For those of you that don’t know, Ganja is a city just north of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh in the Caucasus, but in the West we usually use the word to describe the very smokable plant that many people refer to as pot.
Martuni of Bust!‘s latest post “Hemp in the Homeland” tells us just how prevalent it is in Karabakh:
Though very illegal and punishable with jail time, there are many war veterans who have become addicted after using it as a substitute to smoking tobacco which was hard to find during the blockade. (source)
Then he says something that he can’t possibly prove true:
The use of hemp certainly is not cohesive with creating a civil society, as the short and long term effects counter what we need today to move forward. It’s very difficult finding common ground with someone who is high and can be very frustrating since many times they live in a fantasy world.
…ummm, the Netherlands, Switzerland or Spain don’t have a civil society I guess? (map)
Check out the whole post and you decide.
All this reminds me of a story about the Armenian American Karabakh soldier Monte Melkonian:
One night in January 1993, he personally stopped a truck smuggling contraband wine to Stepanakert, and dumped the entire tank load onto the road. A couple of weeks before his death, he incurred the wrath of local Mafia bosses in Karabagh-and defied the advice of close friends-by burning a large field of cultivated cannabis plants. (source)
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