Is It Legal to Purchase Marijuana in North Korea?
It may not be legal to purchase or smoke marijuana in North Korea, but the North Koreans are well known for smuggling drugs into other countries to raise foreign currency.
North Korea has been getting some pretty high praise lately from the stoner world.
Marijuana news outlets including High Times, Merry Jane and Green Rush — along with British tabloids, which always love a good yarn — are hailing the North as a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. They’ve reported North Korean marijuana to be legal, abundant and mind-blowingly cheap, sold openly to Chinese and Russian tourists at a major market on the North’s border for about $3 a pound.
But seriously, North Korea? Baked?
The claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: The penal code lists it as a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin. And the person who would likely help any American charged with a crime in North Korea emphatically rejects the idea that the ban is not enforced.
“There should be no doubt that drugs, including marijuana, are illegal here,” said Torkel Stiernlof, the Swedish ambassador. The United States has no diplomatic relations with the North, so Sweden’s embassy acts as a middleman when U.S. citizens run afoul of North Korean laws.
“One can’t buy it legally and it would be a criminal offense to smoke it,” Stiernlof said. He said that if a foreigner caught violating drug laws in North Korea happened to be an American citizen, he or she could “expect no leniency whatsoever.” [ABC News]
You can read more at the link.
Hmm… I’ve read in several places, including I think Andre’ Lankov’s books that ganja is legal, always has been. Did a Google Search, so far it’s just Fox and ABC news saying the leafy green is illegal. Everybody else is saying blaze up.
Of course if an American even fails to look both ways before crossing a street, he can expect to be brought up on charges… If the North needs a reason. Otherwise, don’t be a jerk. Every case I’ve seen since I started hanging out here at ROK Drop has been someone acting a fool before getting scooped up. Stealing propaganda signs, tearing up passports, being where you probably shouldn’t be.
Not that I’ll go to the DPRK until it’s the Former DPRK, and I can’t indulge until I retire or at least quit my current job. (Or someone decides the income from taxing the herb is more money than running a for-profit prison and we finally legalize.)
I do wonder, what do they do for munchies up there since there aren’t any twinkies or doritos? Somehow, twigs, bark, and dirt don’t sound all that appealing.
If you got ’em, toke ’em, I say. At last, a reason to venture north.
@MTB Rider, I would be surprised as well if authorities in North Korea are arresting people for smoking pot. However, I think they have the law because they don’t want foreigners thinking they can come to North Korea and smoke pot. I would not want to be a western tourist over there and try to smoke weed. It seems like you would be asking for trouble.
Only a stoner would even think about going to Norkistan…
Well, until they lose the paranoiac “leadership”, that is…