A Puff in Paris

Danna Harman
The Huffington Post (US web)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Napoleon's troops first brought over the mysterious dried leaf called hashish from Egypt in the early 1800s. Soon, it was being sold in pharmacies across France and gaining adherents, especially among the bohemian intellectual crowd. Today, France has some of the most conservative drugs laws in Europe. A high-level parliamentary report released recently concluded that it was impossible to continue "advocating the illusion of abstinence" and recommended that the drug be subject to "controlled legalization."