Finland’s strict drug laws have put a cannabis farmer behind bars – but he feels he’s done nothing wrong
J oonatan Pitkänen had long been possessed by nightmares. Bone-chilling, dread-inducing, viciously recurring nightmares. They always followed the same formula: asleep in bed, he’s jolted awake by the sound of thunderous pounding on the front door. He leaps to his feet and looks out the window to see his front yard full of police cars. He hears the door burst open and footsteps hammer up the stairs of the three-storey yellow house.
On Friday, November 1, 2024, this nightmare became a reality.
Police officers barged into his bedroom; gargantuan men with machine guns, helmets and covered faces. “Hands up!” they shouted. The officers zip-tied his hands behind his back, grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him out of the house and into the back of a large black riot control van. It was early in the morning – the skies were grey, the temperature in the small central Finnish town of Joutsa slightly below zero. Pitkänen sat in the van trembling, wearing nothing but his underpants.
“Would it be possible to get some clothes or a blanket?” His request fell on deaf ears.
Police searched the house and found it had been converted into a cannabis farm. It was now an active crime scene. Two of the floors had cultivation rooms with lamps, irrigation systems and large wooden grow boxes with the names and planting dates of cannabis cultivars written in marker. Buds were drying inside cages hanging from the ceiling. Police also uncovered three trash bags filled with cannabis scraps, a tempering machine and moulds for chocolate bars, and a memory stick from which police later recovered thousands of images depicting different stages of the cannabis harvest: from feeble saplings to furry bushes of hemp.
Retail packages and label stickers identified the brand as Vihreä Kolmio (Green Triangle) – a widely renowned cannabis seller on the Finnish dark web. The estimated value of the drugs seized from the house and the company’s office in nearby Jyväskylä was around €175,000 (£106,000 or US $143,000). Receipts show that in 2024 alone, some 1,475 postage stamps had been purchased by the office.
The District Court of Central Finland handed down its verdicts in May 2025. Pitkänen was given a prison sentence of four years and eight months for a serious drug offence. He was also ordered to pay the government nearly €200,000 (£170,000 or US$229,000) in compensation for illicit profits and other fees.
Three of Pitkänen’s accomplices were sentenced at the same time: a Helsinki-based IT entrepreneur in his forties, a Jyväskylä man in his thirties, and Pitkänen’s mother, who is in her sixties. According to news reports, the group had been growing cannabis in Joutsa and selling it on the dark web to customers all over Finland between 2021 and 2024. Their sentences varied from a one-year suspended sentence to several years of incarceration.
One degree of separation
Inside the family meeting room of the prison, Pitkänen offers me a bag of tea, gifted by a former cellmate.
“I have noticed there is a lot of solidarity here in prison,” he says. “People take care of each other.”
The room is cosy: there’s a sofa, TV, double bed and toys for kids; a kitchen corner with a dining table and pictures of Moomins framed on the walls. Outside, a drizzly October sky is darkening. The prison building could be mistaken for an ordinary lodging, or perhaps a small school. There are no walls or window bars in sight.
Pitkänen secured his transfer from a closed high security prison a few weeks earlier. Life is a lot freer here, he says. Inmates are allowed to keep their own phones and walk around the grounds during the day. Access to work and education are provided to help soften the landing back into civilian life. On the day of our meeting, Pitkänen had also been to work outside the prison. The encounter feels strange for both of us –we’d heard a lot about each other over many years but never met. Perhaps we should have. He is my sister’s boyfriend.
It has been almost exactly one year since Pitkänen was arrested at his home in Joutsa in November 2024. The following days are vivid in my memory too; I was on holiday with my sister when she got the news that he’d been arrested. It wasn’t a complete surprise. I knew my sister’s boyfriend was growing cannabis, but I didn’t know the details or the scale of it. Naturally, my sister knew more. Ever since his arrest, I’ve been puzzled by this question: why did this person, who has barely one degree of separation from me, do what he did? I came to the prison to find out.
Pitkänen places his hands on the table, and begins to tell me his story.
Many people in Finland feel they need cannabis, for one reason or another, he says. Some simply want to relax, but many use it as medicine for an illness or ailment that other treatments haven’t effectively remedied, such as nerve pain, gastrointestinal disorders, or side effects of cancer treatments. But unlike many other countries, Finland makes it very difficult to obtain medicinal cannabis legally.
“It felt wrong,” Pitkänen says. “I had the urge to do something about it.”
Advocating for a change in the law by political means seemed painfully slow. Direct action was more appealing to Pitkänen, who wanted to provide safe, high-quality cannabis to as many people as possible. “I understood that the impact could be quite significant.”
Pitkänen sees his actions as a form of civil disobedience: he consciously broke the law for a cause he considered just. But these infringements also earned him a considerable sum of money. Pitkänen says this was also part of the plan: “If the risk is spending years in prison, you do also want to secure some remuneration.”
According to the police, Pitkänen and his accomplices earned a total of €175,000 (£150,000 or US$200,000) from drug sales during their three-year operation. Not all his customers bought cannabis for medicinal use; some just wanted to get high. But Pitkänen isn’t too concerned with this distinction: “If someone smokes on the weekend to relax and reset their mind, why should that not be considered medicinal use? Why does it have to be labelled something different? Is it somehow worse or more evil?”
A cannabis revolution
Since the 2010s, attitudes and policies on cannabis use have been softening globally. In 2014, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise cannabis, permitting its recreational use, sale, and cultivation. Canada followed suit in 2018.
Cannabis remains illegal in most of Europe, though several countries have started adopting more permissive policies. Public attitudes have also grown increasingly tolerant in Finland. According to the latest drug survey from THL (the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare), conducted in 2022, more than half of the population (53 per cent) believes that cannabis use should not be penalised. A quarter of Finns think it should be legal to obtain cannabis for any purpose.
Hemp activism is also gaining momentum in the country. In 2023, a citizens’ initiative to “Legalise, Regulate and Tax Cannabis” earned the required 50,000 signatures to be deliberated in the Finnish Parliament. In the spring of 2025, the legalisation-focused Hemp Party also made it into the party register. Last November, the Left Alliance also announced its support for legalising cannabis use and transferring sales into state-owned shops. The Greens had already included a similar objective on their policy agenda.
But Finland’s dominant political parties are resistant to this “green wave.” In February 2026, Parliament rejected the citizens’ initiative to legalise cannabis, with just 18 votes in favour (all from the Greens or the Left Alliance), and 145 against.
From comedy to cannabis
A decade ago, Pitkänen was better known for something completely unrelated to drugs. He grew up in Jyväskylä, the regional capital of Central Finland. He studied game design and woodworking, but never ended up working in either field. Something else had sparked his imagination; in the spring of 2012, he entered an amateur stand-up comedy show at the Anneli karaoke restaurant in Jyväskylä, and won. His comedy career took off like a rocket. Soon, he was cracking jokes at the legendary Apollo club in Helsinki and Logomo in Turku, and MC’ing events from corporate functions to rock festivals. These gigs became his entire livelihood.
But within a few years, things came to a halt. Pitkänen realised that making people laugh was no light work. He felt pressure and uncertainty. At the same time, he was going through a phase of spiritual searching: why was he really doing comedy? Was it meaningful? Where did the urge to perform come from? What did he want to do with his life? Pitkänen started turning down invitations to perform. It was around this time that he really got into cannabis. The drug became an aid for self-examination, he says. It helped him dive headfirst into difficult thoughts, and scope them out from new angles.
Unlike LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis is not classified as a psychedelic, but it can have similarly mind-expanding effects, particularly in large doses. That’s what Pitkänen experienced. “It was hard, but incredibly fruitful,” he recalls.
He became fascinated with the myriad aspects of cannabis cultivation, from the conditions and techniques required for optimal growth, to the thousands of different cultivars, each with their own colours, flavours, smells and effects. Pitkänen grew his first crops in the sauna of his Helsinki apartment, with the help of two powerful lamps.
Most Finnish cannabis dealers operate in the same way: cultivating the plant at home and selling some of their modest harvest to acquaintances. The drugs circulate within small, trusted networks, and the profits rarely exceed pocket money. In recent years, however, growing numbers of professional weed farmers have emerged on the scene, cultivating dozens or even hundreds of plants in remote houses or storage depots. Pitkänen soon became one of them.
After leaving the entertainment industry, Pitkänen moved back to Jyväskylä. His cannabis farm expanded little by little, his ambitions growing alongside the demand.
Pitkänen drew inspiration from countries like the US, where the legal cannabis industry has become a multibillion-dollar business. Recreational use is now allowed in 24 states, where any adult can walk into a stylish shop with glossy glass vitrines full of dried flowers with delicious-sounding names like Gelato, Lemon Thai, and Special Lime Haze. Brands compete for buyers’ attention with candy-like packaging, playful colours and fonts, as well as derivative products like creams, oils, sweets, lozenges, chocolates, biscuits, cacao, tea or soda.
Finland was far behind on this front. On the drug dealing sites of the dark web, product pictures were shot with a greasy phone camera, with juvenile descriptions along the lines of “max prime dull, buzzy as fuck.”
Pitkänen wanted to raise the bar. Gradually, the idea of developing his own cannabis brand took shape, and he and a friend coined the name Green Triangle. Instead of the red trigon of warning, their packaging would be decorated with a grass-coloured triangle. He would grow a comprehensive selection of cultivars, one for any occasion. Would-be buyers could request advice from a friendly and knowledgeable customer service. Instead of cheap Ziploc bags, the product would be packaged in slick mylar pouches, with details of its cultivar, weight, cannabinoid concentration and date of harvest. He’d promote the brand on commercial sites of the Tor web, with high-quality pictures and alluring copy, like for his “Durban Poison” strain:
“You won’t be left cold by this top sativa, grown from seeds imported directly from Durban, the historic port city of South Africa. Very energising in effect and hardly produces any of that sofa-rotting body high associated with indicas. Instead, it gets the imagination going and energy flowing through the body. Due to its nature, this strain is not recommended for those looking for narcotic or pacifying effects!”
Green Triangle quickly became popular with Finnish buyers. According to police estimates, it managed to grow tens of kilograms of cannabis – equivalent to tens of thousands of doses – between 2021 and 2024.
Pitkänen dreamed of becoming the largest cannabis grower and seller in Finland. “Before us, nobody was doing it like this,” he says.
Journalist and author Aarno Malin, who has closely followed drug crimes on the Tor web for years, affirms this claim. He describes Green Triangle as one of the most “legendary” merchants on the Finnish dark web.
“Green Triangle took branding and product packaging to an entirely new level,” he tells me via email, adding that none of its competitors could compare.
A history of violence
Cannabis has been used for millennia, both as an intoxicant and as a remedy for numerous ailments. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was sold in pharmacies in various countries, including the US. But attitudes changed, and the healing plant was rebranded as a killer weed.
This shift began in 1910, when the Mexican Revolution saw hundreds of thousands of people flee over the border into the US. In Mexico, cannabis had acquired a bad reputation as a lower-class drug associated with danger and violence. These ideas were adopted in the southern US, paving the way for racist prohibition laws that disproportionately targeted Mexicans and Black people, as well as sex workers. Drug policies became an instrument for social control.
In the 1930s, a man named Harry J. Anslinger single-handedly incited a moral panic about cannabis. Anslinger was appointed as the first chief of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, and cannabis became a fitting enemy to justify the bureau’s existence. He launched a vicious campaign to sow fear of the drug among the white middle classes.
The yellow press capitalised on this fear to sell papers. Headlines screamed about the dangers of the killer weed, peddling stereotypes about Black users turned bloodthirsty by “reefer madness.” The fearmongering worked. In 1937, the sales tax on cannabis was raised high enough to effectively prohibit it, although it remained nominally legal.
Over the following decades, attitudes hardened around the world. In 1961, the UN adopted the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, obliging signatories to limit drug use through stringent laws. The convention classified cannabis as one of the most dangerous drugs, along with heroin and cocaine.
Finland fell in line, making drug use a criminal offence in 1966. Cannabis had only appeared on Finnish streets a few years prior, arriving from the West along with other kinds of youth culture like rock music, free love and hippie lifestyles. At the time, cannabis users were mainly limited to the bohemian art scene of the Finnish capital. In the wake of this short-lived blossom age, cannabis use was confined to the margins for decades.
These days, however, mainstream consumption is unprecedented. According to the 2022 drug survey from THL, nearly a third of the Finnish population has used cannabis at least once. Among those in my age bracket, 25 to 34, the share is almost half. In some areas of Helsinki, including my neighbourhood of Kallio, the smell of cannabis has become as mundane as that of tobacco. Does it make sense to label such a sizeable portion of the population as criminals?
Perfecting the harvest
Pitkänen purchased his quaint house in Joutsa in early 2021 with money from a Helsinki-based IT entrepreneur, who would later help him move cryptocurrency earned from selling cannabis. Surrounded by dense forest, an hour’s drive from the town of Jyväskylä, the place was ideal for a cannabis farm. But it took months of work to install power and aircon systems, powerful light fixtures, and an automised irrigation system. To fill the large cultivation beds, mass quantities
of soil were delivered into the yard.
Pitkänen learned to do everything by himself. He started working in a basement cellar with plans to expand the farm in stages, room by room. Conveniently, the house came with two garden buildings. In June 2021, the household electricity consumption surged significantly – a detail later noted by police in their investigation.
The first harvests failed miserably. Pitkänen had to install more powerful air conditioning to offset the scorching grow lights. But soon they became bountiful, and Pitkänen shifted his focus to product development. He started making chocolate bars with Fazer Blue bought from a nearby grocery shop, blended with Madagascar vanilla and homegrown bud. The result was an excellent flavour and a perfectly satisfying snap. Wrapped in foil, the canna-bars looked like any other.
Pitkänen wrote the following product description: “Made from Fazer chocolate, and spiked with Green Triangle’s homegrown kief, these bars are imbued with a uniquely rich flavour and a strong medicinal effect. For customers with a light tolerance, we recommend beginning with half a piece. More resistant consumers are advised to take one or two pieces to start with. The most experienced wizards are urged to arrange themselves into appropriate circumstances and consume the entire bar at once.”
Cannabis is not a quick-harvest crop – it takes months to grow. At first, Pitkänen planted hemp in small, staggered batches, to be harvested once a month.
By summer 2024, works were completed on a large new growing room, which allowed Pitkänen to grow bigger batches at once. He notified customers of the change from “staggered” to “broadside” harvesting via the messaging app Telegram. But the plan was never fully executed; the inaugural harvest was ultimately seized by police in November that year.
Peeling the onion
The dark web is a hub of illegal activity. About six out of ten dark web sites relate to illicit activities, from hitman services and illegal weapons to stolen credit card information and counterfeit goods, among other things. Drugs are the most significant market commodity of the dark web – and cannabis is the best-selling of them all. Payments are typically made with anonymous cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, making them difficult to trace.
This business model was pioneered by the Silk Road, a Tor marketplace founded by Texan libertarian Ross Ulbricht in 2011. The site became a smorgasbord of drugs, offering everything from strawberry-patterned LSD tabs to sticky “black tar” heroin. The FBI shut it down in 2013, and Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison. Despite its short lifespan, the Silk Road had a revolutionary impact on the drug trade. It inspired countless imitators, triggering a constant game of cat and mouse between authorities and drug dealers – and Finland was no exception.
Green Triangle launched on Piilopuoti, a Finnish-language Tor marketplace for drugs, in July 2023. Whilst many drug dealers arrange street trades on Tor forums and direct messaging apps, Pitkänen took a different approach: he wanted to make the business as safe as possible, dispatching only via post, and never selling face to face.
Only orders worth more than €1,000 (£900 or US$1,140) were occasionally deposited in outdoor stashes. In May 2024, for example, a buyer in Vantaa wanted 50 bars of cannabis chocolate. The goods were hidden under a nearby highway bridge, and the exact map coordinates were shared with the customer via the Telegram messaging app. Pitkänen also made complex arrangements to cover up his money flows, like moving his assets through virtual wallets, cash and stored-value cards.
The Sipulitie site on the Tor web became the most important marketplace for Green Triangle – until Finnish Customs shut it down in September 2024, just two months before Pitkänen’s arrest.
Bone of contention
When a country decides to relax its cannabis policy, it typically pursues one of two distinct models. It’s important to distinguish between these approaches.
Decriminalisation means that drug use, or possession of small quantities, is no longer punishable. As production and sale typically remain forbidden, consumers still obtain the substances through illegal channels.
Legalisation goes a long way further. The drug is legally brought into the market, allowing it to be regulated and taxed, just like alcohol or tobacco.
In Finland, THL supports decriminalisation. The health institute wants to see all penalties related to drug use eliminated, maintaining that addiction is a disorder, and disorders should not be punishable.
“It should be addressed through measures of social and health services, not criminal law,” says Sanna Kailanto, a senior policy specialist at THL.
At the same time, THL opposes the legalisation of cannabis, or any other drug. This is because it expects that easier access to drugs would increase their harms – and costs – on the societal level. Although many people feel that cannabis helps them manage pain and other health conditions, Kailanto asserts that there isn’t enough research-based evidence to conclude that its benefits outweigh the risks.
“Alcohol causes enough harm as it is. We don’t need new legal intoxicants to compound them,” she says.
Even if cannabis turns out to be less harmful than many other drugs, THL does not support singling it out for legalisation. According to Kailanto, such an approach could further marginalise the most disadvantaged people with more severe drug addictions. She points out that people who are addicted to amphetamines or opioids, for example, would still be treated as criminals.
“That would be very unfair from the perspective of equality.”
Legalising cannabis is often justified with noble objectives, such as protecting minors or boosting tax revenues. But Kailanto is sceptical of these motivations.
“It is worth considering what the real bone of contention is in this discussion. Is it that cannabis is fun to get high on, so its illegality is irritating?” she asks. “Does anyone dare to say that out loud?”
Prescription powers
Doctors have been authorised to legally prescribe cannabis in Finland since 2008. But in practice, these prescriptions have been very difficult to obtain.
That is precisely why Mika Luoma-aho of Rovaniemi in northern Finland became a cannabis activist. A lecturer in political science at the University of Lapland, he’s currently writing a book about cannabis activism in the country, and serves as the chairman of the Finnish Cannabis Association (Suomen Kannabisyhdistys). He was also one of the originators of the recent citizens’ initiative to legalise cannabis.
Luoma-aho’s activism is largely motivated by his personal experiences. As a child, he was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent harsh treatments with cytostatic drugs. His leg was amputated from the thigh down, and a metastasised tumour in his lungs was also surgically removed. These treatments resulted in a variety of complications. By the time Luoma-aho was in his thirties, his heart functioning had deteriorated to the point that he needed a prosthetic mitral valve.
After the heart surgery, he began to suffer from phantom pains and migraine attacks. Because of the heart prosthesis, many painkillers were no longer suitable for him. As a new course of treatment, he was put on prescription opioids. They didn’t really work for the pain, and Luoma-aho soon realised they were addictive. Specialist doctors worked to find a solution. One suggested he visit a Turku-based neurologist who treated severe pain with medical cannabis. In the spring of 2014, Luoma-aho travelled to Turku, where he was prescribed medical cannabis.
As the summer progressed, his pain vanished. He stopped taking the other pills for pain, sleep, depression, everything. It was a wonderful time, he recalls. But things soon became complicated.
Any medication marketed in Finland must have authorisation. Currently, only two cannabis-based products have obtained this license: Sativex, an oral spray to treat muscular stiffness caused by MS, and Epidyolex, an oral solution for severe forms of epilepsy.
Most medical cannabis users prefer dried flowers, because they’re considered more effective for alleviating symptoms. But in this form, cannabis doesn’t have the required marketing authorisation. It’s classified as an experimental course of treatment, requiring special permission from the Finnish Medicines Agency (Fimea). The bud can only be prescribed as a last resort after other available treatments have been exhausted.
In 2017, Fimea granted 348 special permits for the medicinal use of cannabis. But in recent years, that number has dropped to less than 100.
This can be attributed to a 2017 letter sent by Kela (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland) to doctors who’d prescribed medicinal cannabis, urging them to be vigilant against the risk of misuse. The institution reminded them that it is authorised to notify Valvira (the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health) if it suspected that patient safety had been compromised. Evidently, this gave many doctors cold feet.
Then, in 2021, Valvira restricted the prescription powers of the neurologist whose practice Luoma-aho attended in Turku. This neurologist had single-handedly issued a significant portion of cannabis prescriptions in Finland. According to the authority, his treatments had been “irresponsible.”
As a result, many patients with legally prescribed cannabis, including Luoma-aho, were left without access to their medication. Anxious about losing his ability to work and function, Luoma-aho began making the rounds from one clinic to another, to no avail. One doctor told him outright that they didn’t want to jeopardise their career by prescribing him cannabis. Out of desperation, Luoma-aho resorted to obtaining it illegally, despite the risks of criminalisation.
“I have a family and a university job. I would have lost everything,” he says.
Activists argue that the greatest harms of cannabis do not stem from consumption, but from the possibility of getting caught. In Finland, a usage offence can result in a fine, but other consequences may be much costlier still. Getting busted for cannabis consumption can result in losing one’s place of study, job, or driver’s license. A record of the offence remains in the police database for years.
Finally, Luoma-aho’s luck turned. The fifth doctor he met was courageous enough to renew his cannabis prescription. He now uses a vape with Dutch buds that are ordered for him to a nearby pharmacy. The main difference from street weed is that the product is cultivated in tightly controlled conditions, and its cannabinoid concentration is measured precisely.
But many other patients are still unable to get these prescriptions. According to THL estimates, thousands of people in Finland are obtaining cannabis for medical purposes illegally. Luoma-aho believes this stigmatisation is harmful, and questions why other, more addictive narcotics are easier to obtain.
A family affair
As Green Triangle expanded its operations, Pitkänen needed another pair of hands. He turned to his 65-year-old mother, who was eager to help. It was decided that she would become the secretary of Green Triangle.
I was fascinated by her reasons for getting involved, so I gave her a call.
Marjut Pitkänen answers the phone from prison, where she’s serving a sentence of three and a half years. She feels no regret or shame, she says resolutely.
“I knew what I was doing. I broke Finnish law, and I am now being punished for that in accordance with Finnish law,” she says.
She tells me she shares her son’s views on drug policy, despite not using cannabis herself. She sees the positive effects of consumption, including for her own son, whose troubles she partly blamed on herself.
“Back in the day, I had passed some of my own trauma down to him,” she said.
In addition to cannabis, Pitkänen found relief through psychedelic therapy – an experience his mother felt emboldened to try for herself. In recent years, studies show that supervised doses of psychedelics including MDMA, LSD and psilocybin have yielded promising results on their effectiveness in treating conditions such as depression, PTSD and anxiety disorders.
Marjut visited an illegal provider of psychedelic therapy, and was given MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy pills. The experience was eye-opening. Pitch-black memories buried deep in her brain resurfaced but in a gentle and loving way. Afterwards, she spent years trawling through her experiences in trauma therapy, and says she’s now successfully overcome them.
As the secretary of Green Triangle, Marjut worked from a studio flat-turned-office space near Jyväskylä city centre. She filled envelopes with drug packages, which her son brought in his car from Joutsa. She took deliveries into the post office and paid the bills. She processed orders on the Tor web, updated inventory, and answered customer questions.
Towards the end of the Green Triangle days, Marjut was making an hourly salary of €20 (£17 or US$22), although she denies ever doing it for the money.
“I did it with all my heart,” she says.
A life post-prison
Back in the family meeting room
of the open prison, the tea has gone cold.
Pitkänen tells me that my sister and I sound identical when we speak. The same emphasis, the same intonation. Then he grows more serious. He’s a little worried: what if this interview makes him look like an attention-hungry narcissist? Like he is trying to justify and whitewash his actions? Like his mother, he says he feels no regrets about growing or selling cannabis. Instead, he deeply regrets the mistakes that got him caught.
“It’s a shame things ended like this,” he says. “But it is a risk you take when running a large cannabis farm with nationwide sales operations.”
During his pre-trial detention, Pitkänen was required to meet with a substance abuse counsellor who concluded he was not an addict.
“I have severe ideological problems and problems of opinion in relation to Finnish law,” he said, calling the drug prohibition laws “idiotic” and “Orwellian.”
As a first-time offender, Pitkänen will serve half of his over four-year prison term – two years and
four months – unless the sentence is modified by the Vaasa Court of Appeal.
But he’s been pondering whether he wants to even stay in Finland. In his view, adults should be allowed to use intoxicants however they please, without the risk of imprisonment. Pitkänen says that large-scale cannabis farming has been the only job in his life that didn’t feel like work at all. There are countries around the world that would allow him to apply his cultivation skills legally – should he make the move? Or could he find a job in Finland that would allow him to experience something similar? The stigma associated with a criminal conviction and the financial burden of his heavy fine also factor into his deliberations – he’s yet to find a clear path forward.
“It casts a bit of a dark cloud over the future,” he says.
Original article ‘Pilvilinna’ published by Long Play on December 11, 2025.
