A saleswoman shows off a locally produced t-shirt and towel made out of hemp in Pyongyang. Hemp is, in fact, grown in North Korea with official sanction.
(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
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.
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But seriously, North Korea? Baked?
The claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: The North Korean 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.
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« 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. »
Americans have been sentenced to years in North Korean prisons for such seemingly minor offenses as stealing a political banner and leaving a Bible in a public place.
