River Khwae Herbal Therapeutic Project Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Background

In early 2019, the Thai government implemented a policy to encourage the cultivation of medical cannabis by requiring farmers to set up community enterprises in order to obtain a license to grow cannabis.

Mr. Wisan founded the River Khwae Herbal Therapeutic Center (RHTC) to conduct research on cannabis cultivation in Thailand, and quickly became an expert in the field.

RHTC provided knowledge, resources, and support to eight community enterprises in the Kanchanaburi province, which marked Thailand's first legal cannabis cultivation.

The cannabis flowers from the first harvest were found to have 18% THC, and RHTC aims to develop strains that can provide up to 30% THC.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, sales of other parts of the cannabis plant (such as leaves, roots, and branches) were not sufficient to meet market demand

When the COVID-19 situation eased in the middle of 2020, the government changed the rules to allow the general public to possess dried cannabis flowers for medical treatment, allowing RHTC to sell dried cannabis flowers directly to hospitals and to export dried cannabis flowers to foreign countries. RHTC is now expanding its network to include more community enterprises and is working to improve its growing techniques in order to increase the THC content and yield of its cannabis, as well as studying the potential uses of other parts of the plant in the development of new products.