Good article in the PPP about that stuff that people smoke.http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/high-life
What got my attention though was the comment underlined here about knee-jerk govt reaction to too much discussion on the subject. If this is the case, then maybe it's not such a good article after all.
So, my question is, should people STFU about this on public forums and news articles for fear that the govt will get pissed off with getting a bad image and crack down hard ?

...
John Collins, coordinator of the London School of Economics’ IDEAS International Drug Policy Project, said legalisation of marijuana in some parts of the US had called into question the 1961 convention’s credibility.

“What you’re seeing now, because states in the US are legalising marijuana, [countries] are saying ‘Well, these conventions aren’t as rigid as we thought they were, and now the states can decide how they want to enforce it’,” he said, adding that US pressure was largely the reason for marijuana’s global criminalisation in the second half of the 20th century.
“Traditionally, the US was an exporter of the prohibition model,” he said.

Collins, who described marijuana as “not a particularly dangerous drug”, said Cambodia’s more hands-off approach to cannabis was preferable to aggressive enforcement.
...
Regardless of the Cambodian approach’s pluses, Collins expressed fear that any discussion of these discrepancies may cause a knee-jerk reaction by the government, as lax enforcement is largely borne out of tacit acceptance by police that they lack resources to enforce a pointless law and a willingness to accept certain activities by sellers.

“To highlight this will bring it lots of attention. It could get nasty,” he said.

Should we even be discussing this ? (Paranoia )

The way I see it is the damage has already been done. If you want to see what Cambodia will be like in the future law wise I would think looking at Thailand and Singapore may give some kind of a clue. I can't help thinking that if the temperance movement hadn't moved on to drug control (hence the Refer Madness movies), DuPont etc hadn't invented Nylon and other synthetics and the UN had left well alone, everything would still be OK for what probably was the world's no 1 drug/fiber/etc for millennia. In just about every prehistory settlement archaeologists have found early wheat forms and cannabis seeds. God, what a mess.

As to why they may not change their minds about making it legal in Asia along with current US thinking, I can only guess. Perhaps it is not seen as the right drug to make money with. It certainly doesn't make people 'go for gold' in a monetary sense. Or perhaps the UN have successfully associated the 'dirty hippie' with a pot smoker in their minds. Perhaps even going so far as to do private screening of Reefer Madness. Or maybe they have been on holiday to SNVL. lol

Here's a very good docu on cannabis' history from early Chinese times when it was called Mar 'plant with two forms or sexes, with over 5000 different uses. To the US need for hemp in belts, parachutes and harnesses etc etc in WW2. Good scenes of huge bales of Manila hemp being unloaded onto US docks.