Experimenting through Sen : The lived networks of Thailand's cannabis boom

Abstract

Thailand's removal of cannabis from the Narcotics Act in June 2022 marked a landmark policy shift, triggering a rapid expansion of cannabis production, distribution, and consumption in the country. Policymakers celebrated cannabis as both a national cash crop and a socio-ecological fix to revitalize tourism and rural livelihoods after COVID-19. Drawing on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis and ethnographic research conducted between 2022 and 2023 with cannabis shop owners, growers, and consumers, this article argues that while cannabis liberalization was framed as a universal recovery experiment, it reproduced unstable tourist/Thai and urban/rural binaries and obscured classed, sen-mediated access to opportunity. By tracing these relational practices and social infrastructures, the article challenges scalar imaginaries that confine governance to urban, rural, or national levels, and instead foregrounds the fluid networks of power through which cannabis industries emerge. More broadly, it shows how agro-technological transformations, though framed as inclusive, are locally mediated and classed, producing new forms of social differentiation across scales, from urban farms to transnational networks.

Keywords

cannabis liberalization tourism agriculture Thailand

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