Marijuana R&D in Eastern Economic Corridor

Wirot Poonsuwan

New marijuana law was passed by the National Legislative Assembly in its third and final reading on Christmas Day, December 25, 2018 as a New Year’s gift to the Thai people to enable farmers to grow weed and the middle class to practice traditional Thai medicine and treat patients with cannabis-based medication when the law takes effect after it is published in the Royal Gazette, expected in March this year around the time of the general election.

Farmers licensed to run hemp plantation

It is anticipated that agricultural groups organized under the law on community enterprises or agricultural cooperatives set up under the cooperatives law by people in the rural areas will be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to engage in large-scale marijuana plantation to feed pharmaceutical plants that manufacture the body-healing cannabidiol or CBD to treat epilepsy and the mind-affecting tetrahydrocannabinol or THC to cure nausea and vomiting resulted from using cancer drugs or to suppress pain and inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease; and to export the produce to other countries that have legalized marijuana.

Native to Southeast Asia in a warm and humid climate, cannabis, with natural solid medicinal properties, is going to be elevated to the ranks of Thailand’s major economic crops, such as rice, rubber, tapioca and sugar cane.

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The new law emphasizes the importance of research and development on how to use extracts from marijuana to treat illnesses and diseases in humans and animals, adopting modern technology on one end of the spectrum and handy local traditional knowledge on the other, and encourages these agricultural groups to work with government research institutes and agricultural agencies, public and private medical and pharmacy schools, and traditional Thai medicine associations to advance the medical cause.

At the same time, it will permit FDA professional licensing of traditional Thai medicine professionals and village healers to become medical practitioners with ability to treat patients and prescribe and dispense marijuana as medicine. These new professions will no doubt up income and improve standards of living to a vast number of villagers in the countryside and the middle-class in cities.

The new medical professionals are added to the existing mainstream doctors, dentists, pharmacists and veterinarians who are all entitled to apply for FDA licenses to practice marijuana medicine in hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centers.

Eastern Economic Corridor—potential R&D hub for medical marijuana

The three industrial eastern provinces of Chachoengsao, Chonburi and Rayong have been demarcated as a special economic zone called the “Eastern Economic Corridor” under the EEC Act of 2018 have been particularly successful in attracting multinationals and local conglomerates to invest there in the fields of 10 specially targeted industries (i) modern automotive, namely electric cars and driver-less vehicles; (ii) intelligent electronics; (iii) high-income tourism and medical tourism; (iv) agriculture and biotechnology; (v) food processing; (vi) robotics; (vii) aviation and logistics; (viii) biofuel and biochemistry; (ix) digital; and (x) medicine and fully-integrated health services.

Generous tax incentives, 100% company ownership, land rights, immigration privileges, export-import conveniences, exchange-control exemption, foreign-currency transactions, excellent infrastructure, cosmopolitan cities, world-class hospitals, upscale international schools and housing and complete one-stop shop government services have all been provided.

Among the purposes of the EEC are to promote research and development, high technology and innovation; transfer of technology and know-how; to promote educational and research institutes with high quality to increase competitiveness of the country in the world stage; to promote information technology and communication and digital technology; to promote manufacturing and services employing high science.

Many of the 10 specially targeted industries and the above purposes align with the objectives of the new marijuana law that highlight agricultural, medicinal and pharmaceutical R&D, agriculture and biotechnology, medical tourism (the new marijuana law which allows tourists to treat their illnesses with prescription marijuana could lead to an inundation of medical tourists strengthening the nation’s position as a top tourism destination of the world); biochemistry that involves properties of hemp and their chemical process transformation into medicines; digital technology that can help the government control and monitor the consumption, prescription and dispensing of marijuana medication, and high-tech manufacture of pharmaceutical products and sophisticated health services.

The coincidental alignment of both the EEC law and the marijuana law make it ideal for the marijuana high-technology agricultural and medical businesses to be located in the EEC. The rural areas surrounding the three EEC provinces are fertile ground of the central plains, perfect for marijuana farming. An ever-enlarging network of roads and highways well connected with the north and the northeast will also link the technology R&D center of the EEC to marijuana plantations and serve as efficient supply routes for raw materials from the regions.

Of course, this is not to forget the alternative of putting up advanced pharmaceutical laboratories in industrial estates, with similar though lesser privileges, in the north and northeast closer to the bedrock of future hemp agriculture.

EEC law above other laws

The special economic zone is run by the most influential group of government officials Thailand has ever seen: the EEC Policy Committee. It is chaired by the Prime Minister himself and unlike any other committees, membered by powerful ministers of key economic, developmental and security ministries including the ministries of finance, industry, commerce, agriculture, transport, digital, energy, science and technology, public health, education, environment, defense and interior. This is the largest pool of the country’s elite ministers that any committee under any law can ever dream of.

The supreme unique feature of the EEC is that the EEC Committee, comprising nearly all relevant ministers, can overrule all other government agencies and bypass them to give all the licenses investors, Thai or foreign, need to do business under any other laws. The far-reaching overriding provisions of the EEC Act make it a more important law than others, including the land code, the foreign business act, the immigration act, the investment promotion act, the public-private partnership act, and, yes, even the narcotics act that governs marijuana, which is administered by the minister of public health, a member of the EEC Committee.

With this unusual prevailing regulatory power, if the EEC so wishes, it is in a position to find ways to overcome all the restrictions in the marijuana law to draw advanced pharmaceutical and medical research giants all over the globe to be located in this already-popular special economic zone.

Wirot Poonsuwan is Senior Counsel and Head of Special Projects at Bangkok law firm Blumenthal Richter & Sumet and can be contacted at [email protected].

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