Belize

Belize
Belize
Orange Walk Town, 2009
Capital	Belmopan
Continent	North America
Subregion	Central America
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Decriminalised (possession of up to 10 grams)
Status Since	2017
Enforcement	Possession of up to 10 grams is not an offence; on school premises a police warning, then a 100-dollar ticket
Documentation
Growing Regions	0
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	0
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Belize is a country on the Caribbean coast of Central America, between Mexico and Guatemala. Marijuana became a major cash crop there in early 1982. By 1985 an estimated 1,223 hectares were under cannabis, most of the crop going to the United States.^{: 47, 50} Aerial spraying of herbicide, first with paraquat in 1983 and from 1985 with United States support, cut production to about 66 tonnes in 1989, some ten per cent of its peak.^: 35: 163 Belize banned aerial eradication in January 1995. Since then the police and the Belize Defence Force have pulled up cannabis by hand, in fields of 500 to several thousand plants, in the north, in Toledo and along the border with Guatemala.^: 120: 11 The Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2017 made it lawful to possess up to 10 grams of cannabis and to smoke it in private homes.^{: ss. 3, 6}

Geography

Belize has an area of 22,965 square kilometres and a climate warm all year, with ample rain and sun, in which cannabis can be grown in every season. In 1985 many of the growing areas could not be reached by road.^: 50: 19 The paraquat spraying of October 1983 covered the Orange Walk, Corozal, Cayo and Toledo districts.^: 35 The glyphosate spraying of October 1985 was aimed at "the primary growing areas in northern Belize".^: 48 In 1989 cultivation centred on the north and north-west of the country; little was then found in the centre and south, where bananas and citrus had been developed as export crops.^: 163

Cannabis was traditionally found mainly in Orange Walk District; by 2001 the Belize Defence Force was also finding many small plantings along the whole of the border with Guatemala. For 2005–2006 Belize reported to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the Organization of American States that the Northern District was the most cultivated area, followed by Toledo in the south, and that cultivation in Belize District had declined. From January to September 2006, 53,000 plants were destroyed in Orange Walk and 50,000 in Toledo.^: 11 The fields destroyed in a joint operation of January 2012 lay at Blue Creek, Honey Camp, Chiwa Camp and Little Belize in the north and behind San Pedro Columbia in the south. In 2024 law enforcement destroyed several small marijuana growing operations in remote forest but found no substantial cultivation.^: 140

In 2000 the Drug Enforcement Administration described the Petén borderland, heavily forested on both sides of the Guatemala–Belize border, as a large region open to traffickers for growing cannabis. In the Chiquibul, on the border with Guatemala, Rafael Manzanero of the conservation group Friends for Conservation and Development said in 2014 that milpa farms were being replaced by expanding marijuana plantations. The milpas once confined to the Rio Blanco zone were moving north to Cebada, where, he said, expanding drug cultivation made a new conservation post a priority.

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

According to the historian Eron Ackerman, an editorial in the Colonial Guardian of British Honduras in 1889 blamed homicides among the colony's East Indian population in part on their use of "Bang or Gunjah". It urged the government to suppress the plant's cultivation, citing the ganja ordinances of Trinidad and British Guiana as precedents. In Ackerman's account, reformers in British Honduras linked ganja to an alleged "Oriental" predilection for violence.

The State Department linked the rise of the crop in part to a lack of other work for the rural population, which in 1985 included many recent arrivals from El Salvador and Guatemala.^: 50 In 1989 most crops appeared to be planted by landless farmers on consignment for the traffickers who paid for the cultivation.^: 165 In 2001 the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that settlers from Guatemala planted cannabis on both sides of the poorly marked border, and that the Belize Defence Force pulled up cannabis from plots held by Guatemalans on the Belizean side as it tried to evict them. A joint patrol of late May and early June 2016 in the Chiquibul National Park destroyed 650 marijuana plants, 50 acres (20 hectares) of pumpkin and 100 coffee plants, and found six Guatemalan families living at Retiro who, according to the Defence Force, had been planting marijuana, coffee and pumpkins.

Agriculture

The State Department attributed the spread of marijuana in the early 1980s in part to weak markets for traditional crops such as sugar, corn and beans.^: 50

Regulations of 17 August 2019 opened a licensed industrial hemp sector: a Hemp Industry Oversight Committee oversees the registration and licensing of those who cultivate or process industrial hemp or import or export its seed. As revised to the end of 2020, the regulations allow hemp no more than 0.3 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol.^: 101–103 In December 2020 the Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries, Kareem Musa, said that the previous government had issued 42 licences to companies that wanted to produce hemp, none of them with experience in the field. No licence holder, he said, had yet grown, made and sold hemp in Belize.

Cannabis in Belize

Commercial cannabis growing in Belize dates from the late 1970s and early 1980s and was mainly for export. After the spraying campaigns of the 1980s much of what the country grew was for its own market. Traffickers bought marijuana from Guatemala instead.^{: 163, 165}

History

The export boom, 1982–1985

Large-scale marijuana production first became evident in the late 1970s, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration brief of 2000, which put Belize fourth in world production in the early 1980s. The State Department dated the crop's rise as a major cash crop to early 1982.^: 50 In 1983 the government eradicated almost six million cannabis plants. In 1985 an estimated 1,223 hectares were planted, with a potential yield of 1,110 tonnes; about 90 per cent of the crop was processed in the country and some 85 per cent was exported to the United States.^{: 47, 50} The quantity available for shipment to the United States fell from 1,100 tonnes in 1984 to 550 tonnes in 1985 and 500 tonnes in 1986.^: 19 In 1991 United Press International reported that marijuana exports had been worth $100 million a year to Belize in the early 1980s, more than all its legal exports, and that the country had become the fifth supplier of marijuana to the American market.

Spraying, 1983–1995

Main article: Herbicide spraying in Belize

In October 1983 two helicopters hired from Mexico sprayed paraquat over the marijuana fields of four districts, with soldiers of the Belize Defence Force sent to the villages of Orange Walk.^: 35 No spraying followed in 1984, when manual eradication destroyed only 84 hectares, under seven per cent of the crop.^: 48 In February 1985 Prime Minister Manuel Esquivel said that Belize and the United States were discussing a spraying raid "just before the April marijuana harvest". The government chose not to use paraquat. On 28 October 1985 it began a four-and-a-half-day spraying of glyphosate in northern Belize that brought the year's eradication to 512 hectares, about 42 per cent of the crop.^: 53: 48

From 1987 the spraying, assisted by the United States, was regular instead of in occasional intensive campaigns; three campaigns that year destroyed an estimated 80 per cent of the crop, about 870 hectares.^{: 19, 34} Of an estimated 436 hectares grown in 1989, 353 were sprayed, by Thrush aircraft of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters or in ground campaigns. Production fell to about 66 tonnes from about 120 the year before.^: 163: 70 In January 1995 the government withdrew its permission for aerial eradication, citing the environment. From then on the police destroyed the fields by hand.^: 120 For spraying elsewhere, see Herbicide spraying of cannabis and United States and cannabis eradication abroad.

Treaties and the law since 1996

Belize acceded to the 1988 convention against illicit traffic on 24 July 1996, and to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as amended by its 1972 protocol and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 18 December 2001.

The Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2017, No. 47 of 2017, received the assent of the Governor-General, Sir Colville Young, on 2 November 2017 and was gazetted two days later. It amended the Misuse of Drugs Act, Chapter 103 of the laws of Belize, to decriminalise the possession of cannabis in amounts of up to 10 grams and its smoking on private premises. It also gave the minister power to make regulations for violation tickets.^{: long title, s. 8} A column in Amandala on 1 November 2017, after the Senate debate, objected that adults could now possess and smoke 10 grams at home but still could not grow, buy, import or sell marijuana, and that the act went beyond the 10-gram decriminalisation recommended in 2015 by the Decriminalization of Marijuana Committee. Regulations for cannabis violation tickets followed on 16 March 2019 and the industrial hemp regulations on 17 August 2019.^{: 89, 101} A Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Control and Licensing Bill, introduced in 2022 to regulate the production of marijuana, stalled over objections from the banking sector and civil society.^: 88

Cultivation

In 1985 growers were moving from two crops a year to staggered planting all year round. They used irrigation, inter-cropping and fertiliser, some of them also herbicide against weeds.^: 47 The United States estimated the yield at 908 kilograms per hectare.^: 51 The spraying of the late 1980s pushed growers onto marginal land and into smaller fields, mostly of less than an acre (0.4 hectares) in remote places, on which they spent more effort hiding the crop.^: 165

Around 2000 growers often planted in remote places and left the plants until harvest, which kept them away from the fields during eradication. To hide young plants from the air they set the seedlings among corn, or cleared the small trees and bushes of a patch while leaving the tall trees standing over it. Belize reported no cannabis grown indoors from 2004 to 2009.^: 11: 9 The joint operation of January 2012 burned 30 pounds (14 kilograms) of marijuana seed with the plants of 24 plantations.

Preparations and consumption

In 1985 so much marijuana was grown for the size of the population that the State Department judged domestic consumption to have little effect on the trade.^: 49 By 2000 a large part of what Belize produced was consumed in the country. In 2022 and 2024 marijuana was the drug most used in Belize.^: 88: 138 The act of 2017 allows cannabis to be smoked, in amounts of up to 10 grams, in a person's own home, in another home with the occupier's consent and in a hotel room or other paid lodging with the proprietor's consent.^{: s. 6}

Trade and commerce

Detail of a 1989 map of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. Its Central American marijuana symbol sits in eastern Guatemala, beside the border with Belize, with a trafficking route running north past Belize.

In 1985 traffickers flew most of the crop to the United States in small aircraft from makeshift airstrips and remote stretches of road.^{: 47, 50} After the spraying of the late 1980s many of them bought marijuana in bulk in the Petén of Guatemala instead of growing it. The State Department had reported in 1988 that traffickers deprived of marijuana were using their routes to smuggle cocaine.^{: 163, 165: 34} In 2000 Mexican buyers bought Belizean marijuana in bulk, but intelligence reports did not show Belize as a primary source for the United States.

Legal status

Under the Misuse of Drugs Act as amended in 2017, "cannabis" means any part of the plant Cannabis sativa, its resin and any product based on the resin, but not licensed medicinal preparations of the plant or industrial hemp, which is defined by a THC concentration set by regulation.^{: s. 2} The hemp regulations set that concentration at no more than 0.3 per cent.^: 102

Possession of cannabis or cannabis resin of not more than 10 grams is not unlawful and is not an offence. On the premises of a school or other educational institution it is a contravention: the first time it may bring a police warning; after that, a violation ticket for a fine of one hundred dollars, with no arrest and no criminal record. A person under 18 found in possession must attend a drug treatment or counselling programme approved by the minister.^{: s. 3} Smoking cannabis and keeping pipes for it are lawful in private homes and paid lodging within the same 10-gram limit. Allowing premises to be used for these purposes is not an offence either.^{: ss. 4, 6}

Enforcement

From 1995 the police and the Belize Defence Force pulled up fields by hand, guided by reconnaissance flights. Around 2000 the government held hand eradication to be more effective and safer for the environment than spraying, and the fields it found ranged from 500 to several thousand plants. The number of plants destroyed was about 103,000 in the first ten months of 2003, and 126,490 in 2006, 27,873 in 2007, 50,050 in 2008 and 144,235 in 2009.^: 9 Belize reported 50,897 plants eradicated in 2015, and 1,085 plants on 12 sites in 2024. In 2002 the International Narcotics Control Board estimated that the area under cannabis in Belize and Jamaica in 1980 had been five times the area then grown.^{: para. 265}

In September 2013 an operation of Belizean forces with aviation support from Joint Task Force-Bravo, a United States military task force, destroyed 22 fields and about 37,970 plants across the country. In September 2015 soldiers and police destroyed 70,000 plants on a single plantation about five miles (8 kilometres) south of Arenal, on the western border with Guatemala.

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

No accessions documented yet.

Conservation status

A specimen of Cannabis collected by B. Brooks and C. Castillo (BLB 100) on the east side of South Water Cay, off the coast of Stann Creek, on 25 August 2010 is held by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, as a herbarium sheet and a tissue sample.

Recent news

Article	Date	Category
News:1983-10-16/Eradication/mexican-helicopters-reported-spraying-paraquat-on-marijuana-in-toledo-district	16 October 1983	Eradication
News:1983-10-09/Eradication/two-mexican-contract-helicopters-spray-paraquat-on-marijuana-in-orange-walk-district	9 October 1983	Eradication
News:1983-10-09/Eradication/aerial-paraquat-spraying-of-marijuana-reported-in-cayo-district	9 October 1983	Eradication
News:1983-10-06/Eradication/mexican-helicopters-reported-spraying-paraquat-on-marijuana-in-corozal-district	6 October 1983	Eradication

See also

• Herbicide spraying in Belize
• Herbicide spraying of cannabis
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Landrace Cannabis
• Mexico
• United States and cannabis eradication abroad