‘Cookies’ delays Bangkok store, drops plan to import weed

A major American weed brand has delayed the opening of a store in Bangkok and dropped plans to sell imported weed.

San Francisco-based Cookies’ plan to join the burgeoning retail scene with a store and lounge located in Soi Ruamrudee have been delayed until November, with Josh Schmidt of cannabis venture Natura saying today it will only sell locally grown cannabis.

“We aren’t shipping anything over,” Schmidt said Monday morning. “We have [T]hai partners with flower in the ground.”

The store was originally planned to open last week; Schmidt blamed the delay on “weather.” A reporter visited the indicated location on Friday and found no sign of a dispensary under construction.

Cookies has partnered with Thai cannabis brand Sukhumweed Industries, according to Schmidt and Sukhumweed founder Soranut Masayavanich.

Last month, Schmidt had said the plan was to sell cannabis and swag brought in from California, with the company attempting to arrange exports via Canada or Israel. The United States, where marijuana remains illegal on the federal level, does not allow cannabis to be exported.

“Everything will be coming from California,” Schmidt said last month. “Some of them have arrived already. So we have a lot of merchandise landed, from skateboards to sweatshirts, to smell-proof backpacks, all that kind of stuff.”

Asked if the change was due to cannabis shipments becoming stuck in customs, Schmidt said today that they “aren’t shipping anything over” now.

Cookies operates dozens of dispensaries in the United States, where it sells weed and apparel. It is credited with a popular strain known as Girl Scout Cookies.

The brand has announced that its public face, founder Gilbert Milam, aka Berner, plans to travel to Bangkok for the opening event.

Clarification: After this story was published, Schmidt said that Cookies only intended to import weed from Canada and Israel because doing so from California would be illegal. He said that plans to import weed were shelved due to legal hurdles, but would be revisited once it was possible. He insisted that Cookies played no role in any of the imported weed currently in circulation in Thailand.