The market
Why Do the Billion-Dollar Thai Cannabis Forecasts Not Hold?
Thailand Cannabis Report · Reefers Club Co., Ltd. · Last checked 29 October 2026
The multi-billion-dollar Thai cannabis forecasts, including the widely cited billion-dollar projections, do not hold because they were built by extrapolating boom-era growth and never corrected for the 2025 recriminalization. They compound assumptions that reality has already invalidated. A forecast that projects continued rapid growth from a market that has since contracted is not a forecast; it is a straight line drawn through a turning point.
The arithmetic, in the open
The published multi-billion-dollar forecasts for 2030 were built before the June 2025 recriminalization and never rebuilt after it. Here is what has to be true for them to hold, against what is publicly checkable. Licences on issue fell sharply at the 2025 renewal deadline: 5 in 6 licences due in 2025 were not renewed. And the export leg of the bull case runs through EU-GMP certification, a door the report finds shut for finished medicine. A forecast that multiplies a pre-contraction growth rate through those three facts is not a forecast. It is a curve that never checked the ground. The market's real size, and the recovery path we consider defensible, are built figure by figure in the report, each one confidence-tagged.
How the number was built
These forecasts typically took the explosive early growth of the open market and applied a growth rate forward over several years. That method works only if the underlying conditions persist. In Thailand, they did not: the legal basis of the market changed in June 2025, and the open recreational model that drove the growth ended.
The compounding error
The deeper problem is compounding. Once a forecast assumes continued high growth from an inflated base, every year forward multiplies the error. A model that missed the contraction does not just start too high; it grows the mistake annually. That is how you arrive at figures detached from what the market can actually support.
What a defensible number looks like
A credible figure starts from the market as it is now, accounts for the contraction and the consolidation, and builds up from observable reality rather than projecting a dead trend. It is smaller than the headline forecasts and more useful, because it is anchored to what exists. The specific number is in our report.
In short
Why are the billion-dollar forecasts wrong?
It extrapolates boom-era growth past the recriminalization.
What is the core error?
Compounding growth assumptions the contraction invalidated.
Is the real number smaller?
Yes, materially.
How should it be built?
From the current market up, not by projecting a dead trend.
Want the numbers behind this?
This article gives you the argument. The figures, where they come from and how sure we are of each one are in the report.