Kathmandu’s Freak Street in the 1960s. (File image)
“It is therefore the duty of state authorities to formulate such rules without delay,” the judgment said in a published English translation. “In fact, regulation is a better policy option,” he told TOI , pointing to the economic opportunities that countries with legal cannabis industries had already begun exploiting. “It is not justifiable that a poor country like ours has to treat cannabis as a drug,” he said earlier, criticising the difference between restrictions in developing countries and changing policies in wealthier nations. “We need to make sure that legalising cannabis benefits the neediest Nepalis,” he said, calling for small farmers and cooperatives to have a meaningful share in any future legal industry.
The order did not permit recreational use, which remains illegal, and left any wider relaxation of cannabis laws to parliament. Rajiv Kafle, a prominent cannabis legalisation campaigner, has long called for Nepal to replace prohibition with regulation. Former health minister Birodh Khatiwada, another advocate of legalisation, has questioned why Nepal continued to criminalise a crop that several other countries had begun permitting. Saurav Dhakal of Green Growth Nepal has also argued that cannabis cultivation could help rural communities, but warned that large companies should not be allowed to corner the benefits. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Kathmandu’s Freak Street became a prominent stop on the hippie trail, attracting Western backpackers, counterculture travellers and Americans seeking to avoid conscription during the Vietnam War. Govt-licensed shops openly sold marijuana and hashish. As then US President Richard Nixon intensified the ‘War on Drugs’, Nepal faced mounting pressure to shut down the trade.