hairdo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:25 pm The hippie pizza weed is quite harmless and compared to heroin export it's also a lousy business. It's hard to control a patch of grass compared to a precious flower. All I see with this drug is a bunch of slightly forgetful hipsters and artist wannabes with a few delusional businessmen on the side. And actually nothing else, really.

I would like to say that your statement is surely true in many ways, more to do with demand since even that we don't hear of many opium busts, or very much about the trafficking of, only the ever so popular ice (meth) gets into the news. Again, there's large demand for methamphetamine and it's easy and cheap to produce, but the street value makes it worth the time of the dealer, such is the process of production, cheap ingredients make it possible to make large quantities of the drug, and the producer floods the potential market willing to lose up to 50% of what is manufactured.
The opium flowers are a different proposition, being that they have to be cultivated and cared for from start to finish of production. A valuable flower indeed, and for the last 2 years heroin produced in the Golden Triangle has been increasing, to be now the world's largest opium-producing area. Heroin has always been the most produced drug in the area of Asia and the most trafficked, via China, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand and it is a drug used throughout the area and beyond it is trafficked to the west.
Despite some of it being sold in passage, heroin seized alone in Thailand increased last year to 1.2 tonnes, up from 940kg the previous year. It has not spread as much compared to meth and cannabis, but however, it is still a cause for concern as heroin is a hard drug and it can damage the health of users even if they use it just a few times, but meth is the substance that the authorities will seek out because it is such a dangerous drug to its user, but the user under the influence can become a danger to the general public, unlike the effects of heroin and cannabis use.
Has, for the simple riverside happy pizza shop still being money to be had, I would say it is strongly regulated by who? I suppose it is because what it is, illegal but draws the harmless tourist and thus provides a service and revenue.