Cannabis coffee: How Indonesia's Sharia stronghold sidesteps drug ban

The nation has declared itself in the midst of a drug "emergency" because of soaring methamphetamine use. But the situation is Aceh is muddled. Police hunt weed farmers, imprison users and torch mountains of confiscated marijuana - more than 100 tonnes last year alone. Yet just last week a lawmaker from the province proposed in Parliament that the drug should be legalised, so the country could export it for pharmaceutical purposes. He was quickly reprimanded by his Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), while the national narcotics agency slammed the proposal claiming it would discourage Aceh ganja farmers from adopting its suggestions to switch to vegetables and other crops.

Despite the risks, Agus, claims he has little fear of going to jail. "How can you ban something that's everywhere?" he said, adding: "It's all over Aceh. This huge crackdown just makes it rarer to see in public but people still use it." Most days, his biggest concern is hitting the perfect ratio for his java - 70 percent coffee and 30 percent marijuana. "If you put more than 30 percent ganja in there then you lose the coffee taste," he explained.

For two decades Agus was a white collar professional but he swapped his prestigious career for a more lucrative trade in order to better support his family. "I wanted to focus on coffee because this is my area of expertise," he added. Agus insists his recipe offers a pleasant, less intense high than smoking it or eating popular dodol ganja. The local speciality mixes marijuana with a fudgy sweet made from glutinous rice, palm sugar and coconut milk. How marijuana became a thing in Aceh is a matter of debate.

Some say it was brought by Dutch colonists hundreds of years ago as a gift for a sultan in the jungle-clad region. But local historian Tarmizi Abdul Hamid counters that marijuana use for everything from medicine and cooking to repelling pests from crops and preserving food - can be found in manuscripts that pre-date the Dutch arrival. "It shows that ganja can be used to cure baldness or high blood pressure," he said of one text. "Ganja was also used for cooking and medicine. Smoking, however, is not mentioned in the ancient scriptures," he added. Centuries later, marijuana was on the front lines - literally of a separatist insurgency in Aceh.

Former weed farmer Fauzan remembers harvesting his crop when bullets started flying across his field in a shootout between government soldiers and rebels back in 2002, three years before a peace deal ended the bloody conflict.

Fauzan estimates that some 80 percent of the people in his hometown Lamteuba, about 50 kilometres from provincial capital Banda Aceh, were once ganja farmers. Locals in the one-time rebel stronghold created secret pathways to their lucrative crops and even built hiding places to stash their weed harvest in a cat-and-mouse game with authorities.

"This village is like heaven. Whatever you plant here it'll grow," Fauzan said. "Throw a ganja seed on the ground, leave it and then come back for the harvest." But, fearing arrest, he later quit the trade.

In pic - In this image a dog is trying to sniff the drugs in the briefcase as part of an anti-drug drill.

Fauzan, who now grows chilies to support his family, works with the government to convince farmers to switch to vegetables and other crops. That's a hard sell in an impoverished village with few job opportunities. "If the government doesn't take care of people and supply assistance, they're likely to go back to their old routine," Fauzan acknowledged.

For pot enthusiast Iqbal - not his real name - the only thing prohibition has done is make locals better at hiding pot in a cup of coffee or plate of noodles. He mused: "It's impossible to get rid of ganja in Aceh. Cracking down on meth by destroying a lab is easier. But when police destroy a ganja plantation, it'll just grow somewhere else."