The always amazing Future Perfect blog has a nice little photo essay about Nasvai, a stimulant being sold throughout the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Made from tobacco and slaked lime (plus a few other goodies), Nasvai is preferred to smoking tobacco because it provides a bit more of a lift.
Of course,
Khazakstan Pravda doesn't see things so sanguinely:
Slight euphoria lasting about 30 minutes is fraught with serious hazards, too dear for life. Consuming frequency grows from 2-3 times a week up to 7-10 times a day.
The consequences are dire. The worst thing is school kids chewing “poisonous gums” during the classes. Doctors say that the poisonous produce is well launched into consumption. Children ask their parents for money allegedly to buy sweets, but buy… nasvai instead. To feel “higher” home-craftsmen mix chicken dung, lime, benabryl, and other poisonous “additives”.
Given that "shamanism" has its origins in this part of the world (if you believe Eliade), this is only the latest in a very, very,
very long tradition of indigenous highs in Central Asia.
Page 195: The state doesn't control anything. Kolkhoz aristoracy is capable of unbelievable vileness, there's hardly any industry (...). Only traders work, as well as people working in the public sphere, but the don't get their salaries for months. There are areas, for examples in the Toktoogulskaya and Issykulskaya valleys, where people haven't seen money for years.
So the currency is a korobok - a piece of hashish of the size of a little finger. On the market you have to pay 250 soms (13 dollars) for it, locally it's much cheaper. (...) Drug gangs distribute food, vodka, livestock, clothes. They give it out for free, but in August or September they'll be back and take half a korobok for a bottle of vodka, 5 for a school pinafore and schoolbooks, 20 for a bag of flour, 500 for a cow. (...)
Drugs are the only way to earn one's living for thousands of Kyrgyz families. In mountain areas people go out to the clearings and work hard from dawn until dusk. They say: "We go picking money".
Page 199: Nobody in Kyrgystan is able to say how many drug addicts are there in the country.
In China already ages ago there used to be a drug problem, because they smoked opium. In Central Asia there were no addicts, although in Kyrgystan, Tadzhykistan, Usbekistan and Turkmenia there was no wedding or funeral without drugs. The Usbeks cooked plov - a national dish with anasha [cannabis], the Tadzhyks prepared sweet chewing tablets with opium, the Turkmen - sweets known as hak, also with opium, and in Kyrgystan even children know the sweet-smelling nasvai, which is available at every market. It's laid out on the stands and nobody's hiding with it, even though it's a mixture of tobacco, pepper and opium [so here we have a different "recipe"]. It has an awful, hot flavour, but produces a nice, lazy high. (...) In every home medicine chest there were strong drugs. Someone had a stomachache, he took a bit of opium, grandpa's tooth hurt him, he ate a bit of poppy - a relief at once. Even if a child was crying it the night with no reason, it was given a few drops of poppy juice and fell asleep. But it was just a medicine. Only in the USSR did Soviet Muslims start drinking vodka and taking drugs without moderation.
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