Cannabis Max: India before Prohibition

Overland to India: Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan Leaving Europe and travelling overland to India in 1977, it was apparent that although smoking hash was quite common in Turkey, it was also dangerous there. In a café, for example, a joint was usually never passed directly to someone, but after a few puffs left on a table for someone to pick up a minute later; this was to ensure that no one was implicated as a ‘supplier’, which was an imprisonable offence. Some people could be found smoking hash joints on the streets of Tehran in Iran; but the police were always hovering around and the atmosphere was decidedly paranoid. The border between Iran and Afghanistan was indeed a scene of strange paradoxes. On the way into Afghanistan from Iran, uniformed Afghani police boarded our ‘hippie’ bus and immediately pulled out large slabs of sticky black hash, which they proceeded to sell to the passengers. Top quality hashish was abundant in Afghanistan in those days. Mazari Sharif, around 300 kilometres north-west of Kabul, near the border with Uzbekistan, was renowned for its ‘Number 1’ hash. You could see a dozen or more men squatting on the roof of a bus in Kabul smoking hash in large hookah pipes. Returning to Iran from Afghanistan On the way back into Iran from Afghanistan, people were smoking cilams (chilams) right outside the mud hut that was the customs post at the Afghani border. You then got called inside and asked if you had any hash…

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Source : seedman
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