The Hash Case
Hashish, a 1946 book about drug smuggling. Photo by Dabawalla.
A parcel of magazines addressed to a former beauty queen was found to contain 356 grams of hashish. Which is about 40 tolas. Which is a lot. And stupid. One British national was caught at customs and another bolted. They were subletting a house from some people I know, on Hudson Street. Neither Angela Seneviratne (the celebrity addressee) nor the couple were in the house or seem to be involved, but it’s still a damn mess.
Note that investigations are ongoing and I don’t know anything for sure. Take everything you hear with chili and salt.
For reference, I think that there’s nothing wrong with hash and it should be decriminalized. Thing is, it is criminalized and shipping a shitload of contraband in a bunch of magazines is retarded. A tola of hash in Colombo is like Rs. 16,000, compared to like Rs. 3,000 in Manali (India). Note that I know cause I know, not cause I’m a buyer.
Again, I think the hypocrisy on hash needs to stop. Everybody from traditional doctors to Tanamalwila dudes to Ministers sons is smoking hash or weed and there’s nothing wrong with it, besides backwards policy that criminalizes it. Colombo is full of drugs as is everyplace on earth. Our biggest problem is heroin, which I also think should be decriminalized, because as it is the drugs are still getting in and just ends up making criminals out of politicians. That’s the real alternative to sane policy – a corrupt polity. Anyways.
Whatever the system is, it’s still damn stupid shipping illegal stuff around (unless you’re a politician). Local politicians have been caught with ganja in state-supplied jeeps and major heavies are implicated in heroin to a high degree. But that’s them. For normal people, you get busted and busted hard and that’s the way it is.
Damn mess, and Gossip Lanka is having a field day, especially with the celebrity angle. They’ve got a recent interview with Angela to clear things up. I read her Facebook update, which says about the same. She hasn’t lived in the house for 10 years, the couple renting it were out of the country, these two subletters were the only ones clearly involved.
It’s a damn shame that Angela et al have gotten involved in this mess, I think because she’d continued to get mail at this rented address. I still don’t know all the details of the case, but that’s a brief sum of what I know. The Island newspaper seems to be covering it the best.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
“Again, I think the hypocrisy on hash needs to stop. Everybody from traditional doctors to Tanamalwila dudes to Ministers sons is smoking hash or weed and there’s nothing wrong with it”…. Is that code for I do it too, so it’s fine?
not picking on you-just feel there may be a bias.
it has issues i think.
to start : social degradation?
I also agree that it has certain issues, whatever drug it maybe and I wouldn’t go as far as saying things as dangerous as heroin should be legal, because people can die using that stuff.
But at the same time, I would also have to agree that decriminalising drugs (at least certain ones) and regulating them might be a better way to handle things seeing as it brings more transparency and takes the drug business away from people wielding guns and murdering people over.
That said, I think it is in the interest of governments around the world to actually have drugs criminalised because it makes the people involved more revenue by it being illegal than it would being legal. This isn’t an issue specific to Sri Lanka, you see it around the world.