The market is a huge covered area with stalls organized neatly in long rows. After passing through the motorcycle spare part section, the electronic goods section, the raw cloth section and the hardware section, you come to the few stalls that make up the traditional medicine section. One stall with an exhibition of animal skins splayed out onto crossing twigs hanging from the front rafter catches your eye. Looking down at the main display, you see a variety of jars and packets containing various twigs, woods, barks, and a wide array of medicinal or flavor-enhancing herbs. Seeing that you are a foreigner, the proprietess, a bent old woman with a bright face and a wide, half-toothless smile, hands you a plastic bag full of what she calls "gaan-chah" and offers it to you for US$2. While you are sniffing this 100 gram packet to assess the quality, she pulls down a large parcel from the shelf above her. This packet contains 1 kilogram of marijuana, and it can be yours -- no bargaining necessary, for $20. Welcome to Cambodia.

Since Cambodia began opening up to tourists and foreign residents in 1992, this unique country has earned a stellar reputation for the availability, affordability and tolerance of marijuana. Grass is enjoyed openly in bars, restaurants and guesthouses all over Phnom Penh. At one typical guesthouse you will almost always find community marijuana lying on the porch table. Scott, an English teacher living at the guesthouse, explains: "Marijuana is so cheap that it doesn't make sense to be possessive. We just leave some on the table to save people the trouble of going to their rooms to get their stash." He waves the cigar-like joint he is smoking as a point of evidence. "There are two components to this spliff here, the rolling paper and the marijuana; the rolling paper is by far the more expensive ingredient."

Craig, an English teacher living in the same guesthouse, brings me to his room to show me a huge sack containing at least 5 kilograms of weed. "One of my students gave this to me," he says causally. "His uncle has a field, and my student requested a bit as a present for me."

Over meals in the backpacker restaurants in the city, there are sometimes so many huge joints being passed around the dinner table that there are simply not enough lungs to smoke them all. The sight of them burning unused in the ashtrays would bring a cash-strapped high school kid saving up for a 1/8 bag to tears. With grass so cheap, enforcement so negligible, and responsibilities so few, lighting up a joint is about as noteworthy as opening a can of soda.

The pizza, as pizza, is lackluster. As a vehicle for marijuana, though, it serves its purpose well. Finely chopped pieces of choice marijuana form a layer between the tomato sauce and the cheese. The tomato sauce is uninspiring, the crust is thin, and the marijuana adds its own unique flavor. But even if the pizza doesn't make your taste buds "extra happy", it still lives up to its name. I am full with an entire quarter of the pizza left uneaten. I want to continue on principle; it is shocking to waste so much marijuana. After all, there are high school kids in Calgary dying for a toke.

A perfect place to enjoy the effects of the happy pizza is another Phnom Penh institution: Seventh Heaven on "the lake." Beng Kok (Lake Kok) is on the northern side of the city, a ten-minute moto (motorcycle taxi) ride from the center of town. The lake hosts a collection of guesthouses, situated on a dirt road which barely deserves the name: If we were outside Phnom Penh, I would call it a wide jungle trail.

The guesthouses have restaurants which look out onto the large, peaceful lake. There are hammocks set up so you can just lie there and watch the day go by. Travelers and residents are sitting alone or in small groups, talking and smoking ganja. There is an almost reverential silence, as if it was some sort of temple to complete and utter passivity. The rooms are cheap, as is the food. With the price of grass so low, an individual with $250 to spare can comfortably spend a month on the lake doing nothing but smoking ganja all day.

The best stuff is reportedly reserved for export, and is most easily available in the port cities of Sihanoukville (locally referred to as Kompong Som), and Koh Kong, bordering Thailand. Getting access to the export-quality stuff is just a bit harder than strolling through the market. This takes contacts with the people who handle it, and who are willing to redirect part of an order for the domestic market. These contacts, though, are easy to make. Within a day of poking around, I was able to find someone with access to the superior export ganja - slightly more expensive than the market ganja, but of much higher quality.

Whether it's the dollar-a-pound "hay" in the market or the high quality grass diverted from the world market, you can find it and enjoy it easily and cheaply in Cambodia.

The (US) War on Drugs

Predictably, this atmosphere of tolerance and freedom is decried by certain officials as evidence of Cambodia's "drug problem". In fact, this problem exists mainly in Washington, DC. Marijuana use among Khmers is not a major concern. Mr. Rith, a Khmer journalist, explains that "marijuana grows very easily on the fields by the river. The farmers can just scatter the seeds and let it grow; they don't need to take care of it. Old men smoke it, and young people see it as an 'old man's habit'. Also, some people have the custom of eating it in chicken soup in the morning. But this is a very small amount, and the Ministry of Health does not see any problem with this." With its stigma as an old-fashioned, old men's drug, Cambodians looking for a high are much more likely to drink alcohol, or to get involved in such glamorous imported drugs like amphetamines or Ecstasy. These drugs are the focus of police crackdowns and enforcement, because it is these drugs, not marijuana, which pose a threat to Cambodian youth. While there are instances of young Khmers getting stoned on marijuana, any attempt to portray Cambodia as having a "marijuana problem" among the local population is tpure fiction.

There are certainly foreigners who take advantage of this open atmosphere beyond what others might consider appropriate. For example, Sansta [a nickname], a Dutch 35 year old living in Cambodia spends every waking moment buying, shredding, rolling, and smoking ganja. He decided to apply for work teaching English, and asked others to help him with his resume. This 35 year old had listed a total of 13 months of work experience.

With a marijuana "problem", confined to a few over-indulgent foreigners, what could have prompted the Royal Government in December 1996, to criminalize marijuana? The answer lies in the extortionate US pressure on Cambodia. Dependent on foreign aid for roughly 40% of its budget, Cambodia is vulnerable to threats of aid cutoff. An article in the English-language Phnom Penh Post quoted numerous sources within and without the Cambodian government confirming heavy US pressure for the drug law. The anti-drug law was rammed through the Cambodian parliament much faster than usual, ahead of other laws which many Cambodians felt had a higher priority. In response to American protestations that the law was not forced through under US pressure, a lawyer quoted in the article asked "do they think we're all stupid?"

The Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of US-Backed Drug Policy

The drug law expands the powers of the police in a country which has a deplorable record of police abuses. According to an unofficial translation provided to me, the drug law authorizes searches in any instance "when there is an indication which may bring forth to a suspicion that there is a commission of crime. . ." The law also gives expanded powers to the courts, famous for their corruption and their subservience to the ruling political party. The law allows for the acquittal from charges if the crime involved some unspecified "very small quantity." In a judicial system where justice is routinely for sale, this leeway has predictable results. Mr. Veasna, a soldier who works at the Ministry of Defense and moonlights working for a foreigner, explains that a low level officer in his regiment has been arrested on drug charges. "They will let him go for $20,000. But his wife has only come up with $1,500 so far."

For the most part, according to a journalist who wishes to remain anonymous, "the drug law has had absolutely no effect on the average Western consumer of marijuana." Chris Fontaine, another journalist, explains that "Mostly, we've seen an increase in the burnings of small or medium size marijuana fields." This hurts the small farmers that depend on the crop for their livelihood, while leaving the high-level exporters untouched. The expat community was surprised by another unsavory (although mercifully rare) effect of the drug laws. The Heart of Darkness is a popular bar for expats living in Phnom Penh. While customers have to pay for beer and soda, the bar used to provide free grass for anyone wishing to light up. "It's cheaper than beer nuts," notes the first journalist. Last September, in a scene familiar to Hemp BC, but previously unknown in Cambodia, police swooped onto the popular nightspot. In effect, they kidnapped the Khmer bartender, and held him for 12 hours until the bar owners could come up with the necessary ransom. Various sources put the amount paid to the police at between $300 and $1,000.

The anonymous journalist explains that "the raid had nothing to do with drugs. The police decided that the bar wasn't paying enough protection money. It was just after the coup, and nobody was getting paid, the whole economy had hit rock bottom, and the police needed some extra cash. The raid on drugs was just an excuse. Usually they use illegal weapons as the excuse." Another journalist, also requesting anonymity, notes that "the 'raid' was more of a shakedown than a crackdown." Mike, an occasional Heart of Darkness patron, remarks that "we can still light up in the Heart whenever we want. But it's different now. Cambodia lost something very special on the night of the raid, and I don't know if we'll ever be able to get it back."

The most notorious example of trafficker involvement in the government is the case of Theng Boon Ma. This colorful businessman is the president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce, holds a diplomatic passport as an adviser to Cambodia's ruling Cambodian People's Party, and among other properties and interests, owns a 70% stake in Phnom Penh's premier hotel, the Intercontinental. He is also on US DEA and US State Department blacklists for drug trafficking, a charge which he has unconvincingly denied for years. Although his involvement in drug trafficking has never been publicly proven, his ties to top Cambodian government officials are beyond doubt. There is the widely acknowledged assertion that the "bodyguard" (in reality a 1,500-man private army) of Cambodian strongman Hun Sen is paid for by Theng Boon Ma. The tycoon admits that he financed the July 1997 coup against Hun Sen's democratically elected coalition partner with an emergency shipment of $1,000,000 in gold to Hun Sen.

Mr. Boon Ma, along with his patron Hun Sen, had even been awarded an honorary doctorate from Iowa Wesleyan University. This was arranged through the intermediation of an Indonesian-born businessman wanted in the US for questioning in connection with donations to the Democratic Party. In January of this year, Iowa Wesleyan rescinded its doctorate when the trustees learned of the accusations against Mr. Boon Ma. Incidentally, Mr. Boon Ma also shot the tire of a Royal Air Cambodge airplane last year. "They give such bad service. If they were my employees, I would have shot them in the head," said Mr. Boon Ma after the incident. Despite the fact that Mr. Boon Ma openly took a weapon past customs and immigration and fired on the airplane with people still on board, no criminal proceedings resulted from the event.

Another documented case of high-level involvement in smuggling is the case of Mong Ret Thy. In April of 1997, police allied with the rival political faction found six tons of marijuana inside a rubber shipment bound for Sri Lanka. The rubber belonged to Mong Ret Thy, a close associate of Hun Sen. This drug smuggler is also the one who gets the construction contracts to build Hun Sen schools all over the country, schools paid for, alleges Hun Sen's ousted rival, with drug money. And, in true Cambodian logic, Hun Sen-allied police arrested the police official responsible for the bust on charges of 'falsifying documents' concerning the marijuana smuggled by Hun Sen's friend. Then, Hun Sen declared that anyone who wanted to arrest Mong Ret Thy had better 'wear a steel helmet.'

So, after pushing an anti-drug law through Cambodia's parliament, the United States' Cambodian drug problem still exists. And while allegations of drug trafficking against the government's top leaders continue, the police have a new excuse to harass ordinary Cambodians. And even with such great victories in the drug war like the Heart of Darkness "raid", Theng Boon Ma and Mong Ret Thy are still major players in Cambodian politics.

But despite the stench of hypocrisy and corruption at the government's top levels, in terms of everyday usage, Cambodia is undoubtedly an excellent place to enjoy low priced grass in a causal atmosphere. Cambodian society has been shattered by years of violent civil war; while this takes a heavy toll on the development of the country and the well being of its people, there is one small and unintended side effect. From the marijuana stalls at the market to the stoned backpackers at the guesthouses, Cambodia offers unparalleled opportunities to enjoy cheap and abundant "gaan-chah."