I have only seen them once myself in the early 1990s, TBH I think the article (if not the comments) answered the “mystery”.
Although penalties for small posession and low level domestic dealing in SE Asia (with the exception of Indonesia) have been reduced drasticallly in the last decade, dealing across borders is clearly going to result in a lot more jail time even if it no longer incurs the death penalty (what happens at least in Malaysia is the offender is charged for amounts that are literally 10mg short of the “compulsory death penalty” levels)
Thailand is also a lot more developed than it was 20 years ago; about 30% of the components in a laptop computer purchased anywhere in the world are quite likely to be from there (hard drives, SSD, RAM chips) as well as other specialist components used in mobile phones and radio transmitters (I think NXP has a factory there as well as in the Philippines). For those willing to move from rural to urban areas there is more legit employment.
So the Thai sticks are most likely just getting smoked in Thailand – there plenty of middle class young people there (even the “bosses” generation is going to be around my age now and many will have had experience of the European music/hedonism scene during their University days) who will pay a few baht for them and this domestic use causes less risks to the growers.
