Take It Gently
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Uruguay's anti-drug laws were never as strict as expected - and its path to decriminalisation of cannabis has also been full of paradox. Simon Maybin explores why the country's taken a slow and steady path to regulate marijuana growers and sellers - and visits a greenhouse full of legal weed.
Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from correspondents around the world.
In Nepal, joining the ranks of the British Army's Gurkhas has long been one of the few options for a stable income. Regimental wages have kept some whole villages, not just families, solvent - so there's a lot riding on the selection process. Hannah King of BFBS witnessed the most recent intake and saw how these young men are prepared for a drastic change in their lives.
Over recent weeks the streets of Haiti have simmered with discontent, with protesters confronting police and the army in the capital, Port au Prince, over systemic corruption, rising food prices and enduring inequality. Thomas Rees describes how the rising tensions made themselves felt on the streets.
On the Karakorum Highway, Chris Haslam sat down to talk business with the driver of one of Pakistan's famous painted trucks - the elaborately-decorated palaces on wheels which haul goods and passengers along one of the highest-altitude roads in the world. But times are changing for them, with competition from "vast Chinese behemoths" now plying the same route as part of the Belt and Road expansion.
And as the world worries over reports of deforestation and dwindling insect numbers around the world, Emilie Filou has a rare tale of revival from Madagascar - with the story of how one NGO has brought back the art of weaving a special kind of silk, made not by worms but by a unique local moth.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, today you're in the Army now. |
| 0:08.3 | We're in Pocura in Nepal with the new Gurkha soldiers. |
| 0:12.2 | What's the mood on the streets of Port of Prince, suffocating |
| 0:15.2 | boredom or nagging fear? We hear of the discontent which hangs over Haiti. High up on the |
| 0:21.3 | Caracoram Highway, one of the world's highest altitude roads and long part of the old silk route, |
| 0:27.0 | it's a new age, as painter trucks are overtaken by hulking Chinese tractor trailers, and more silk as we unraveled the mystery of silk |
| 0:36.0 | spun not by a worm but by a moth in Madagascar. |
| 0:41.5 | To South America and to Uruguay, the first country in the world to legalize recreational |
| 0:46.5 | marijuana, a trendsetter in the five years after its reformed cannabis law was signed, |
| 0:52.1 | ten US states followed suit and last year Canada became |
| 0:55.7 | the second country to legalize production and sale. |
| 0:59.9 | Drug policy is obviously a touchy matter in the Americas, drugs are big business and the |
| 1:04.8 | root of much violence. |
| 1:07.0 | So Uruguay's decision was bold, though as Simon Mabins been finding it's been carried |
| 1:11.6 | out in a distinctively Uruguayan way. |
| 1:15.0 | It's one of Uruguay's paradoxes, says my guide with a wry smile, |
| 1:19.0 | as he tells me the name of the prison next door to the site we're visiting. |
| 1:22.0 | As it turns out, Liberty Prison was not named of the prison next door to the site we're visiting. |
| 1:22.6 | As it turns out, Liberty Prison was not named by someone with a dark sense of irony. |
| 1:27.3 | The nearest city just happens to be called Liberty. |
| 1:30.2 | Now a maximum security jail, during Uruguay's dictatorship in the 70s and 80s |
... |
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