Vietnamese-Americans help legalize rau muong in US

"They’re treating water spinach like marijuana," she said.

In three decades Doan and her husband had spent in California and Maryland, they had never lived anywhere they could not legally buy water spinach, Atlanta magazine reported.

In Vietnam, and many other Asian countries, water spinach, which thrive in rivers and damp soil, are eaten regularly as a choice green.

In Georgia, though, it had been illegal for a decade over fears that, as a non-native species, the aquatic vine could overtake the state’s waterways, to the detriment of native species.

Previously, locals brought water spinach over from Florida and Texas, and sold it in grocery store parking lots, out of their cars, and door-to-door.

Costs on this black market could run up to three times the vegetable’s typical price, up to $11 a pound, said Vo, chief operating officer at Atlanta-based City Farmers Market and Hong Kong Supermarket.

More than a decade ago, Hong Kong Supermarket started collecting signatures online and on clipboards at every register to petition for the legalization of water spinach.

The petitions often cited national developments that owner Ben Vo, Jenny’s father, watched closely, like how in Texas water spinach was actually found to be a low-risk crop, given the proper regulations.

In 2016, after chatting with community members like Vo and Doan, state Rep. Pedro Marin introduced a bill that would exempt water spinach from Georgia’s definition of a "plant pest", so it may be cultivated legally. His bill was rejected.

In Georgia, water spinach became a priority again with the 2021 election of state Rep. Marvin Lim, who spotted the crops growing when he visited the village where his mother grew up in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Doan and others collected over 100,000 signatures in favor of legalization. Community members handed out flyers at a campaign event for house Rep. Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, and organized an informational event to stress how integral water spinach is to their lives.

In 2022, Georgia began approving water spinach import and sales permits.

Grocers now sell water spinach tops, with most of the plant’s hollow stems cut off, so that the plant doesn’t accidentally propagate: "They cut the root very deep so they don’t have the root when we take it home," Doan said.