How Big Is the Thailand Cannabis Market, Really?

The honest answer is that the Thailand cannabis market is materially smaller than the multi-billion-dollar forecasts still in circulation, and also not the collapsed ruin the closure headlines imply. The real figure sits between those two stories, and reaching it requires counting the market from the ground rather than extrapolating from boom-era assumptions. That number, and how it was built, is the core of our report rather than something to give away in a blog.

Why the headline forecasts mislead

The widely quoted forecasts were built by projecting the boom forward, using growth assumptions from before the June 2025 recriminalization. When the market contracted, those projections did not; they kept compounding a reality that no longer exists. The result is figures far above what the market actually supports today.

Why the collapse story also misleads

The opposite error is reading the shop closures as the whole story. Thousands of shops closed, but demand concentrated into survivors and continued through grey channels. Sizing the market only by what officially closed undercounts what actually persists. Both the boom forecast and the collapse narrative miss the real, middle figure.

How you actually size it

Getting a real number means measuring the market as it is: counting shops, observing what sells, tracing supply including the grey channel, and reconciling the legal retail market with the supply that feeds it. That is slow, ground-level work, and it is the opposite of extrapolation. It is also the only way to produce a figure you can defend.