only places like Netherlands, spain and maybe italy have kept their traditional attitude to cannabis , the rest of the world took the US line.
As late as the 80's you could smoke a joint inside a police station while going about your official business, or anywhere in morroco.
The same in Egypt, with President Anwar sadat the most famous hasheesh smoker.
India took untill the 80's to put it in the law books, and untill 4 years ago !!!!!
i am not joking 4 years ago till they started persecuting cannabis smokers.
They do this cynically because it gives corrupt police more power to extort money from tourists.
local indians blatently smoke it in public right in front of the police , but if you do it, you will be arrested and if you dont bribe them quickly enough, they could throw the book at you.
Egypt is still safe except for the month of december.
The police have 1 month left before the end of the year and they start getting serious about arrests so that they could get a promotion or pay rise, if they get the most arrests.
The rest of the year they can bribed very cheaply, and they may even ignore you.
after taxriir square and the breakdown of law and order, today the police do not even bother to arrest you for smoking weed.
and people are selling it blatenly on the streets .
Another sad thing is with the loss of Ghaddafi Libya will change and adopt the American view of weed.
till last year all forms of cannabis were perfectly legal.
you would buy your weed from your tobbaconist , right next to your marlboros and winstons and sheesha mix.
and you can buy it from your grocer, or your tobaconist , go to your local cafe and smoke it there in public with your tea and nobody will look at you twice.
you can imagine my extreme disspointment when the libyan government delayed the issueing of a licence for my company.
i was already lobbying heavily to put my name on the list of people heading to libya to open the libyan branch of our company.
this was 2009 , in hindsight it might not have been such a good idea..
anyway back to the point, damn you american tyrants, damn your hearst, damn you anslinger and damn you J-egar hoover and the entire population of racist WASP americans in the 20 and 30's.
and damn you all those countries for bending backwords for american tyranny.
