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According to DEA intel, the Middle East (including Iran), North Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are the main sources of hashish. A few years ago, I saw a DEA world map that indicated source countries for various drugs and the transport routes for the drugs. Iran was shown to be an exporter of Hash, among other things.

An egyptian I knew in grad school once told me that qat was so widespread in the saudi peninsula that it virtually shut down the entire economy wherever there wasn’t a suitable oil well. According to him, what made it so bad was the fact that there was no processing required at all. Opium, Cocaine, etc, require much expertise and processing. But apparently qat is a leaf that you pluck from a bush and put in your mouth...way too simple.

What’s amazing to me is that all these things and alcohol and tobacco are all frowned upon by islam. Yet the only one you get executed for is alcohol...the most difficult one to produce. Why is that? Could it be that it is the only one that they can’t produce themselves due to lack of technology and it’s all imported from the west?

It makes one wonder, no?