Tosh and Malana have earned themselves their much deserved place in every stoner’s diaries for their top notch marijuana and hashish produce. Not that India lacks grounds for being a stoners’ haven, but with Idukki’s locally produced ‘Kerala Gold’ we might just have hit the jackpot and are now fast losing it.
Idukki in Kerala falls in the western ghats with a temperature and topography conducive to the growing of some awesome weed. Idukki gold is Asia’s most prized pot and has stoners from around the world flocking in to score this stuff. ‘Neela Chadayan’ is the name locals refer to it as and it is believed to be a hybrid strain of cannabis, with a mixed origin of 80 percent Indian and 20 percent foreign.
Idukki’s gift to stoners came in around the 80s and for a long while this illegal cultivation was the way youngsters around made a living. Cultivation has gone on for years and plantations find themselves investments worth lakhs. What has deterred cultivation and made this produce worth a million dollars a fast depleting one, is the fact that marijuana is illegal in India and producers risk their lives trying to keep cultivation going.
If all this information made you wonder how you can score this for your next smoking up outing, chances are you won’t find it. With everything from indegenously produced fabric to spices getting huge amounts of investment, it is suprising how we as a nation are not recognizing the money power marijuana and hashish hold. If marijuana was to be legalized in the country for medical and recreational purposes, it could push our economy a lot ahead and give legal employment to several habiting such areas.
What better than promoting a cottage industry that will have people flocking to it, after all. Research has also proven that marijuana is a lot less addictive than alcohol and cigarettes and has rarely ever caused a death as long as the consumption is not abnormally high.
This is Asia’s best produce that we are on the brink of losing. Time for a 420 movement in India, no?
