Marijuana AND Crystal Meth Legal in North Korea?

A recent visitor to the capitol Pyongyang said he went and purchased a substantial 'shopping bag' of the wacky tabacky at an open-stall vegetable market (at a rock-bottom price), no problem. There is simply exists no taboo around pot smoking in the DPRK- foreign businessmen say that many residents know the drug exists and have smoked it at least once.

Marijuana -which goes by the name of ip tambae, literally 'leaf tobacco'- is said to be especially popular amongs young soldiers in the North Korean People's Army, and you can often smell it wafting through public places, even the streets of the capitol.

Norks may not consider pot to be a 'drug', but you'd assume they surely consider meth to be one. But whatever they want to call it, it didn't stop them from making piles of the stuff in government labs for the purpose of generating hard currency (while destroying the West, perhaps).

Production in government labs of high quality methamphetamine for export by Pyongyang's mysterious Room 39 is said to have been halted, yet -in the finest entrepreneurial spirit- independent producers have picked up the slack (apparently with government sanction of some sort). In fact, five alleged drug smugglers (Chinese, British, Slovak, and Thai) were busted in late 2012 for their plot to smuggle almost 100 kg of meth into the US. Upon interrogation, they revealed that the source was working out of North Korea.

But it's not all for export, this story gets a lot weirder:- meth (known as orum, or 'ice') is also widely tolerated for personal use in North Korea- in fact, a 'little sniff' is commonly offered as a greeting to visitors in many private homes as casually as we would offer a tea or coffee(!) Stories of whole families getting through famines by smoking a little meth are not uncommon.

Given all this, it's wise to assume KPA soldiers -if we ever have to face them- will be all cranked-up on methamphetamine -feeling no pain- and looking for some hand-to-hand combat (with a knife in their teeth). After all, that's what the Nazis invented meth for in the first place.

Back on the business side, you can now add private, small-factory meth production to the list of Nork hard-currency sources: besides blackmailing idiot US presidents, there's opening North Korean restaurants in Europe (staffed with imported captive labor who are not allowed to leave the premises), extremely sophisticated production of counterfeit US $50 and $100 bills... even worldwide distribution -under diplomatic immunity- of hashish through North Korean embassies/diplomatic couriers. That's how this heinous regime continues to limp-along, test nukes, and assemble missiles with a stone-cold-dead economy.

So this God-forsaken nation full of obedient zombies is not just brainwashed... they're stoned out of their cotton-picking mind! Explains a few things, doesn't it...
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