Boom Shankar, Indyeah!

The cops often talk of "narco-terrorism." The libertarian antidote is "narco-tourism." Allow me to explain, especially in the Indian context.

In the early 1970s, when I was growing up in New Delhi, the Connaught Place area was always full of young, white tourists, usually broke, but invariably smokers of the Noble Herb. It was these tourists who discovered Goa, who put Kathmandu on the tourism map, and who discovered the hills of north India, where good charas was plentiful.

I have friends from college who walked the entire length of Goa, staying on every beach, on a 2-month narco-holiday. This was Goa in the 70s. These days things are different. On Palolem the other day, a dealer tried to palm me some adulterated charas. In Goa, smoking tourists are getting screwed.

When I first visited Kathmandu in the early 80s, charas was legal and there was a great narco-tourist market called "Freak Street." There, you could get hash tea, hash coffee, hash omelets, hash cakes, hash cookies - and, of course, you could buy hash to smoke.

Things are different today, after the government ban. On my last visit to Kathmandu, a shady guy in Thamel sold me some bad hash. Notice that the Maoists who are in power are not talking about tourism, the hash market, and things like that. Their soldiers are just waiting for government jobs. There is no "liberation" unless The Market is liberated from State control. These guys just want to become tax parasites. Their chief ideologue holds a PhD from New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. The mission of the Maoist leadership in Nepal is to control a State; it is not to liberate a people.

Coming to Hasan, Karnataka, on whose huge, untapped tourism potential I have just written, the quality of ganja on the market is simply awful. Suneet Shukla brought some stuff from Bangalore and that was awful too. I know for a fact that the stuff you get in Delhi is just as bad.

What poisonous stuff is selling in our markets?

This is a serious question of public health when the authorities have unleashed a culture of hard drinking.

I think states like Karnataka, which borders Goa, should seriously consider narco-tourism. Amsterdam flourishes on tourism.

We must also consider the farmers who grow the stuff and are exceedingly poor. I visited one such farmer and was shocked by his poverty and his unconnectedness. We had to motorcycle it along a rutted track in the jungle in order to reach his shack. These guys should own SUVs.

Narco-terrorism is just a symptom of the futility of State prohibition of ganja and charas. Narco-tourism allows us to liberate the trade and bring all players into The Market - with all the consequent benefits.

Boom Shankar, Indyeah!