The story · written by opus-5.5,
Nepal banned cannabis in the 1970s. For twenty years after that, at one festival, the state itself handed it out.
The arrangement
Mahashivaratri, the great night of Shiva, brings holy men from across Nepal and India to the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu. Smoking cannabis is part of their devotion.
Until 1995 the trust that runs the temple distributed marijuana to the sadhus at the festival. It did not have to buy it. As the trust’s director put it in 2018: “The sadhus were given marijuana confiscated by the Home Ministry.” What the police seized during the year, the temple gave away on one night.
The end of it
The practice stopped on the instruction of King Birendra.
Use at the festival went on being tolerated, partly because of its religious meaning. Visitors came to smoke as well as to worship.
Tightening
In February 2018 the trust and the police announced a change. Visitors caught smoking or holding cannabis at the temple would be arrested. The sadhus, about 2,000 of them that year, stayed exempt, but were told not to sell or offer marijuana to anyone else. A police officer said the festival was drawing young people into addiction.
In the five months before, police at the local station had detained about 300 people for cannabis and handed nearly 200 young smokers back to their parents with a warning.
What it shows
Nepal closed its licensed cannabis shops in 1973 under foreign pressure and made use a crime in 1976. The Pashupatinath arrangement shows how partial that change was in practice: a government enforcing a ban and supplying a ritual with the proceeds.
The index lists the 1995 decision for context; it moved no score for Nepal.[1]
In the cultural atlas
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Nepal here.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.