The Thai government is keen to develop their own medicinal cannabis industry with the first full-time cannabis clinic opening in Bangkok this week.
Both traditional and alternative based medicines will available to patients, free of charge for the first two weeks.
Although there are around 25 cannabis clinics already around Thailand, this is the first one to be open full time in the country. With limited supply of medical specialists in the cannabis field, there may be a bit of a wait to access the clinic. But they still expect to be very busy.
Anutin Charnvirakul, the Public Health Minister, estimated the pilot clinic in Bangkok expects to see 200 to 300 patients each day.
The Thai government has also forbidden the import of cannabis products – thereby enabling the domestic industry to grow with the production, cultivation, and sale of cannabis restricted to within their country.
With the Thai laws as recently as early 2017 allowing the death penalty for any caught carrying, transporting, or using illegal drugs, they’ve done a huge back flip in an extremely short time period.
In addition to the plans to open another 77 clinics around the country (one for each province), politicians have also drafted laws which could possibly allow each household to grow up to 6 cannabis plants each.
Thailand was the first country to introduce medical cannabis in South East Asia in 2018.
This is fantastic to see from a global standpoint with some of the harshest countries in terms of penalties are hastily reverting their laws based on scientific studies and the world movement.
