Hello from Thailand
I am not walking through clouds of ganja smoke and reggae music is not playing from every bar.
Ganja (กัญชา) is the loanword used in Thailand for weed. The leaves have been legal for culinary and medicinal use for a quite a while now. (The leaves only have a tiny amount of THC). The standard was that the THC level in any ganja product to be legal was 0.2% or less.
What has changed is that the entire plant was removed from the controlled drug list. But, at the same time, they said that smoking dope in public would be proseucted as a public nuisance — punishable by a fine and potential jail of up to 3 months.
In addition, the sale of ganja is still illegal to people under 20 or to pregnant / lactating women. It is also still illegal to possess on university campuses.
Further, extracts of ganja must have a THC level of 0.2% or less (so CBD is OK, but forget about hash oil). So you Thai stick fans out there will be disappointed LOL.
You can now buy marijuana buds in public, but it’s pretty pricey...especially considering the normal Thai salary is a lot less than the Stateside salary. At the newly-opened ganja shop in the local mall, the prices ranged from THB 450 to THB 600 per GRAM. (that’s USD 350 to USD 500 per ounce in stateside terms...or a cost of around USD 10-12.50 per joint). Consider the normal Thai salary for a professional is around 500-750 a month and far less for a blue-collar type job.
So, yeah, I could go to my local mall and buy some. But I can’t smoke it unless I do so in my house with the doors and windows closed. And I can’t really afford it on my retiree budget. So, don’t plan to see me posting on FR stoned...
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“THC level in any ganja product to be legal was 0.2% or less.”
And who will there be, running around, trying to apply these tests to everybody’s boo?
Highly unlikely .
Out in the mass population , entirely unenforcible
And if you did somehow come afoul of some % regulation, I’m sure it would be nothing a hah-loy baht note could not fix.
After all, it’s Thailand!