between legalization and decriminalization in Canada, the Netherlands and Thailand

Netherlands: legal sale authorized since Friday

The famous coffee shops that dot the kingdom are the only ones to have the right to sell it, but they operate in a “gray zone”: they have the right to sell cannabis to consumers but, in theory, purchasing from their suppliers are forbidden to them. We therefore have a paradoxical situation of a semi-legal trade which is based solely on a policy of tolerance that the Batavians have nicknamed “the back door”.

But from December 15, everything changes: the Netherlands has started experimenting with the legal sale of cannabis. Since Friday morning, the experiment began in Breda and Tilburg, two cities in North Brabant, a province in the south of the Netherlands. A second phase should be launched in the coming months to extend the experiment to around ten cities including Nijmegen, Maastricht and Amsterdam. This phase should last four years and the ambition is ultimately to be able to offer this legal cannabis to all of the approximately 573 coffee shops in the Netherlands.

The law was passed in 2019 but it took time to launch this experiment because the cultivation and trade of this legal cannabis will be very regulated. The Netherlands has already limited the right to purchase cannabis to Dutch citizens and residence permit holders and the hope is that legal cannabis will lead to the disappearance of illegal distribution channels.

Canada: five years after legalization, the market is going down again

The sale of recreational marijuana has been legal since 2018, but the approximately 900 producers are not necessarily swimming in happiness. With almost 30 billion euros injected into the Canadian economy since legalization, one might think that the cannabis industry constitutes a real El Dorado. However, for some time now, nothing has been going well. Companies listed on the stock exchange are reducing their investments. Canopy Growth, one of the flagships of the sector, had to divest its head office in Ontario and laid off hundreds of employees. Another, Aurora Cannabis, now produces orchids in addition to cannabis to balance its books.

Investors may have had their eyes bigger than their stomachs. They flooded their market with their products, and inevitably the price went down. Except that the production costs remain very high. In fact, only 20% of the approximately 900 producers are currently making profits. Faced with such a crisis, producer associations are turning to the government. They are demanding a reduction in fixed taxes imposed on each gram sold. And above all, the legal industry would like the authorities to target more of the criminal market. 40% of sales are still made on the black market, as many consumers who escape the producers who nevertheless desperately need them.

Thailand: after a year of decriminalization, towards restricted use?

In Thailand, cannabis was removed from the list of narcotics in July 2022. Since then, cannabis flowers have been sold over the counter but part of civil society is lobbying to go back. Some doctors now accuse decriminalization of being the cause of an increase in road accidents and of causing harm to Thai adolescents, particularly in the poorest provinces in the northeast of the country.

A bill is being studied, it would not be a question of recriminalizing cannabis, but rather of restricting its use, officially only for medical purposes. The free sale of cannabis flowers would therefore soon be prohibited, and the new version of the law could require the presence of a doctor at the point of sale. But a complete turnaround, particularly in tourist areas, does not seem likely today, as the economic stakes are so high: the cannabis market in Thailand is estimated at nearly a billion euros.