Interesting post I found..
yes, I'm sure plenty of Thai seeds have found their way to Australia and America over the years
but that doesn't mean that Thai cannabis didn't also get subjected to intensive eradication projects and one way or another suffer as a result
the first really serious eradication began in the Reagan era from about '85 on --- the effect was to disrupt the cannabis economy, including the way seeds were produced for farmers etc., and scatter commercial production from its historic base in N. Isan out all around Thailand
(the decline in quality in commercial Thai cannabis seems to show up in UK customs seizures from the end of the 70s on, though the numbers are limited, so can't carry much weight)
as for the Hmong growing ganja... well, the Hmong grow hemp...
it's the Thai and Lao, plus a few of the tribes in northern Burma and Thailand who have a history of growing ganja...
until comparatively recently the Hmong were not one of these tribes
on a related point:
if you're looking for 'Hmong strains' I'd seriously question how much weight you can put on a strain called 'Meo Thai', since in SEAsia 'Meo' is a term of abuse used by outsiders to insult Hmong (SE Asian Hmong consider it to mean 'thief', 'bandit' etc.)...
a Hmong tribesman from Laos or Thailand would not call himself a 'Meo' any more than someone from the Congo would call himself a 'Wog'... maybe the strain did ultimately come from a Hmong village; but would you unequivocally buy the 'origin story' of a Congolese strain if the people who said they found it called it "Wog Congolese"?
anyway, the few exceptions to the Hmong being only hemp growers are where the Hmong have migrated far south enough to enter regions where there is a pre-existing tradition of growing ganja --- case in point being Khammouane province in Central Laos, where the Hmong first began to appear in maybe the late 50s or so --- that's where the Highland Lao I sold years ago was collected; so yes, the scattering of Hmong there will sometimes grow ganja and opium etc.
the same has also happened in parts of Thailand, again with the Hmong migrating into ganja growing regions and acquiring strains there, not bringing them with them... i.e. it's Hmong migrating into Tai places
if you take a place like Mae Hong Son in Thailand - there has been ganja growing on both sides of this part of the Thai/Burma border since way back (it's recorded in the IHDC)
and yes, as said, some ethnic groups are more closely associated with ganja growing than others
but these days if someone picks up a strain in that part of northern Thailand and declares that it is a 'Lisu strain' or whatever it is a bit of a stretch - some villages get involved in the 'drug trade' some don't; some ethnic groups tend mostly to keep out of it (Karen), some tend to be more closely involved (Lahu)
but these days what it comes down to really is that the place - the region - has 'drug' cannabis around, and that villages of whatever ethnicity in those regions will sometimes grow ganja for money... commercial production really began to pick up in the far north in the '90s
as for the Thai genepool being 'wrecked' - again, sorry, but what exactly are you basing this opinion on?
all I've been pointing to is that the whole 'ganja economy' they had in N. Isan up until the 80s was shattered by the efforts of the DEA and ONCB etc. and that the system they had, which ensured the strains were always being worked on and hence stayed high quality, fell apart... which meant the quality had to drop...
but there is still 'underground' seed production and breeding, good Thai ganja still exists... if a Thai 'Big Man' wants to commission a crop and cares to supply the farmers with good quality seed, he can...
I don't know who if anyone is in a position to know what exactly was lost in the way of biodiversity etc., but no doubt as in other regions (South Africa, for example) some irreversible damage was done
but to anyone who has been to Thailand the claim that it has been 'wrecked' doesn't really stand up... even in Isan there is plenty of production of strong ganja still going on; it's just its mostly not being grown along the Isan side of the 'Meuang Lao' stretch of the Mekong where it used to be... instead afaik it's in central Isan and on the Lao PDR side of the Mekong
