Global Ganja Report

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have sought the death penalty against dissident bloggers, and actually imposed prison terms and hundreds of lashes, for such sins as opposing sharia law and advocating equal rights for women. But now the conservative kingdom's General Directorate for Drug Control (GDDC) is hunting for a 13-year-old boy who appeared in a video clip teaching some of his friends the art of rolling a cigarette laced with hashish. Abdul Ilah Al-Sharif, assistant director general of the GDDC for preventive affairs, told Saudi Gazette that the agency is seeking the help of IT experts in tracking down the audacious young vlogger. The video clip, widely circulated on the Path social media platform, showed the boy proudly schooling viewers in the fine art of rolling a hash cigarette—using all the required materials, including a pinch each of  tobacco and hashish, as well as a sheet from Al-Sham newspaper to wrap the goodies up in.

Despite draconian enforcement, hashish continues to make its way into Saudi Arabia. Last month, Yemeni border police busted 18 alleged smugglers with a total of 72 kilograms of hash in Hajja governorate in the country's northwest, who were apparently headed along mountain trails to the Saudi border. The hash was hidden in packets beneath their clothes. This was presumably just one shipment in an ongoing operation, as authorities were tipped off by a local sheikh who became aware of the smuggling trail. The Yemeni-Saudi border stretches 1,800 kilometers from the Red Sea in the west and the Omani border in the east, through remote and rugged territory, and is notoriously porous and uncontrolled. Last year, Saudi Arabia announced plans to build a wall to seal off the frontier with Yemen. (Yemen Times, May 15)

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