Should Thailand open an outlet in Marijuanaville?

The following advertisement, paraphrased for brevity, is currently running in the US state of Colorado, and in slightly edited form across the entire United States: ‘‘Needed urgently, 64 tonnes of marijuana, FOB payment $84.48 million, completely legal, opportunity to build business 50-fold.’’

The question is whether Thailand should answer the advert, and further, should Thailand sue the United States at the World Trade Organisation when Washington gets all huffy that another country’s farmers and traders are trying to horn in on its developing drug trade.

The US movement to legalise ‘‘recreational’’ drugs is well under way. The states of Colorado and Washington specifically voted to legalise both the trafficking and unrestricted use of marijuana last November. Drug peddling will be kept under government supervision, officials state optimistically.

The ‘‘advertisement’’ above for a wholesale source of marijuana comes from a paper on the financial impact of legalising the drug by Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The numbers are interesting.

When marijuana peddlers open their shops for business next year, it figures that around 40% of people aged from 18-25 will ‘‘toke up’’, but only about 12% of all other adults.

They will need 2,394,428 ounces of weed (64.46 metric tonnes to be more exact than the advertisement). Expect a 200% mark-up by the drug dealers, so customers will spend for ganja — including state tax, sales tax, ‘‘special’’ dope-dealing tax and excise tax — US$6,510, or about 196,000 baht, per kilogramme. In other familiar units, that is $407 (12,250 baht) per ounce, or $14.36 (432 baht) per gramme.

That is quite a profit margin for the middlemen in this drug market. Colorado marijuana dealers, including the government, will pay $84.48 million for the bulk purchase of the pot, and then rake in $419.6 million.

Now, this is not the profit margin of a Wei Hsueh-kang or even a secondary United Wa State Army methamphetamine A 2009 file photo of marijuana grown for medical purposes inside a greenhouse at a farm in California. Growing and using marijuana is being legalised in some US states, but is still a crime in Thailand. pill pusher, but 500% is a substantial upgrade for your ordinary business.

Supermarkets make maybe 3-4% on their grocery aisles. In the United States, TV stations have a profit margin of around 69%, beer makers about 26% and a wellmanaged jewellery store nets an average 50% profit.

Comparisons with the serious drug trade are difficult, because criminals have a lot more expenses (and stress) than government-licensed drug traffickers. But in 1988, the ‘‘Super Star gang’’ from Bangkok was caught while trying to smuggle 72 tonnes of marijuana into the United States, which supposedly would gross the gang $280 million — ‘‘supposedly’’ being an important word.

In any case, even this 500% profit margin is confirmation, if any were needed, that criminals will continue to be a big and influential part of the legal US marijuana trafficking, just as they have been up to now.

That has to impact any decision by legitimate business and the Thai government on whether to pile into the rapidly opening recreational drug market in America. It may not be worthwhile taking part in an industry, no matter how lucrative, that is going to be fighting criminal infiltration for years to come, if not decades.

So, again: Is this an agricultural trade opportunity for Thailand and its farmers? Even way down at the bottom end of the legal sales scale, $84.48 million for 64 tonnes of marijuana is a pretty good deal.

Not to be crude about it, but the Khao San Road set is not paying that kind of money. As for farmers, they were getting the equivalent of 1.28 million baht for 64 tonnes of potatoes last Saturday at the Klong Toey Market, in one or 2kg bags of course, and 960,000 baht for 64 tonnes of prime eggplant. So you have to think they wouldn’t mind getting 2.5 billion baht for roughly the same amount of field work.

But supplying drugs, even legally, is a seriously dangerous endeavour — including to life and limb. It is why Thailand, very wisely, has never participated in the large and lucrative medical opium trade, even though it has the farmers, the expertise, the contacts and the morphinemaking companies all close at hand.

Everyone knows that more opium farmers than needed would plant and harvest more opium than needed, creating a bureaucratic nightmare. It would be impossible to police, corrupting everyone concerned including legal farmers and drug firms.

Marijuana, of course, is not opium. It can’t be made into heroin. It is bulky and it grows in lowland areas, both factors that make it easier to track.

And it is not at all clear that ‘‘leakage’’ of marijuana from legal fields for export to the US would be any higher than the current, entirely illegal marijuana crop that feeds the hippies and others at Khao San, rock concerts and several well-known southern beach areas.

But the truth is that as the US discards the ‘‘war on drugs’’, business opportunities are opening quickly. Getting in on the US weed revolution could prove lucrative to the government, and also to, say, a startup company that knows where to obtain some good ‘‘Thai stick’’.

The US will try to protect its own growers and distributors, but once marijuana is legal, it’s just another crop, subject to WTO rules, with protectionism forbidden.