Everybody grows weed in Thanamaliwila, a rural hamlet pointlessly close to the new international airport and cricket stadium. Perhaps that’s better put as, weed grows. It’s a weed. Sri Lankans don’t cultivate it to a high degree. In most cases it’s just planted and left alone and plucked later. Even moreso than in America — where a hydroponic arms race has created a potent drug out of a plant — Sri Lankan marijuana is just a weed.
Sri Lanka also has a long history with the plant that our wholesale adoption of western drug laws has papered over. It’s a vital ingredient in ayurvedic medicine (a use western medicine is just starting to figure out) and even used in cooking. Nothing tenderizes tough Sri Lankan beef like a handful of marijuana, and I’ve heard of older Muslim households where they kept it as a spice.
Hence it makes sense that this island is getting bubbles of legalization talk. What’s interesting is that it’s coming from Ministers, ayurvedic doctors and even monks. To quote Mrs. Sumedha G. Jayasena (Minister Of Parliamentary Affairs) “Even Buddhist monks of the area demand that ganja be legalised. These Bhikkhus come to us and request that laws be amended in Parliament to remove legal barriers to allow free cultivation of ganja.”
Which is, like, yeah. As the government moves to make foreigners-only gambling islands near Hambantota, one can help but imagine that legalizing marijuana would make this a much more appealing tourist destination. And that would just be a peripheral benefit. The real demand for this policy is coming from the most traditional sources. Lets just hope that sanity grows. Like a weed.
