On a series of trying new eateries, Pune is leading the game. The Hemp Café is all set to serve you bhang ka sandwiches, hemp coffee and a lot of other hemp-infused food. Since the dawn of time, hemp has been used in Ayurveda and Unani to cure illness. Consumption of hemp is legal in this café.

Amruta Shitole, 30, owner of The Hemp Café, also have another café known as Ganja Café. She has been successfully selling cannabis-based food products for the last four years. In an interview, she said,” We use seeds of cannabis and not leaves. Most of us have misconceptions about hemp. We consider Bhang as just one of the traditional addictive used only to get the high. We often call it marijuana, which is a narcotic. Although marijuana and hemp are names for cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content in them is different from each other.”

For medicinal or culinary products, legal hemp must have 0.3 percent THC or less than that. People tend to have misconceptions about hemp, clearing that, Amruta said,” I was already selling Hemp oil, hemp laddu, protein powder and many such products. But I started this cafe to clear the misconceptions of people around hemp. Bhang is good as well - this is the message we wanted to give through this cafe. Hence we have the hemp cafe museum here. You will find all the factual information about cannabis over here.”

Even though marijuana is not legal in Maharashtra, a few years ago, it was legalised in Uttarakhand. Compared to other cash crops, hemp consumes less water and it also increases soil fertility. Not just medicinal, hemp has been used in paintings in Ajantha too.