Marijuana Tourism in Jamaica: A Travelers Tale WSJ Team

By: Jewnnabis (A User Submission)

Over this past year I took my first visit to Jamaica, the marijuana capital of the Caribbean. Although I figured weed would be easily acquired, I was surprised to see quite how ridiculously available it was considering the drug is still technically illegal. We barely stepped off the plane before people began trying to sell us every drug you could think of. We got on a tour bus to make the 2-hour trip to our resort and upon first meeting our bus driver he told us “You want the Ziggy Marley you buy weed from someone else, you want the Bob Marley you buy from me.” Naturally with an offer like this on the table, my group quickly bought about 2 O’s for $150. After arriving at the resort my friend allowed one of the locals to bum a cig, which was paid for when the man reached into his bag and gave my friend a handful of weed.

We met the resort staff and the first day one of the staff from the US saw us smoking and came up to us and mentioned his best friend grows and takes groups up to his farm. We were all very interested but a little hesitant because we all thought of weed farms as what you see in the movies with a lot of people standing around with guns for security. A couple days later the same guy approached us to tell us that we could go on a “field trip” later that day if we wanted. We all agreed and a few hours later this Jamaican local came to pick us up and we began the drive through the Blue Mountains.

I ended up sitting in the front for the nearly 2-hour ride, the entire time thoughts running through my head of everything that could possibly go wrong. Every once in a while our driver would slow down to point something out and tell us about it, although a very thick Jamaican accent made everything impossible to understand. Finally we arrived at the farm and we were all surprised to see that the only security there was a gate with a little old man sitting at it. We pulled up to another fence that led into the woods and we got out and began to hike. After hiking for about 30 minutes we finally reached our destination, the weed farm. Initially the operation seemed very small but then we continued hiking a little bit further and reached a second part of the farm (pictured below).

The farmer was happy to show off his crop, surprisingly even encouraging us to take pictures. After talking and hanging out for a bit we made the trek back through the woods and to the car. We then drove to the farmer’s parents place and met his mom right before smoking a J and being given massive amounts of by-far the best weed I have ever smoked. After an incredible journey we finally safely made it back to the hotel to smoke our freshly farmed ganj.

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