The RG420 cannabis cafe opened just four days ago in Khao San, an area of Bangkok popular with backpackers – and already it’s crammed with customers.
Several such outlets have sprung up across the capital since Thailand decriminalized the plant in June, a few weeks before it dropped COVID-linked controls on foreign visitors.
Foreign arrivals shrank to 2 million in the first half of 2022 from nearly 40 million in 2019, and RG420’s owner Ongard Panyachatiraksa and others like him view their cafes as central to efforts to revive a tourism industry that contributed about 12% to GDP before the pandemic struck.
He said hundreds have been visiting the cafe every day, and he plans to open others.
“Europeans, Japanese, Americans — they are looking for Thai sativa,” Ong-ard told Reuters, referring to a cannabis strain. “Cannabis and tourism are a match.”
In 2018, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian country to legalise marijuana for medical use. In June, the entire cannabis plant was decriminalized.
That has led to an explosion in its recreational use, something that government officials – concerned about negative effects on health and productivity often linked to uncontrolled use of the drug – have retrospectively tried to discourage. [Read More @ CNN]
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