The plant had been cultivated in the hills for as long as anyone could remember, often alongside mustard, millet, and maize.

The midslopes of the central hills and the ridges around the Kathmandu Valley produced charas that locals pressed by hand. Cultivation was a household and village activity, not a clandestine one.

In towns, licensed vendors sold cannabis products openly. The government collected revenue. There was no moral panic, no enforcement apparatus, and no stigma attached to the trade heavier than the stigma of selling tobacco.

Foreign travelers who arrived in Kathmandu in the 1960s encountered an unfamiliar ease. A place where the plant they were told was dangerous was sold across the counter like any other crop. That ease was not a quirk. It was the default, the way the country had run itself for generations.

The change was not organic. It was imported.