Here, in Jamaica's verdant central mountains, dreadlocked men escort curious visitors to a farm where deep-green marijuana plants grow out of the reddish soil. Similar tours are offered just outside the western resort town of Negril, where a marijuana mystique has drawn weed-smoking vacationers for decades...I have a problem generally with traveling to foreign countries. Is this what they mean by broadening the mind? Isn't it mind-expanding enough to consume the powerful Minnesota marijuana while playing Bob Marley records and contemplating the man who no longer lives anywhere in his natural habitat? Do people from Jamaica journey to Minnesota to think about Prince? (And he's still around. You might entertain the hope of actually seeing him.)
"I can get stronger stuff at home, but there's something really special about smoking marijuana in Jamaica. I mean, this is the marijuana that inspired Bob Marley," said a 26-year-old tourist from Minnesota who only identified herself as Angie as she crumbled some pot into rolling paper.
My mind is already sufficiently expanded to contemplate Bob Marley solely by reading about him and remembering hearing his music, and it's also expanded enough to imagine how bad I would feel getting near criminal activity in a foreign country.
I picture: "He was a 20-year-old American boy, up against a system he didn't understand, spoken in a language he couldn't speak...." Can you handle your legal problems in the language of Jamaica?
Yes, of course marijuana is still illegal in Jamaica. Here's another quote from Breezy, the Jamaican pot farmer quoted in the post title:
"The government needs to free up marijuana soon, man, because it's a natural thing, a spiritual thing.... And the tourists love it."Ah, but what sort of bland old rule-abiding travelers would clog up the place, ruining the ambiance, if it weren't a crime? What's marijuana without the transgressive edge?
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