Business booms in a free-for-all industry less than a year after Thailand legalised cannabis.
The future of this free-wheeling new industry is uncertain.
For many Thais, who have grown up in a country which viewed all narcotics as a dangerous social evil, the dramatic flowering of the weed business since last year is bewildering. Yet the unforgiving official view of drugs is a relatively recent development. As the Vietnam War wound down, the US put pressure on Thailand to curb drug production. In 1979 Thailand passed a sweeping Narcotics Act, mandating harsh penalties for using and selling drugs, including the death sentence.
Meanwhile a series of royally-sponsored crop substitution projects persuaded most hill tribes to stop cultivating opium and marijuana, and try coffee or macadamia nuts instead. "Welcome to Amsterdam on steroids," booms Tom Kruesopon, the Thai entrepreneur known here as "Mr Weed" for his role in getting the drug laws liberalised, to a group of German tourists just off the plane, who cannot quite believe what they are seeing. Mr Kruesopon has opened a branch of the US cannabis store Cookies in Bangkok, and runs through the different strains of locally-grown marijuana, each in its own illuminated jar.
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