It might not feature in Morocco’s official tourism brochures, but cannabis attracts thousands of visitors each year to the North African country.
At a hotel bar in the northern region of Ketama, German tourist Beatrix made no attempt to hide the joint she was rolling.
The 57-year-old said she had fallen in love with the area for “the quality of its hashish and the friendliness of its residents.”
Photo: AFP
Hassan, a 40-something sporting a conspicuous gold watch, said cannabis was “our main source of wealth.”
“The climate here is very special. Nothing grows here except kif,” he said, using a Moroccan name for the drug.
Northern Morocco is a key production center for hashish for export to Europe, but it has also seen traffic in the other direction — an influx of European visitors heading to sample the local pleasures.
While Moroccan law bans the sale and consumption of the drug, that has not stopped farmers from growing vast plantations of it, providing a living for about 90,000 households, official figures for 2013 showed.
Smoking kif is seen as part of the local culture and is largely tolerated by the authorities.
Beatrix was one of the organizers of the “Bombola Ganja” festival in mid-September, essentially an evening gathering of smokers at a hotel swimming pool.
Cannabis leaves appeared prominently on the poster on Facebook for the event, alongside the names of trance DJs and a call for cannabis to be legalized for medicinal purposes.
Ketama hosts thousands of tourists each year, mostly from Europe, but also from other parts of Morocco.
“People are attracted by the mountains, the hiking, the climate,” hotel director Abdelhamid said.
However, it has also been famed for its cannabis since the 1960s, when it became popular with hippies seeking the high life.
Later, it gained a reputation for lawlessness, and by the late 1990s guidebooks were advising tourists to avoid the region entirely.
“Tourism saw a sharp decline,” local activist Mohamed Aabbout said, adding that “the extension of kif culture to other cities in northern Morocco” was partly to blame.
Hashish has helped put the town of Chefchaouen, high in the hills 100km to the west and now buzzing with visitors, well and truly on the map.
“Twenty years ago, the tourists were mainly young Spaniards who came to smoke,” one local tour operator said.
“Now, nonsmokers also come for the blue of the city, highly appreciated by Chinese tourists,” he added.
Famed for its narrow alleys lined with striking blue houses, the town is also the main urban center of a region famed for its cannabis production.
Small-time dealers and unlicensed guides approach tourists to offer them hashish or a tour of nearby farms to meet the “kifficulteurs” — local cannabis producers.
Chefchaouen guesthouses offer a similar service for about US$18, although they are careful not to mention it in their brochures.
On the terrace of a strategically located cafe, dealer Mohamed approached potential buyers, showing them a large pellet of hash and offering a “field visit” to see how the cannabis is processed.
After gathering a group of tourists, he took them to a nearby village.
Standing in a field, with cannabis plantations covering the hillsides as far as the eye can see, he pointed out the varieties being cultivated.
“Here you have the Mexican plant, the Afghan and the beldia [Arabic for domestic],” he said.
Most farmers in the area import seeds in order to ensure a bigger harvest, he added.
Nearby, a group of young French tourists crossed the plantation with another guide.
The two groups met in front of a modest building, where a farmer tapped a container full of cannabis clippings, collecting the finely powdered resin in a bucket below.
Wearing a Paris Saint-Germain soccer jersey, one of the French tourists said he had just bought a batch of the drug worth US$230.
Women from the village watched the scene with amusement as chickens pecked around the cottage.
The farmer took the bucket to his workshop and returned a few minutes later with the finished product — a block of hashish.
“Here, you smoke where you want, except in front of the police station,” Mohamed said.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Taiwan is open to joining a global liquefied natural gas (LNG) program if one is created, but on the condition that countries provide delivery even in a scenario where there is a conflict with China, an energy department official said yesterday. While Taiwan’s priority is to have enough LNG at home, the nation is open to exploring potential strategic reserves in other countries such as Japan or South Korea, Energy Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇憲) said. While the LNG market does not have a global reserve for emergencies like that of oil, the concept has been raised a few times —
AI-FUELED DEMAND: The company has been benefiting from the skyrocketing prices for DRAM chips amid the AI frenzy, especially its core product — DDR4 DRAM chips DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported that its revenue for the first quarter surged 582.91 percent to NT$49.09 billion (US$1.54 billion) from NT$7.19 billion a year earlier, as the supply crunch caused chip price spikes. Last quarter’s figure is the highest on record. On a quarterly basis, revenue jumped 63.14 percent from NT$30.09 billion, the company said. In January, Nanya Technology expected global DRAM supply scarcity to continue through the first half of 2028, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) forecast prices of standard DRAM chips would rise between 58 percent and 63
RSS