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Armenia

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Armenia
Հայաստան (Hayastan)
Khor Virap, Ararat Province, with Mount Ararat behind
Khor Virap, Ararat Province, with Mount Ararat behind
Capital Yerevan
Continent Asia
Subregion West Asia
Cannabis Status
Legal Status Illegal (industrial hemp licensed)
Status Since 2021
Enforcement Police destroy wild and grown plants; small amounts and use fined
Documentation
Growing Regions 0
Growing Areas 0
Accessions 3


Armenia is a country of the South Caucasus, on the Armenian Highlands. Wild and weedy forms of Cannabis sativa are quite common there, along streams and rivers and on herbaceous slopes and dry stony or rocky hills between 700 and 2,000 metres.[1]: 22 The Armenian name of the plant is kanep. Its seed goes into aghandz, a snack of roasted wheat eaten at Easter and other festivals, and into tolma.[2]

Cannabis is a controlled drug whose circulation is prohibited.[3] Since 5 July 2021 industrial hemp, with more cannabidiol than THC and no more than 0.3 per cent THC, may be grown under licence in greenhouses and nurseries.[4][5]

Geography

Digitised herbarium sheet with three slender, branched cannabis plants with their roots, a colour chart at the top and a printed label completed by hand at the lower right.
Avetisyan s.n., gathered on a dry stony slope near Verin Dvin, in today's Ararat Province, on 9 June 1961 and determined as Cannabis ruderalis.

A. S. Shkhijan treated the genus in the fourth volume of the Flora of Armenia (1962). Wild and weedy forms, which Eleonora Gabrielian and Daniel Zohary place in subsp. spontanea, grow in the Lori, Idjevan, Sevan, Erevan, Darelegis, Zangezur and Meghri floristic regions and in Nakhichevan.[1]: 21–22

G. Fayvush and colleagues collected plants named Cannabis sativa var. spontanea on the track to the caves at Lastiver, north-west of Ijevan in Tavush Province, on 23 June 2008, and subsp. spontanea at the southern end of Zansakar, south of Ijevan, the next day.[6][7] In 2004 they gathered Cannabis sativa near Shirakamut, in the Spitak district of Lori Province, at an excavation site by caves.[8] S. Castroviejo and colleagues collected it between Haghartsin and the road to Chambarak in 2005.[9] In the Areguni mountains near Gosh, V. Vašák gathered a large, much-branched plant at 1,800 metres on 5 October 1974.[10][11]

In September 2018 Manica Balant and colleagues collected seed at Goris and Shikahogh in Syunik Province and beside the road from Gyumri to Garibjanyan in Shirak Province; the plants grown from it in a growth chamber are vouchered at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona.[12][2] In their genome-size study, average 2C values ran from 1.890 picograms in an accession from Romania to 2.028 picograms in "Armenia 1".[13] In their phylogeographic study the Armenian wild-growing samples fell into a Caucasus and Mediterranean subgroup, with wild-growing samples from Iran and Greece, hemp cultivars from Turkey and Italy and drug landraces from Morocco and Lebanon.[14]

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

In a study of the plant foods of the Yezidis and Kurds of Armenia, informants said that cannabis is forbidden to Yezidis because of its narcotic properties.[2] E. A. Stoletova, in her survey of the field crops of Armenia (1930), found hemp fibre in common use only in the Russian settlements; elsewhere wool served for the purpose.[2]

Agriculture

Hemp was among the field crops of the Erivan governorate of the Russian Empire, whose chief crops were wheat, barley, millet, rice and cotton.[15] In the hot lowlands of the Erivan district it was grown with wheat, barley, rice, millet, peas, lentils, cotton, flax, sesame and castor.[16]

Stoletova also found that local people roasted hemp seed with salt, wheat, chickpea and sesame and ate it at festivities.[2] Ropes of hemp fibre have been photographed at Gargar in Lori. In the sources that Balant and colleagues gathered, fibre uses are the most often cited, and both fibre and medicinal uses have since declined.[2] A. A. Grossheim wrote in 1952 that fibre from wild hemp was of the same quality as that of cultivated hemp.[2]

The industrial-hemp chapter of the narcotics law allows the crop to be grown only indoors, in greenhouses and nurseries, under licences of up to ten years; growing it for personal use is forbidden, and the government sets quotas for its production, import, export and wholesale trade.[4] Announcing the plan in February 2021 as part of an economic response programme, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan said that about 40 per cent of the country's farmland lay idle, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the hemp would not be grown for human consumption.[17]

Cannabis in Armenia

Interviewed in 2018, people across seven provinces called the plant kanep; one informant also used kanef, and qol for hemp unfit for smoking. Writings from the 5th century to 2020 give 17 names in Armenian, Russian, Azerbaijani and Georgian, among them kanap, kanepat and ganap.[2] The narcotics law calls the flowering or fruiting tops կանեփ (kanep), the plant կանեփի բույս and its resin կանեփի բուսախեժ; the control list names marijuana, and hashish, anasha and cannabis resin.[4][3]

History

Before the Russian Empire

Balant and colleagues trace the plant in Armenian writing to Eznik of Kolb, in the 5th century, who wrote of its seed: "Its seed is medicine, but also could be the cause of loss of desire". A. Mnatsakanyan's study of Armenian ornament (1955) documents illustrations of the plant from the 14th century.[2] Amirdovlat Amasiatsi (d. 1496) was an Armenian physician at the Ottoman court; Avedis Sanjian writes that he recommended saffron, mandrake and hashish to relieve pain and bring sleep.[18] In his Angitats anpet he wrote that wild hemp looks like althaea but is shorter, and that a poultice of its boiled root softens hot and solid tumours; eating hemp, he added, causes abundant urination and more yellow bile.[2]

Under the Russian Empire

Digitised herbarium sheet with two leafy, flowering cannabis stems with narrow-leafleted palmate leaves, an empty paper capsule at the top left and a small typed label at the lower left.
Maliyants s.n., gathered in the environs of Erivan, today's Yerevan, in 1904.

G. P. Maliyants gathered Cannabis sativa in the environs of Erivan in 1904; the sheet is in the Moscow University Herbarium.[19] The Erivan governorate also took in the Nakhichevan district, today part of Azerbaijan.[15]

Soviet Armenia (1920–1991)

Before 1974 the criminal code of the Armenian SSR already punished smoking anasha or hashish, or obtaining them for that purpose.[20] Balant and colleagues write that in the Soviet Union even botanists had very restricted access to wild cannabis and its collection, so that cannabis is under-represented in herbaria.[2] In 1961 V. Avetisyan, E. Gabrielyan and A. Pogosyan of the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR gathered plants on a dry stony slope near Verin Dvin, determined by Mulkidzhanyan as Cannabis ruderalis.[21][22]

Independent Armenia (since 1991)

Armenia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as amended in 1972, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the convention of 1988 against illicit traffic on 13 September 1993.[23][24][25] The National Assembly adopted the law on narcotic drugs on 26 December 2002, in force from 20 May 2003, and the government approved its list of controlled drugs on 21 August 2003.[4][3]

In February 2019 the health minister, Arsen Torosyan, denied reports that the government planned to legalise cannabis use.[26] In February 2021 the government announced that it would allow industrial hemp, while recreational use stayed illegal; a separate bill on psychotropic drugs for scientific purposes had been before parliament since December 2019.[17] The industrial-hemp chapter was adopted on 3 June 2021 and came into force on 5 July 2021.[5] A new Criminal Code, adopted on 5 May 2021, came into force on 1 July 2022.[27] On 5 June 2025 the government approved a strategy and action plan against the non-medical use of and illicit trafficking in drugs for 2025–2027.[28]: 102

Cultivation

The plant is both cultivated and wild-growing in Armenia.[2] The informants interviewed in 2018 all spoke of the ban on growing it, saying that the police destroyed both wild and cultivated plants, and some were reluctant to talk about it.[2] In September 2018 police found two cannabis plots in backyards in the village of Hovtamej, near Vagharshapat, with 127 plants weighing 26 kg and 52 plants weighing 8 kg.[29]

Preparations and consumption

Aghandz is made from roasted wheat and hemp seed. It is eaten at Easter, at New Year and at vardavar, the festival of water, and prepared for trndez, a festival of fire and sun held in February. At atamhatik, the feast of a baby's first tooth, sweets are added to the mixture and relatives sprinkle it over the child's head. Hemp oil goes into tolma, among them dzavarov tolma, made with wheat instead of meat.[2] Seeds of Cannabis sativa are sold as edible nuts in the markets of Yerevan.[30]

One informant described malachko, a drink made with milk from the aerial parts of the plant to bring on an altered state.[2] In 2017, 4,064 of the 6,544 drug users registered in Armenia used marijuana, according to the Health Ministry's chief narcologist, Petros Semerjyan.[31]

Trade and commerce

Licences for activity connected with industrial hemp are issued for up to ten years, and production, import, export and wholesale trade are held to government quotas.[4] A licence holder who breaks its terms is fined 5,000 to 10,000 times the minimum salary.[32]

The government's control list puts all species of hemp, and the preparations containing tetrahydrocannabinols (marijuana, hashish, anasha, cannabis resin and hash oil), on its first list, of drugs whose circulation in Armenia is prohibited.[3] The law defines industrial hemp as a crop with more cannabidiol (CBD) than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and with THC at or below 0.3 per cent of the sampled mass.[4]

Making, obtaining or keeping a small amount of a drug without intent to sell is an administrative offence, fined 200 to 400 times the minimum salary; using a drug without a doctor's prescription is fined 100 to 200 times. The small amount is up to five times the dose that has a psychotropic effect on a healthy adult who does not use drugs, and the government sets it.[32] Sowing or growing a small amount of a prohibited plant is fined five to ten times the minimum salary, and a significant amount ten to 30 times.[32]

Under the Criminal Code, growing a large amount carries a fine or up to two years' imprisonment, and growing by a group or in a particularly large amount two to five years; the government sets the amounts.[27] Keeping a significant amount without intent to sell carries a fine or up to one year, and a particularly large amount two to five years. Trafficking for sale carries three to six years, rising to six to 12 years for a criminal organisation or a particularly large amount.[27]

Enforcement

In the police campaign "Hemp-Poppy 2010", some 8,118 kg of cannabis and poppy crops were seized and burnt in the days before 25 August.[33] The informants of 2018 said that the police destroy wild and cultivated plants alike.[2]

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.

Accessions

Accession IDNamePriorityCollectedArea
Avetisyan s.n., Verin Dvin (1961)Avetisyan herbarium specimen, dry stony slope near Verin Dvin, Ararat Province, Armenia (1961)
Maliyants s.n., Yerevan (1904)Maliyants herbarium specimen, environs of Yerevan, Armenia (1904)
Vašák s.n., Gosh (1974)Vašák herbarium specimen, Areguni mountains near Gosh, Tavush Province, Armenia (1974)

Conservation status

The seed genebank of the Armenian National Agrarian University, which holds more than 6,000 accessions of crops and their wild relatives, keeps one of Cannabis sativa, AG129.[34] In May 1998 the gene bank of the Vavilov Institute in St Petersburg held four cannabis accessions from Armenia.[35] Two of them, no. 472, labelled "Armenia, Araratsky, local", and no. 482, did not germinate when sown for renewal in 1997.[36] Gabrielian and Zohary list the wild and weedy forms among the wild relatives of food crops that grow in Armenia.[1]: 22 In 2018 tissue was taken for DNA, for C. J. Grassa, from Vašák's sheet at Meise Botanic Garden and from the Fayvush sheet from Lastiver and the Haghartsin sheet in Vienna.[6][9][10]

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Gabrielian, Eleonora; Zohary, Daniel (2004). "Wild relatives of food crops native to Armenia and Nakhichevan" (PDF). Flora Mediterranea. 14: 5–80. ISSN 1120-4052. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 Balant, Manica; Garnatje, Teresa; Vitales, Daniel; Oganesian, Marine; Vallès, Joan; Stepanyan-Gandilyan, Nina; Gras, Airy (2025). "Bridging past and present: exploring Cannabis traditions in Armenia through ethnobotanical interviews and bibliographic prospecting". Journal of Cannabis Research. 7 (1) 8. doi:10.1186/s42238-025-00259-x. PMID 39881377.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Composition (list) of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors subject to control in the Republic of Armenia(Decision of the Government of the Republic of Armenia No. 1129-N), 21 August 2003, List No. 1.Armenia.Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Թմրամիջոցների և հոգեմետ (հոգեներգործուն) նյութերի մասին(Law of the Republic of Armenia No. ՀՕ-518-Ն), 26 December 2002, art. 3 and chapter 5.1, official incorporation in force from 25 December 2025.Armenia.Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 «Թմրամիջոցների և հոգեմետ (հոգեներգործուն) նյութերի մասին» օրենքում լրացումներ և փոփոխություններ կատարելու մասին(Law of the Republic of Armenia No. ՀՕ-277-Ն), 3 June 2021.Armenia.Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Occurrence 1230532596: Cannabis sativa var. spontanea Vavilov". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  7. ↑ "Occurrence 1230533086: Cannabis sativa subsp. spontanea (Czern.) Serebr. ex Serebr. & Sizova". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  8. ↑ "Occurrence 1230527772: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Occurrence 1230530610: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Digitised sheet BR0000023200326: Cannabis sativa L." Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
  11. ↑ "Occurrence 2243247646: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  12. ↑ "Occurrence 5797296517: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  13. ↑ Balant, M.; Rodríguez González, R.; Garcia, S.; Garnatje, T.; Pellicer, J.; Vallès, J.; Vitales, D.; Hidalgo, O. (2022). "Novel insights into the nature of intraspecific genome size diversity in Cannabis sativa L." Plants. 11 (20) 2736. doi:10.3390/plants11202736.
  14. ↑ Balant, M.; Vitales, D.; Wang, Z.; Barina, Z.; et al. (20 October 2024). "Integrating target capture with whole genome sequencing of recent and natural history collections to explain the phylogeography of wild-growing and cultivated Cannabis". bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2024.10.17.618884.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Эриванская губерния". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. 41. St Petersburg: F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron. 1904. pp. 10–14. Retrieved 14 October 2026 – via Wikisource.
  16. ↑ "Эривань". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. 41. St Petersburg: F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron. 1904. pp. 14–16. Retrieved 14 October 2026 – via Wikisource.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Avetisyan, Ani (5 February 2021). "Getting Hye: Armenia to legalise industrial hemp cultivation". OC Media. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Sanjian, Avedis K. (20 July 2003). "Amirdovlatʿ Amasiatsʿi". Encyclopaedia Iranica. doi:10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_1058. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  19. ↑ "Specimen MW0661552: Cannabis sativa L." Moscow Digital Herbarium. Moscow State University. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  20. ↑ Sumachev, A.V. (2018). "Уголовная политика России в сфере борьбы с незаконным оборотом наркотиков (с 70-х годов – до наших дней)". Вестник Югорского государственного университета (in русский) (2 (49)): 24–30. doi:10.17816/byusu20180224-30.
  21. ↑ "Herbarium specimen E00405496: Cannabis ruderalis". RBGE Herbarium Catalogue. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  22. ↑ "Occurrence 574888238: Cannabis ruderalis Janisch". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  23. ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961: status". United Nations Treaty Collection. United Nations. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  24. ↑ "Convention on Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 16. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  25. ↑ "United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 19. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  26. ↑ "No plans to legalize weed in Armenia". Armenpress. 25 February 2019. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, 5 May 2021, arts 393, 396 and 404, non-official translation of February 2022.Armenia.Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  28. ↑ International Narcotics Control Board (2026). Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2025 (PDF) (Report). Vienna: United Nations. ISBN 978-92-1-154655-2. E/INCB/2025/1. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  29. ↑ "Etchmiatsin PD's vice squad discovers major cannabis farms". Armenpress. 24 September 2018. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  30. ↑ Nanagulyan, Siranush; Zakaryan, Narine; Kartashyan, Nune; Piwowarczyk, Renata; Łuczaj, Łukasz (2020). "Wild plants and fungi sold in the markets of Yerevan (Armenia)". Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. 16 (1) 26. doi:10.1186/s13002-020-00375-3.
  31. ↑ "Armenia reports an increase in officially registered drug user rates". JAMnews. Yerevan. 9 March 2018. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 Administrative Offences Code of the Republic of Armenia, 6 December 1985, arts 44.1, 44.2, 44.3 and 110.2.Armenia.Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  33. ↑ "Marijuana Crops Goes Up In Smoke; Police Riding". Hetq. 25 August 2010. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  34. ↑ "Occurrence 3970975847: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 14 October 2026.
  35. ↑ Clarke, R.C. (1998). "Maintenance of Cannabis germplasm in the Vavilov Research Institute Gene Bank: five year report". Journal of the International Hemp Association. 5 (2): 75–79.
  36. ↑ Kutuzova, S.N.; Grigoryev, S.V.; Rumyantseva, L.T.; Clarke, R.C. (1998). "Maintenance of Cannabis germplasm in the Vavilov Research Institute Gene Bank – 1997". Journal of the International Hemp Association. 5 (1): 28–31.
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