis meds exists in a legal grey area. It is wrong to present to the world a picture of Thailand as an advocate of medical cannabis and research while not providing transparent access to home growing based on citizenship.
What a wasted opportunity to wake up a sector that has been sleeping, i.e., the home-grow sector. It will emerge as a sub-sector with the two other main sectors - urban (dominant) and rural (up and coming).
The freedom to grow your cannabis at home should be clearly stated, publicly promoted and nationally celebrated -
It is not too late to start this third sector, and for it to connect the other two. After all, urban trendsetters and rural sun-growers are both patronized by the personal cultivator. Home growers are brand loyal year-round and carry knowledge from one sector over to the other. Every home grower is an expert in training with a head full of medical cannabis ideas.
In the case of growing cannabis at home, turning a blind eye would send exactly the wrong message, i.e., “We do not approve but we will not say anything”.
The message that will grow the industry by capturing the imagination of conscious consumers around the world is quite the opposite. It is more like this: “Live your greatest and healthiest life in Thailand, where you can grow your own medical cannabis and learn how to incorporate it with Thai traditional medical herbs and recipes.”
Summing up: The Role of Personal Cultivation in Thailand
Personal cultivation is a vital component of a thriving cannabis market. Allowing individuals to grow cannabis at home fosters education and learning about the plant's medicinal properties. As cultivation expands beyond major population centers into rural areas, home growers serve as essential liaisons between urban trendsetters and rural cultivators.
Make the personal cannabis cultivation policy in Thailand inclusive.
Smart regulators in a free market want to promote the sector they regulate by articulating its features and benefits.
In Thailand, it would be of great interest to patients and practitioners, wellness seekers and other bell-ringers to learn they can pursue over-the-counter purchases, deliveries in some cases and the freedom to grow a plant or two without worrying about the legal repercussions.
If your goal is a nation where responsible use of medical cannabis is the norm, incentivize responsibility. Simply allowing residents to grow cannabis at home is not enough; the new option should be aggressively publicized as a path to optimal well-being that can include whole foods, sunshine and traditional Thai medicinal herbs.
It is time for home cultivation for all to be legalized, publicized and dignified.
The Top 7 Benefits of Personal Cultivation Policy
Empowerment of residents through personal control over health and wellness.
Support for traditional practices by encouraging home cultivation of medicinal cannabis.
Economic benefits from reduced costs associated with purchasing cannabis products.
Reduction of black market activity by providing legitimate alternatives for residents.
Enhanced public health outcomes through personalized cultivation tailored to individual needs.
Educational opportunities fostering informed public understanding of cannabis use.
Community building through shared experiences and resources among local growers.
There has never been a better time for a government-sponsored promotion of personal cultivation for all residents in Thailand.