Why anti-cannabis propaganda in Thailand matters. They can’t reverse it outright, but they could force enough regulation to kill the industry with a thousand cuts, as in the US and Canada. In Politico’s piece on Why weed companies can’t make any money, outlines the multiple obstacles faced by cannabis businesses there that might explain why .
…financial filings from two dozen of the largest publicly traded U.S. operators shows that they collectively lost more than $550 million in the first six months of this year on revenues of nearly $4.5 billion. The villain of the story is “federal illegality”. No doubt, that is not helping. Yet even if we imagine the federal law changing tomorrow, that would have no impact on the specific obstacles created by states where cannabis is legal. These include:
- High taxes
- Vertical supply chain mandates
- Higher leasing costs because of their illegal federal status
Federal illegality certainly sucks and is clearly based on the stigma that cannabis retains in the minds of many lawmakers. If there was a button we could push and make cannabis federally legal in the US tomorrow, who really believes that the industry’s problems would be over? If you wan to know why weed companies can’t make money, it requires admitting that, even if it were legal at the federal level, most states have made legal weed uncompetitive against illegal weed.
Anti-Cannabis Propaganda in Thailand Could Make It Too Expensive
