The reality of Marijuana and Hookah in the Dominican Republic
Not an island known for marijuana, but it's here. Wait, what's the deal with smoking hookah?
Every country has its own views and differences of opinion on what they deem as drugs or recreational.
Those looking to unwind with recreational use of marijuana or hookah in the Dominican Republic could face a nightmare outcome.
Just the other day my lady walked inside saying that she could smell a heavy scent of marijuana coming from one of the apartments nearby.
My first thought was foreigners vacationing at a short-term rental lol.
I have been living in the Dominican Republic for quite some time now, and I have only smelled that scent once.
The laws here for marijuana/Mary-Jane/weed are extreme. The Dominican government isn’t what you would want to take a chance with.
The US and Canada treat and view weed completely differently from the DR. In the DR marijuana is classified as “Drogas” with no exception.
All jokes aside, whoever it was in that apartment is taking a real risk. You don’t want to go to jail in the DR, I saw the conditions on the news.
Wow, so not worth it.
It reminds me of the time an old friend of mine told me his marijuana story at a resort in the Dominican Republic.
This guy is an excessive marijuana smoker, lighting up more than 10 times a day. He and his brother decided to go to the DR for the first time. I don’t recall which part he stayed in, but it was a resort.
By not doing a speck of research, he just assumed that because he’s vacationing in the Caribbean, the laws for marijuana didn’t much apply in some sense.
One night him and his brother walked along the beach asking locals if they had the connection. Down on his luck, nobody had any, so they kept walking further off the resort territory, now looking if they could find someone who could help them out.
At this point they walked way too far off the resort grounds and it was late in the night.
And then, he describes being ambushed by police yelling in Spanish. Him not understanding a word, while big shotguns are being pointed to their heads. It was the making of a complete disaster, they were thrown on the ground, scared and shocked.
The police later noticed the resort wristbands, which caused them to calm down. The police explanation was that they thought these guys were robbers, and their job was to protect the people on the resort.
Marijuana search over, my friend hated his time in the Dominican Republic. I don’t think he was able to smoke that vacation week.
Even publicly smoking hookah is banned now.
I’m surprised by this one. I can only imagine how hard businesses and their customers are taking it.
When I first got to the DR, inside and outside the clubs, smoking hookah looked to be a new phenomenon among young party people. And now, for those upscale (enclosed) hookah lounges that were doing good business to be stripped away.
It was only recently, through conversation, that I was told smoking hookah is outright illegal now in any public space.
Well, it's not quite fully illegal; there are exceptions. It is legal only in completely open-air, outdoor private commercial venues (like roofless terraces or patios) and inside your own private home.
That sounded strange to me because I would always see multiple groups of people smoking hookah openly in the park. The Dominican lawmakers noticed that loophole also and expanded the ban to include parks, beaches, street corners, and stadiums. That covers pretty much all the public grounds where people would smoke hookah.
Maybe the government was going to the extreme of protecting the public from secondhand smoke?
But it’s actually more about enforcing the laws. In this matter, marijuana and hookah are tied together. Apparently, the sudden outlaw on hookah came when authorities believed that people were using a mix of marijuana, hashish, and illicit cannabis-derived liquids in their hookahs.
Marijuana is strictly illegal for both medical and recreational use in the Dominican Republic, with a zero-tolerance policy. Possession of even a very small amount could lead to a lengthy prison sentence.
If a person is caught illegally smoking hookah by the Dominican authorities, their equipment will be confiscated and that person will receive a heavy fine.
The person will not face jail time, but if the police search the hookah equipment and find any trace of illegal substances, then jail is likely.
The Dominican Republic is a beautiful place to vacation or live, but when it comes to smoking, playing by the rules is the only way to go. It’s just not worth the risk.
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