Indonesia

Indonesia
Indonesia
Terraced rice fields in East Java, Indonesia.
Flag
Capital	Jakarta
Continent	Asia
Subregion	Southeast Asia
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	2009
Enforcement	Active eradication campaigns
Documentation
Growing Regions	1
Growing Areas	3
Accessions	1

Indonesia has a cannabis record documented from the 17th century onwards, concentrated in Aceh on the northernmost tip of Sumatra, where the plant is known as ganja. Acehnese cooks have used cannabis seed as a flavouring, a use that informants in 2020 said continued only in private. When the national narcotics board proposed reviewing the plant's legal status in 2007, the debate drew street protests from religious groups and the proposal was dropped; Vice-President Jusuf Kalla argued against legalisation while allowing that "[i]t's alright to use it as a food seasoning." The Dutch botanist Georgius Rumphius, stationed on Ambon in the 1670s and 1680s, produced a detailed botanical description of cannabis in the Indonesian archipelago, the earliest located, including a record of a compact, curled-leaved variety from the Papuan and Sula Islands. No modern study of eastern Indonesian cannabis populations has been located.

The Dutch pharmacologist Willem Boorsma, commissioned in 1913 to investigate the cannabis situation in the Dutch East Indies, concluded that cannabis was used as an intoxicant only in three Sumatran residencies, the West Coast, the East Coast and Aceh, where it was grown, though not on any significant scale, and used mainly by foreigners, very little by the indigenous population.^: 27 No measures to stop cultivation followed his study.^: 5 The 1927 prohibition came from the inclusion of cannabis in the 1925 International Opium Convention; the decree's main concern was opium, for which cannabis often served as a surrogate.^: 4–5 Cannabis remains in the same Group I category as heroin and crystal methamphetamine under the 2009 narcotics law.

Nearly all the cannabis consumed in Indonesia is grown in Aceh Province and elsewhere in Sumatra and shipped from there to the other islands.^: 2 Annual eradication campaigns run there against cultivation that has continued across generations. Between 2009 and 2012, 37,923 people were imprisoned for using cannabis, which the Transnational Institute puts at as many as 26 people sentenced daily. No systematic botanical collection or genetic characterisation of Indonesian landrace cannabis has been located. The published chemical work profiles seized material rather than plants of documented provenance. The varieties face pressure from eradication, from hybrid introduction and from the interruption of traditional cultivation knowledge under prohibition.

In the 17th century Rumphius described Ginji Papoua, a short-stemmed, small-leaved form of cannabis brought to Ambon from the Papuan and Sula Islands.^: 211

Cannabis in Indonesian culture

Main article: Cannabis in Indonesian culture

Vocabulary and regional names

The standard Indonesian term for cannabis is ganja (also spelled gandja or gendji in older Dutch colonial sources), derived from Sanskrit ganja through the same transmission pathway as Khmer kanhcha:, Thai kancha: and Lao kan xa. The term reflects introduction from the South Asian cultural sphere, likely through the same maritime trading networks that brought Hinduism and Buddhism to the archipelago in the early centuries CE.^{[original research?]}

However, the Malay word recorded by Rumphius in the 17th century was not ganja but ginji: "In het Maleisch heet de hennep ginji," Boorsma quotes him directly. The plate of the Herbarium Amboinense calls the male plant Ginji Lacki Lacki and a smaller female form Ginji Papoua.^: 211 The shift from ginji to ganja in Indonesian usage likely reflects later 19th- and 20th-century convergence with the broader South Asian term carried by Indian migrant labour and by the colonial narcotics regulatory framework, which adopted ganja as its standard term.^{[original research?]}

Regional variation in terminology is significant. In urban slang, cimeng is a term for cannabis; the briefing records its use by one young Javanese consumer interviewed for a case study, and does not describe its wider distribution. The word bang appears in Dutch colonial sources alongside ganja to describe the smoked preparation, particularly in Aceh. On Ambon, Rumphius recorded the term hayal (modern Indonesian: khayal) for the recreational state of well-being induced by cannabis tea, a state described as imagination or fantasy.

The Historical Dictionary of Indonesia records cannabis as having been "native to the Caspian Sea, but reported from Java in the 10th century," used as both a source of fibre and an intoxicant, though less common than tobacco, opium or betel.

Culinary use

Main article: Cannabis in Acehnese cuisine

In Aceh, cannabis seed goes into cooking for flavour, for moisture and to a lesser degree for colour. The 2016 briefing names goat curry and Acehnese noodles among the dishes and reports flowers soaked in palm wine, kept in bamboo and taken as a tonic. In 2006 the BNN documented cannabis foods seized during eradication programmes in Aceh: cannabis oil, a toffee-like confection, curry, fried noodles, meatball soup and peanut sauce, most of them made with seed or oil. Many households grow a few plants in their own backyards; the yield is often not sold.

In 2015 the Sydney Morning Herald reported three young men in the provincial capital grinding 10 grams of cannabis into 250 grams of arabica beans and selling the mixture to cafes as "Coffee Lawak".

CNN Indonesia quoted two informants in February 2020. Syardani M. Syarif, a commentator on cannabis, said that kuah beulangong, kari sie itek and ie bu peudah were often cooked with cannabis seed and that the use went back several generations. Suahdi Imran, who runs a food stall at Lambaro in Aceh Besar, said that ground seed had been the ordinary seasoning before factory-made flavourings and had also been mixed into coffee. Where it was still used, he said, it was used privately and out of sight.

In May 2024, with Aceh due to host the National Games (PON) that September, the provincial office of the BNN and the food and drug agency (BPOM) announced plans to raid restaurants for food containing cannabis. The office's head, Marzuki Ali Basyah, said the aim was to "erase the stigma that Aceh's food is seasoned using marijuana".

Outside Aceh, the briefing reports, citing the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië (1896), that shopkeepers and warung (small shop) holders used cannabis leaves and opium to enhance the aroma and narcotic effect of dried tobacco in banana leaves.^: 3 Separately, the briefing records that cannabis was not well known among Javanese populations in the late 19th century, and that familiarity with terms such as ganja, gandja or gendji led some observers to assume the plant was cultivated on the island.

Rumphius documented an additional culinary and medicinal preparation on Ambon: dried cannabis leaves combined with nutmeg and brewed as tea for asthma, pleuritic chest pain and bile secretion.

Medicinal use

Main article: Cannabis in Indonesian traditional medicine

Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense records the following medicinal applications on Ambon in the 17th century:

• Gonorrhoea: Cannabis roots consumed as treatment
• Asthma, pleuritic chest pain, bile secretion: Leaves combined with nutmeg, brewed as tea
• General well-being: Cannabis tea consumed recreationally to induce hayal (a state of imagined ease)

The Tajul Muluk, a Malay compilation of herbal formulations assembled by the Acehnese scholar Shaykh Isma'il al-'Asyi, was printed by lithograph in Mecca in 1893. A 2022 study of its medical chapter found cannabis only in combination with other ingredients that temper its effect, in formulations to be taken in small amounts to avoid its strong effects on cognition.^{: 75, 80}

In the late 19th century, advertisements in Dutch-language newspapers published in the Dutch East Indies promoted cannabis cigarettes manufactured by Grimault in Paris as remedies for asthma, coughing, throat illnesses, breathing difficulties and sleeplessness, directed primarily at the European colonial population, reflecting contemporary European medical practice rather than indigenous use.

Smoking and social use

Main article: Recreational cannabis in Acehnese culture

The dominant preparation method in Aceh and Sumatra was mixing cannabis leaves with tobacco and smoking in lintingan (rolled cigarettes), using nipa palm leaves, or corn or banana leaves as wrappers. Stronger effects were reportedly achieved with corn or banana leaf wrappers compared to nipa palm. Chopped cannabis leaves were sometimes first soaked in water and dried before rolling.

Boorsma's 1892 article quotes at length Rumphius's first-person account of cannabis effects in the Indies, from the fifth volume of the Herbarium Amboinense. According to Rumphius, the sap of leaves and seeds was consumed mixed with betel nut (pinang) or dry leaves smoked with tobacco, with added spices including nutmeg, mace, cloves (nagelen), camphor and even opium; seeds separately prepared mixed with musk, amber and sugar. He observed two distinct types of effect: some smokers became gantsch razende (completely mad), wanting only to fight and throw things; others, of phlegmatic or melancholic temperament, began weeping and grimacing while simultaneously making threats. He noted that the greatest intoxicating power resided in the leaves, not the seeds: seeds could be eaten safely in small quantities without harm, and hence required the spice additions to achieve potency. He added a comparative observation: the Mughals, Persians and Turks made better cannabis compounds "dan de slegte Mooren van deze Hilanden" (than the simple Moors of these islands), simultaneously documenting cannabis compounding as a practised art in 17th-century Ambon and placing Ambonese practice within a wider Islamic pharmacological hierarchy.

The recreation state sought was described as hayal or khayal, a word meaning imagination or fantasy, implying a sought-for perceptual shift rather than escape from difficulty. This contrasts with the Khmer framing in neighbouring Cambodia, where Martin recorded users explicitly distinguishing the effects from opium and describing the purpose as "to avoid being sad, to experience a feeling of well-being."

Acehnese cannabis was also smoked or consumed as a tonic by immersing flowers in palm wine kept in bamboo sections.

Textiles

Boorsma's 1918 archipelago survey reports from the Lampung districts of southern Sumatra that cannabis was present "uitsluitend om touw te maken" (exclusively for making rope) and not as an intoxicant.^: 325 It is the only fibre use recorded in that survey. The overall pattern (cannabis valued for seed, leaf and flower but not for stem fibre) matches Martin's finding that cannabis fibre was "completely unknown in Khmer country."

Knowledge under threat

Cannabis cultivation in Aceh persisted through the post-independence period, through the Aceh conflict and through the national prohibition. Unlike Cambodia's Khmer Rouge-era knowledge destruction, Indonesia's traditional cannabis knowledge erosion has been gradual and structural.^{[original research?]} Crop-substitution programmes have replaced traditional Acehnese mixed-crop agriculture with BNN-promoted alternatives including cacao, patchouli, soybeans and turmeric, changing the agricultural context in which cannabis cultivation was embedded. No source documenting the effect of eradication on seed stocks, or on the transmission of cultivation knowledge between generations, has been located.

In 2015 Lingkar Ganja Nusantara (LGN) founded Yayasan Sativa Nusantara (YSN) as its research arm and obtained a government research licence for cannabis. No published account of the work carried out under that licence has been located.

Legal history

Colonial indifference and the Boorsma commission

The Netherlands East Indies colonial government initially gave cannabis little regulatory attention. The colonial administration's regulatory energies were focused on opium, which was controlled through a state monopoly (the Opium Regie) that generated substantial revenue. Cannabis attracted attention primarily as an opium surrogate: as opium controls tightened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cannabis use expanded among populations priced out of or legally excluded from opium.

Concerns about "Indian hemp" were raised at the International Opium Conference in The Hague in 1912. The colonial government commissioned Willem G. Boorsma, Head of the Pharmacological Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, to examine the situation of cannabis across the Dutch East Indies. The survey was commissioned by a directive dated 23 August 1913, No. 9031 from the Director of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, and was conducted jointly by the Opium Regie (Opium Revenue Service) and 's Lands Plantentuin (the Botanical Gardens at Bogor), with regional administrators and agricultural instructors instructed to collect specimens and submit reports on occurrence and use. Boorsma signed the report as "Chef van het Pharmakologisch Laboratorium."

Boorsma's findings, published across a 1915 departmental yearbook report and a 1918 journal article, found that most plants called gendji or gandja across Java and parts of Sumatra were not Cannabis at all, but lookalike species including Clerodendron Siphonanthus, Leonurus sibiricus, Artemisia spp. and several others. True Cannabis was confirmed present only in Salatiga (Semarang residency), the West and East Sumatra coasts and Aceh and its dependencies. The survey was carried out through the colonial administration and the Opium Regie, so its coverage followed theirs. In Aceh, as on the two Sumatran coasts, Boorsma's conclusion was that cultivation and use were "primarily by foreigners" (Klingalese Tamil labourers, Bengalis and Arabs) rather than by the indigenous Acehnese population, and that the variety grown was of relatively low potency compared to Indian forms. The result was not prohibition but increased administrative scrutiny: regional administrators were required to report annually on the cannabis situation in their areas.

In practice, however, preconditions were set when leasing land that forbade cultivation of all plant-based psychoactive substances, including Indian hemp, without government authorisation.

Provincial prohibition: Aceh 1924

Prohibitions at the provincial and local level preceded the national framework. In 1924 the Governor of Aceh and Dependencies promulgated an ordinance in the Javasche Courant that forbade anyone to plant cannabis, to own or hold a stock of it, to transport it or to offer it for sale. It extended the prohibition to the self-governing territories and their subjects. The penalty was a fine of up to 100 guilders or up to three months' detention, and the cannabis involved could be declared forfeit. Putri and Blickman record the Aceh ordinance as one instance of such local legislation rather than as the earliest, and the wider set has not been enumerated.

The Verdoovende Middelen Ordonnantie (1927)

The national prohibition came with the Verdoovende Middelen Ordonnantie (Narcotics Decree) of 1927, which followed the inclusion of cannabis in the 1925 International Opium Convention and made cannabis subject to a system of export authorisations and import certificates. The decree's primary focus was opium and its derivatives; cannabis was regulated as a secondary concern, principally in its role as an opium substitute. The decree prohibited cannabis cultivation and established restrictions on use, possession and distribution, though penalties were modest by later standards.

Under the 1927 Ordonnantie, penalties included a maximum fine of 1,000 guilders or six months' imprisonment for cultivation, and 3,000 guilders or three months for import, export, possession, preparation or use.

Cannabis-related arrests, ranging from cultivation to recreational consumption, began to increase during the 1930s as colonial enforcement efforts intensified.

Post-independence: the colonial framework retained

Following Indonesian independence, the new government retained the colonial narcotics legislation without revision.

Fifteen years after the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the Indonesian government passed its first independent narcotics law.

Law No. 9 of 1976 on Narcotics

Law No. 9 of 1976 classified cannabis as a controlled substance restricted to medical and research purposes only. Unlike later legislation, it contained no formal scheduling system. Penalties under this law included: personal use, up to two years' imprisonment; cultivation and small-scale distribution, up to six years and a fine of Rp 10 million; dealing and trafficking, 20 years to life and a fine of Rp 30 million.

Law No. 22 of 1997 on Narcotics

Law No. 22 of 1997 introduced formal scheduling, placing cannabis in Schedule I, the most restrictive category, permissible only for research under strict conditions. Penalties escalated dramatically: small and large-scale possession and cultivation carried sentences of 10 to 15 years; production and distribution extended to the death penalty.

The current law: Law No. 35 of 2009

The governing legislation is Law No. 35 of 2009 on Narcotics, enacted and promulgated on 12 October 2009. Cannabis sits at item 8 of the Golongan I (Group I) schedule in the law's first annex, which covers the cannabis plant, all plants of the genus Cannabis and all parts of the plant including seed, fruit and straw, together with processed products of the plant including damar ganja (cannabis resin) and hashish. Tetrahydrocannabinol and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol are listed separately at items 9 and 10. Golongan I also contains opium, coca leaf and cocaine.

Golongan I placement carries two consequences beyond the penalty scale. Article 8(1) forbids the use of Golongan I narcotics in health services altogether. Article 8(2) permits their use in limited quantities for the development of science and technology and as diagnostic and laboratory reagents, subject to the approval of the Minister of Health on the recommendation of the head of the food and drug authority. Article 13(1) allows scientific institutions, whether state or private, to obtain, plant, store and use narcotics for scientific and technological purposes once they hold a ministerial permit.

As enacted, the trafficking articles set both minimum and maximum terms, and imposed prison and fine cumulatively. Article 111 covered planting, keeping, possessing, storing, controlling or providing Golongan I narcotics in plant form, at four to twelve years and a fine of Rp 800 million to Rp 8 billion; where the weight exceeded one kilogram or five plants, the penalty became life imprisonment or five to twenty years, with the maximum fine raised by one third. Article 113 covered production, import, export and distribution at five to fifteen years and a fine of Rp 1 billion to Rp 10 billion, rising at the same quantity threshold to death, life imprisonment or five to twenty years. Article 114 covered offering for sale, selling, buying, receiving, brokering, exchanging or handing over, at life imprisonment or five to twenty years, rising to death, life imprisonment or six to twenty years. Article 115 covered carrying, sending, transporting and transit at four to twelve years, rising to life imprisonment or five to twenty years. The death penalty was therefore available under Articles 113 and 114 but not under Articles 111, 112 or 115, a distinction that enforcement and press accounts frequently collapse.

Article 127(1)(a) sets a maximum of four years for a person who abuses a Golongan I narcotic for their own use, with no minimum term. Article 127(2) directs the judge to have regard to the law's rehabilitation provisions, and Article 127(3) makes medical and social rehabilitation compulsory where the abuser is proven to be a victim of narcotics abuse. Putri and Blickman describe the 2009 law as having been presented by its architects as prioritising rehabilitation, and argue that its language allows prosecutors and police to reclassify personal users as dealers or traffickers, exposing people carrying small quantities to the trafficking articles.

Between 2009 and 2012, 37,923 people were imprisoned for cannabis use, a rate Putri and Blickman put at as many as 26 people sentenced daily.

Timeline of cannabis legislation in Indonesia

Period	Legislation	Cannabis status	Key penalties
1924	Aceh provincial ordinance	Prohibited (province only)	Fine of up to 100 guilders or up to three months' detention for cultivation, possession, transport, sale
1927–1976	Verdoovende Middelen Ordonnantie	Cultivation prohibited; use/possession restricted	Up to 1,000 guilders or 6 months (cultivation); up to 3,000 guilders or 3 months (use/possession)
1976–1997	Law No. 9/1976	Restricted to medical/research; no scheduling	Personal use: 2 years; cultivation/small supply: 6 years; trafficking: 20 years–life
1997–2009	Law No. 22/1997	Schedule I (research only)	Personal use: 4 years; large-scale possession/cultivation: 10–15 years; trafficking: death penalty
2009–2026	Law No. 35/2009 as enacted	Golongan I (science and technology only)	Personal use: max 4 years (Art. 127); cultivation 4–12 years, or life or 5–20 years above 1 kg or 5 plants (Art. 111); production and distribution 5–15 years, or death, life or 5–20 years above that threshold (Art. 113); sale and brokerage life or 5–20 years, or death, life or 6–20 years above it (Art. 114)
2026–present	Law No. 35/2009 as adjusted by Law No. 1/2026, with Articles 112, 113, 117, 118, 122 and 123 replaced by the Criminal Code	Golongan I (unchanged)	Statutory minimum terms removed; prison and fine cumulative-alternative; cultivation max 12 years, or life or max 20 years above 1 kg or 5 plants (Art. 111); sale and brokerage life or max 20 years, or death, life or max 20 years above it (Art. 114)

The war on drugs

The Indonesian government first declared a war on drugs in 2002 under President Megawati. An independent National Narcotics Board (Badan Narkotika Nasional, BNN) was established in March 2002 and in 2003 set up provincial branches (BNP), expanding the P4GN anti-drug programme (Pencegahan dan Pemberantasan Penyalahgunaan dan Peredaran Gelap Narkoba).

In 2007, the BNN and the Indonesian National Institute for Drug Abuse issued a proposal to review the legal status of cannabis. Tomi Hardjatno, a drug expert working as a consultant to the BNN, argued against the demonisation of ganja, citing its culinary use in Aceh and the plant's industrial potential, and holding that it was not as dangerous as commonly supposed. Religious protesters took to the streets. Vice President Jusuf Kalla argued against legalisation but said of cannabis that "[i]t's alright to use it as a food seasoning". Putri and Blickman record that the proposal appears to have been dismissed immediately.

In April 2015, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) had 14 drug traffickers executed, and the government escalated its war on drugs rather than retreating under the resulting criticism. The BNN, with the health and social affairs ministries, was authorised to gather as many as 100,000 drug users for transfer into rehabilitation centres, a quantitative target to be doubled annually. The Indonesian Drug Users' Network (PKNI) reported that as officials pursued those targets for financial reward, forced urine tests, fraudulent sales of controlled medicines and breaches of patient confidentiality became widespread.

Sentencing practice and the rehabilitation gap

The formal route out of prison for a cannabis user runs through a Supreme Court circular rather than through the statute. Surat Edaran Mahkamah Agung No. 4 of 2010 (SEMA 4/2010), issued on 7 April 2010 and replacing an earlier circular of 17 March 2009, sets out when a judge may apply the law's rehabilitation provisions. The circular requires five conditions together: the defendant was caught in the act by police or BNN investigators; the quantity found was no more than one day's use, set at 5 grams for the cannabis group; a laboratory test was positive; a report was obtained from a government psychiatrist appointed by the judge; and there was no evidence that the defendant was involved in illicit narcotics trafficking. The circular also names the rehabilitation institutions a judge may specify and sets programme durations of one month for detoxification and stabilisation followed by six months each of primary and re-entry programmes.

The five-gram figure is widely read as the boundary between a user and a dealer, but in the circular it is one of five cumulative conditions rather than a threshold standing on its own. Putri and Blickman note that the circular does not bind law enforcement agencies such as the BNN and the National Police, that a 2014 joint regulation signed by the heads of the Supreme Court, the National Police and the BNN together with the justice, health and social affairs ministers and the Attorney General extended similar procedures without changing that, and that both instruments operate inside a framework of punishment and are better described as de-penalisation than as decriminalisation. They also record that the Integrated Assessment Team on whose examination a judge's rehabilitation decision largely depends is often ignored by police investigators, and cite a member of the Indonesian Drug Users' Network suggesting that in 2014 only 17 of thousands of arrested drug users were transferred into rehabilitation centres.

The Supreme Court has separately allowed judges to sentence below the statutory minimum, through a line of rulings issued after its annual chamber plenaries. The 2015 plenary held that where a prosecutor charges Article 111 or 112 but the facts at trial show the defendant was a user holding a relatively small quantity by the 2010 schedule, and Article 127 was not charged, the judge decides in accordance with the indictment yet may depart from the special minimum by giving sufficient reasons. The 2017 plenary relaxed the requirement that the defendant have been caught in the act of using: where a relatively small quantity is found, a urine test is positive and Article 127(1) was not charged, the conduct may be categorised as personal abuse of a Golongan I narcotic, while the offence as qualified continues to follow the indictment. That formulation is written around a methamphetamine fact pattern, although the conclusion it reaches is expressed for Golongan I narcotics generally. The 2023 plenary extended the same latitude to the minimum prison term under Article 114(1), leaving the fine as that article sets it. In each of these formulations the conviction stands under the article charged and only the sentence moves, so a defendant may be convicted as a trafficker and sentenced as a user.

Medical cannabis and the Constitutional Court

On 3 February 2020 the Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo, signed Decree No. 104/KPTS/HK.140/M/2/2020 on commodities fostered by the Ministry of Agriculture. Its annex lists ganja (Cannabis sativa) at item 12 of the medicinal plant commodities assigned to the Directorate General of Horticulture, alongside ginger, cardamom and kecubung (Datura spp.). The listing attracted no attention until it circulated publicly at the end of August 2020. On 29 August the ministry issued a press statement in which the Director of Vegetables and Medicinal Plants, Tommy Nugraha, said the decree would be withdrawn for the time being so that it could be reviewed and revised in coordination with the BNN, the Ministry of Health and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The ministry added that it did not support cannabis cultivation, that cannabis is a Golongan I narcotic, and that Article 67 of the 2010 Horticulture Law permits cultivation of horticultural species harmful to public health only for health services or science, and only where no other statute provides otherwise. As of September 2026 the national regulatory database maintained by the Audit Board records the decree as in force and lists no instrument revoking it, while recording the 2019 decree that this one replaced as revoked by it.

A constitutional challenge to the medical prohibition was decided on 20 July 2022. In case 106/PUU-XVIII/2020, brought by Dwi Pertiwi and others, three mothers of children with particular illnesses together with private legal entities, the Constitutional Court was asked to review the Elucidation of Article 6(1)(a) and Article 8(1) of the 2009 law against Articles 28C(1) and 28H(1) of the 1945 Constitution. The Court held the petitions of the fifth and sixth petitioners inadmissible for want of standing and rejected the remainder in their entirety. Its reasoning was that Golongan I substances carry a very high dependency potential, and that no comprehensive and in-depth scientific study of Golongan I narcotics for health services or therapy had been shown to exist in Indonesia, without which the petitioners' case could not be assessed on medical, philosophical, sociological or juridical grounds. The Court recorded empathy for the petitioners' children while holding that their accounts were not a valid scientific result.

The decision was not simply a refusal. The Court directed the government to follow it up promptly with the study and research it had found missing, noted that such work could be carried out by state or private institutions under the ministerial permit provided by Article 13(1), and held that any resulting change to the classification belonged to the legislature as a matter of open legal policy, because the 2009 law carries criminal sanctions as well as scheduling.

Research did not follow quickly. On 15 June 2025 the BNN's Deputy for Law and Cooperation, Agus Irianto, said the agency was opening a limited opportunity for cannabis research for medical purposes, restricted to institutions with high credibility and standard laboratories, naming the University of Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University and the Bandung Institute of Technology, with the BNN acting as national laboratory centre. He framed the opening as a consequence of the Court's encouragement of scientific study rather than as a step toward legalisation, and said BNN research had found the THC content of local cannabis high enough to suit recreational rather than medical use.

A revision of the narcotics law has been under preparation in parallel. In July 2025 the BNN set out its objectives for the bill: strengthening enforcement and rehabilitation, strengthening the Integrated Assessment Team, regulating new psychoactive substances, and merging the narcotics and psychotropics statutes. The agency's director of law, Toton Rasyid, identified the unclear statutory definitions of addict, abuser and victim as a defect of the 2009 law, on the ground that it leads to users being handled in the same way as dealers.

The 2026 Criminal Code transition

The penalty structure described above changed on 2 January 2026, when Indonesia's new Criminal Code came into force. Law No. 1 of 2023, the Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana or KUHP, was promulgated on 2 January 2023 and took effect three years later under its own Article 624. Article 622(1)(w) of the Code repealed Articles 111 to 126 of the 2009 narcotics law and replaced their subject matter with a narcotics section of its own at Articles 609 to 611.

Law No. 1 of 2026 on Criminal Penalty Adjustment was promulgated and took effect on the same day, and narrowed that repeal. Under it, only Articles 112, 113, 117, 118, 122 and 123 of the 2009 law are repealed, and the remaining penal articles stay in force with the penalties set out in the adjustment law's second annex. Cultivation therefore remains an offence under Article 111, but the article now carries a maximum of twelve years and no minimum, with a fine of up to category VI, which the Criminal Code sets at Rp 2 billion. Above one kilogram or five plants it carries life imprisonment or up to twenty years. Article 114 carries life imprisonment or up to twenty years, rising above the same threshold to death, life imprisonment or up to twenty years. Production, import, export and distribution, formerly Article 113, now fall under Article 610 of the Criminal Code, at five to fifteen years for Golongan I substances and, above one kilogram or five plants in plant form or five grams in other forms, death, life imprisonment or five to twenty years. Article 127 was never within the repealed range and is unchanged.

Two structural changes cut across the whole scheme: the statutory minimum terms are removed, and prison and fine become cumulative-alternative rather than cumulative, so that a court may impose one without the other. An analysis published by the Supreme Court in March 2026 examined 39 narcotics cassation decisions registered in 2026 and published between 2 January and 2 March. All 39 applied the Criminal Code and the adjustment law rather than the 2009 narcotics law, and eight invoked the principle of lex favor reo under Article 3(1) of the Criminal Code, which directs that where the law changes after the act the more favourable provision applies. Eleven defendants convicted under Articles 111 or 112 and eighteen convicted under Article 114 received sentences below the former statutory minimum. Thirty-eight of the 39 decisions imposed no fine at all.

Current legal status

Cannabis remains a Golongan I narcotic. Cultivation, possession and distribution are criminal offences at all scales, and the heavier tier continues to turn on a quantity of more than one kilogram, or more than five plants. The death penalty remains available for sale and brokerage above that threshold under Article 114(2) and for production and distribution under Article 610(2) of the Criminal Code, but not for cultivation, which is capped at life imprisonment.

What changed in 2026 is the floor rather than the ceiling. With the statutory minimums removed and fines made alternative to imprisonment, the discretion that SEMA 3/2015 and SEMA 3/2023 had extended to judges case by case now rests on the statute itself, and the earliest cassation decisions under the new scheme show courts using it. Personal possession remains capped at four years under Article 127, with rehabilitation compulsory only where the user is proven to be a victim of narcotics abuse.

No medical cannabis framework exists. Article 8(1) of the 2009 law continues to forbid Golongan I narcotics in health services, the Constitutional Court declined to strike that prohibition down in 2022, and the research it called for has not produced a published result. The permit route under Article 13(1) remains the only legal opening, and the BNN's 2025 statement that it would host research at a small number of named institutions is the furthest that opening has been taken in public. In early 2015 Lingkar Ganja Nusantara established a research body, Yayasan Sativa Nusantara, which obtained the first government licence to conduct scientific research on the cannabis plant.

Putri and Blickman document entrapment and extortion by law enforcement and security officers as widespread, and record that the Supreme Court's five-gram figure does not bind the enforcement agencies.

Cultivation history

Traditional use period (pre-1927)

Before prohibition, cannabis in the archipelago was grown mainly in northern Sumatra.^: 3 Boorsma's 1913–1915 inquiry confirmed the plant on Sumatra's west and east coasts and in Aceh, where it occurred in most districts (afdeelingen) and was planted in a few of them. In his judgement it was cultivated in these regions, though not on any significant scale.^{: 25, 27}

On Ambon, Rumphius documented cannabis cultivation using seeds transported from Java, suggesting active seed trade between islands in the 17th century and a degree of deliberate cultivation management rather than wild harvesting. In Java, Boorsma records that cannabis was formerly cultivated "in den omtrek van Batavia" (in the environs of Batavia, now Jakarta), but by 1892 this cultivation had "spoorloos verdwenen" (disappeared without trace), apparently never having yielded the advantages initially expected from it. From Bantam (now Banten Province), Indian hemp appears to have been exported to Europe in the 17th century. By the time of Boorsma's 1918 archipelago survey, however, Bantam was among the regions where cannabis was entirely unknown, so the cultivation episode had ended by then. In Java's urban centres, cannabis was present in trade and in the practice of enhancing tobacco and opium in warung settings. The briefing also records cultivation in Batavia, Buitenzorg (now Bogor) and Ambon.

Acehnese smokers used the plant mainly to stimulate the appetite, Boorsma was told. One report warned that regular use left the consumer thin and dull, with a yellowing of the whites of the eyes.^: 26

Boorsma's 1918 survey records Acehnese cultivation practice in more detail. Transplanting of seedlings (bibit) was often accompanied by "luidruchtig ceremonieel" (noisy, festive ceremony) believed to increase the potency of the subsequent product. The preparation sequence for smoking was also documented: leaves dried, soaked in water, dried again, then finely cut. Three different wrappers produced markedly different effects: nipah palm leaf (mild), maize leaf (stronger) and banana leaf previously used to cook glutinous rice (bras poeloet), which reportedly rendered the smoker "volkomen bewusteloos" (completely unconscious) after eight to ten draws. Boorsma expressed scepticism about the last claim but recorded it.

Boorsma qualified his 1918 conclusions on the origins of Acehnese use. He concluded that in Aceh and on the Sumatran coasts, cannabis was cultivated and used "however, primarily by foreigners, very little by the indigenous population": the foreigners being Klingalese (Tamil South Indian contract labourers and traders), Bengalis and Arabs. Klingalese are specifically documented as the likely introducers of cultivation on the West Sumatra coast and as the manufacturers of madjoen (an aphrodisiac preparation from cannabis) in Aceh. Boorsma's report does not establish whether this reflects an older Acehnese tradition in decline or an introduction through South Asian and Arab trade networks.

Papua and the eastern archipelago

The eastern archipelago has a documentary record separate from the Sumatran one and a much thinner one. Rumphius described a third cannabis form on Ambon in the 1680s, the Ginji Papoua, which he recorded as brought from the Papuan and Sula Islands rather than grown there, placing cannabis within the maritime networks that linked Maluku to the Papuan coast in the seventeenth century. No comparable record exists for the interior. The mountainous centre of Western New Guinea was not reached by any outside party until June 1938, when the Third Archbold Expedition located the Baliem Valley from the air, and permanent administrative contact followed only in the 1950s. The botanist on that expedition, Leonard Brass, described the subsistence crop of the Bele valley at first contact as sweet potatoes, supplemented by sugarcane, bananas, cucumbers, a gourd, spinach and taro, and recorded that tobacco was grown there too.^: 279 He recorded no cannabis there. The genus is absent from both parts of his expedition narrative. Boorsma's 1918 survey had likewise reported Indian hemp unknown in South New Guinea, though that survey ran through a colonial administration whose presence was confined to coastal outposts and did not extend to the highlands.^: 325

The colonial prohibition period (1927–1945)

The 1927 Ordonnantie drove cultivation underground in Aceh without eliminating it. Cannabis-related arrests began to increase during the 1930s, the period in which colonial authorities advanced their law enforcement efforts. The Second World War and the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) interrupted colonial administration and enforcement.

The Aceh conflict period (1976–2005)

The armed conflict between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) ran from 1976^: 4 to the 2005 Helsinki Peace Agreement. During it, according to the Transnational Institute, the military and police were reported to have promoted cannabis cultivation in rural areas and to have bought cannabis from farmers at prices well below those of the black market.^: 6

GAM was alleged to have partially financed its operations by levying taxes on cannabis cultivation and cooperating with trafficking networks. In 1988, a GAM sub-district commander was arrested and reportedly showed investigators hectares of cannabis fields connected with GAM operational funding, though the validity of this confession has been questioned.

The Indonesian government launched Operation Nila I in 1989, targeting both GAM and cannabis cultivation simultaneously. Subsequent attacks by GAM were characterised by Indonesian authorities as retaliation against eradication programmes.

Indonesian military and police forces were themselves extensively involved in cannabis trafficking alongside, in competition with and independent of GAM: a police helicopter pilot was arrested by the air force in early 2001 after flying 40 kg of cannabis out of Aceh, which he said belonged to the police chief of Aceh Besar regency, Lt. Col. Ali Hussein.^: 213 In September 2002, police near Binjai, North Sumatra, caught an army truck carrying 1,350 kg of cannabis out of Aceh. Soldiers attacked the Binjai police post on 29 September to recover the truck and the soldiers arrested with it, in a nine-hour exchange that killed six police officers, one soldier and one bystander and wounded 23 bystanders.^: 214 Multiple actors (military, police, rival GAM factions, local warlords, criminal entrepreneurs) participated in shifting alliances around cannabis revenues, while the rural farmers and cannabis growers dependent on cultivation for subsistence remained the most disadvantaged of all the parties involved.

Schulze reported that an estimated 30 per cent of Southeast Asia's cannabis was believed to originate in Aceh.^: 27

The 2005 Helsinki Peace Agreement was followed by the Nila Rencong eradication operations of 2006 and 2007, the largest in the seizure series the Transnational Institute compiles for 2003 to 2013.

The Nila Rencong operations (2006–2007)

The Nila Rencong Operations were three operations carried out in Aceh in collaboration with the provincial BNN and Acehnese provincial police, following the 49th Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting and with UNODC endorsement.

Seizure data compiled by the BNN and UNODC for the period document the scale: 1,109,307 cannabis plants seized in 2006, escalating to 1,869,595 in 2007. These operations were followed by alternative development programmes administered by the UNODC and the Mae Fah Luang Foundation (2006–2010), including reconstruction of irrigation systems and promotion of alternative agricultural livelihoods. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) opened an office in Jakarta in 2011 and began providing counter-narcotics assistance including for cannabis eradication in North Sumatra.

The effectiveness of these programmes has been persistently contested. According to the Transnational Institute, local researchers contest the crop substitution programmes, chiefly because the alternative crops fetch much lower prices than cannabis.^: 18–19 A member of the Indonesian Drug Users' Network has suggested that some eradication and seizure operations were staged, to raise arrest numbers or to create a case for media coverage.

Geographic shift to dispersed production (2010s–present)

Commercial cultivation is also reported in Bengkulu, Lampung and Mandailing Natal in North Sumatra. Cannabis cultivation areas typically do not exceed one hectare; many farmers cultivate rented or informally occupied land, abandoning sites after harvest and switching to new locations to evade enforcement.

In 2015, the BNN reported eradicating 64 hectares of cannabis plantations nationally, with 60 hectares claimed as converted to alternative crops in Aceh.

Growing practices

Traditional agronomy

In the report from Aceh that Boorsma received, seedlings (bibit) were raised from seed and then transplanted.^: 25 For present-day Aceh, the Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing reports that backyard growing is common among households, which keep a few plants and often do not sell what they harvest.^: 8

An additional documented agronomy function is pest management. Cannabis planted as a border or companion crop in plantation rows was used to repel insect pests and suppress weeds, a practice the child-welfare organisation PKPA recorded in 2010, cited in the Lingkar Ganja Nusantara volume.

Modern prohibition-era cultivation

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Varieties and genetics

No systematic botanical collection or genetic characterisation of Indonesian cannabis landraces has been located. The published chemical work is forensic: the 2025 profiling study sampled cannabis seized in five Aceh regencies for origin-tracing rather than as documented landrace material, and analysed no plant material from North Sumatra.

Botanical classification

Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense (vol. 5, 1747) describes male and female plants of cannabis (Ginji) grown in Ambon gardens from Javanese seed, and a third form, Ginji Papoua, short-stemmed and small-leaved, brought from the Papuan and Sula Islands.^: 208–211 The Ginji Papoua passed into formal botanical nomenclature without any plant being examined. Hasskarl took Rumphius's third variety as the type of Cannabis sativa var. crispata in 1866, basing the name, in his own words, on Rumphius's text rather than on a specimen. Merrill and Robinson's concordance of the Herbarium Amboinense recorded the act and judged the variety "apparently merely a variant of the common hemp". The name was later treated as a synonym of Cannabis sativa subsp. indica var. indica, the South Asian domesticate, in a 2020 revision that does not discuss Papuan material. No herbarium specimen of cannabis collected in the Papuan provinces has been located in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, whose Indonesian holdings for the genus comprise four sheets from Sumatra and Java. The variety Rumphius described has therefore been named, assessed and synonymised without a collection ever being made.

Colonial botanical identification: Cannabis indica

When Boorsma's 1913–1915 survey collected herbarium specimens from confirmed Cannabis-growing areas, the Aceh material was formally identified as Cannabis indica, not Cannabis sativa. The Lamarckian binomial C. indica then denoted the compact, resinous, intoxicating form associated with India, as distinct from the tall fibre-producing European C. sativa; the distinction was still taxonomically current in the early 20th century and was later collapsed by many authorities into a single species with varieties. Boorsma recorded that the Acehnese plants produced little visible resin compared with Indian material, and held that cultivation had been introduced through South Asian networks.

The "gendji" problem: cannabis lookalikes across Java

Boorsma's 1918 survey found that most plants called gendji, gandja, gendje or similar names across Java and parts of Sumatra were not Cannabis. The most common substitute, sent by administrators from Tangerang, Karawang, Tjitjuroeg, Soemedang, Pekalongan, Grobogan, Demak, Salatiga, Kedoe, Banyumas and Djombang (and found by Boorsma himself in the environs of Batavia), was Clerodendron Siphonanthus (Verbenaceae), whose smoke has an opium-like odour, leading to its use as an opium surrogate and acquisition of the cannabis name petjandon ("the opium-scented one"). Other documented substitutes included:

• Fraxinus Eedeni (Oleaceae), from Besuki, called pohon tjandoe ("opium tree")
• Leonurus sibiricus (Labiatae), from Cheribon, Kediri, Ngawi
• Polantsia viscosa DC. (Capparidaceae), from Jambi, Palembang and South/East Borneo; mistaken for Cannabis due to handlike compound leaves and sticky glandular hairs
• Scoparia dulcis L. (Scrophulariaceae), from Banyumas, Kedoe, Salatiga
• Blumea balsamifera L. (Compositae), "omboeng" from South/East Borneo
• Artemisia sp. (Compositae), "wild gandjo" from Fort de Kock and Solok
• Ficus fistulosa and Ficus quercifolia, from South/East Borneo, drunk as decoct and smoked with opium

Boorsma attributed the proliferation of cannabis names across Java to "memories of the time when authentic Indian hemp and its narcotic power were known here", the names attaching to superficially similar plants after cannabis itself had gone.

True Cannabis in the survey was confirmed only in: Salatiga in the Semarang residency (as gendji djawa, not used as an intoxicant), the West and East Sumatra coasts and Aceh and its dependencies, within the administration's reach.

Boorsma's chemical analyses from the 1890s and 1910s are the earliest chemical work on Indonesian cannabis located, identifying cannabine, cannabinon and choline in samples from Sumatra and Java. The analytical methods of the period did not permit the chemotype characterisation possible with modern gas chromatography or mass spectrometry.

Morphology

Rumphius names the Ginji Papoua for its foliage, curled and wrinkled like the hair of Papuans. It has a short stem and small, narrow leaves gathered in bundles, and his plate legend calls it a smaller kind than the male plant of the first figure.^: 211

See also: Ginji Papoua

Quality tiers

No systematic documentation of quality tiers in Indonesian cannabis equivalent to the Cambodian or Lao systems has been located. Cannabis grown in Aceh for household culinary and medicinal use is not selected for the same qualities as cannabis grown for commercial smoking markets.^{[original research?]} The price gradient documented in the TNI briefing (from Rp 300,000/kg ($22) at Acehnese farmgate through Rp 1,500,000/kg ($110) in Medan to over $220/kg in Jakarta and $513/kg in Surabaya) reflects distance and distribution rather than quality grading.^{[original research?]}

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The market

Cannabis Price Points (Indonesia)

Year	Price	Location	Context	Source
1913–1915	Not recorded	Fort de Kock (now Bukittinggi), West Sumatra	Sold locally by the packet	Boorsma: 25
2014	Rp 300,000/kg (US$22)	Aceh (farmgate)	Commercial landrace	BNN via TNI
2014	Rp 1,500,000/kg (US$110)	Medan (wholesale)	Commercial landrace	BNN via TNI
2014	~US$220/kg	Jakarta (wholesale)	Commercial landrace	BNN via TNI
2014	~US$513/kg	Surabaya (wholesale)	Commercial landrace	BNN via TNI
2014	Rp 100,000/paket (~US$7)	Urban (retail)	5–6 joints	BNN via TNI

Jakarta wholesale price runs to about ten times the price paid to the grower. Cannabis is cheaper than ecstasy ($29 per tablet), heroin ($36 per 250 mg) or crystal methamphetamine ($29 per 250 mg), and is the most common choice of substance among Indonesian drug users, accounting for up to 66 per cent of drug consumption in the country.

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Supply chain

Domestic supply chain

The documented Acehnese supply chain operates as follows:

1. Small-scale cultivation by household farmers and larger-scale operators in highland Acehnese districts, often with military protection obtained through bribery
2. Drying and basic processing at or near cultivation sites
3. Sale to traders at farmgate (Rp 300,000/kg) or transport to Medan wholesale markets
4. Distribution by road network from Sumatra to Java and eastern Indonesia, with a Jakarta drug policy expert naming Sukabumi in West Java as the primary Sumatra-to-Java entry point
5. Urban retail through paket (fixed-price packages) at approximately Rp 100,000 per package (5–6 joints)

Synthetic displacement

With intensifying law enforcement, high-quality traditional cannabis became increasingly scarce on Indonesian urban markets. Synthetic cannabinoids (primarily synthetic cannabis marketed under names such as "Gorilla tobacco") expanded rapidly to fill this gap, reaching peak popularity between January and May 2015.

Enforcement

Eradication campaigns

The BNN conducts annual eradication operations targeting cannabis cultivation throughout Indonesia. The three Nila Rencong operations of 2006 and 2007, which coincided with the peak in plant seizures, were carried out in Aceh. The conversion of eradicated fields to other crops reported for 2015 was also mainly there.^: 18

In the Nila Rencong period, 1,109,307 cannabis plants were seized in 2006 and 1,869,595 in 2007. The Jakarta Post reported that by the end of 2015 the BNN had eradicated 64 hectares of cannabis plantations nationally.

The BNN's stated 2016 intention was to shift enforcement focus from farmers to "investors" allegedly controlling cannabis cultivation, and to avoid prosecuting cannabis farmers.

Enforcement challenges

Acehnese highland cultivation areas are remote, and cultivators commonly abandon plots after harvest and move to new sites to evade enforcement.

The institutional barriers are more systemic. The BNN, National Police (Polri), Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Affairs operate in fragmented and sometimes competing institutional frameworks, with overlapping responsibilities and contested resources, particularly around rehabilitation programme authority. Prison overcrowding from drug-related prosecutions, mainly for possession, consumes the institutional resources ostensibly available for enforcement; national prison capacity averaged 145 per cent in September 2015, exceeding 260 per cent in Jakarta, Central Kalimantan and Riau.

Selective enforcement and military involvement

The military trafficking problem

The documented cases of protected trafficking involve the Indonesian military (TNI) and police rather than civilian political patrons. In September 2002, 1,350 kg was seized from an army truck at Binjai.^: 6 The assault that followed it, in which soldiers attacked the police post to recover the load, killed six police officers, one soldier and one bystander. A police helicopter pilot was separately arrested for flying 40 kg of cannabis out of Aceh for the Aceh Besar police chief.^: 213 In an earlier case police found five serving soldiers moving 60 kg of cannabis from Aceh to Medan, from where Kingsbury and McCulloch report it was broken into smaller packages and sent on, probably through a continuing military network.^: 213 In late November 2002 a consignment of 675 kg was seized and taken to the Polda station in Banda Aceh, where a senior officer said it "came from Pulau Aceh where the military supervises its cultivation".^: 214

The TNI briefing documents that security forces (military and police) "were reported to have promoted cannabis cultivation in rural areas and purchased cannabis from farmers at much lower prices than on the black-market." Kingsbury and McCulloch describe the same arrangement in more detail: the security forces "encourage" locals to grow and harvest the crop for what remains "a predominantly military market", paying "a price far below the market value", so that "the majority of profits accrue to armed forces, while the farmers live in both poverty and fear".^: 213

Contrast with small-scale enforcement

In the same period, cannabis users caught with quantities sufficient for personal use faced routine prosecution, extortion and imprisonment. The Supreme Court's five-gram threshold for user classification was ignored by officers who instead categorised buyers sharing cannabis with friends as dealers and traffickers, triggering sentences of five to twenty years. An Acehnese farmer selling a kilogram of cannabis earned $22 at farmgate and faced prosecution under the narcotics law.

Civil society response

Lingkar Ganja Nusantara (LGN) has since 2011 documented the traditional and cultural contexts of Indonesian cannabis, provided legal advocacy for arrested users and in 2015 obtained the first government research license for cannabis through its foundation Yayasan Sativa Nusantara (YSN). LGN published Hikayat Pohon Ganja: 12,000 tahun menyuburkan peradaban manusia (The Tale of the Cannabis Tree) in 2011, a general history of cannabis written for an Indonesian readership.

The Indonesian Drug Users' Network (PKNI) provides legal advocacy for arrested users and has systematically documented the gap between the law's stated rehabilitation intent and its punitive application in practice.

Recent news

Article	Date	Province	Category
News:2026-10-10/Eradication/army-task-forces-uproot-1-657-harvest-ready-cannabis-plants-on-community-garden-land-at-kampung-sinimbuk-in-pe	10 October 2026	Highland Papua	Eradication
News:2026-10-09/Trafficking/papua-police-find-about-10-kg-of-cannabis-in-two-sacks-near-mayo-beach-resort-in-holtekamp-jayapura	9 October 2026	Papua	Trafficking
News:2026-09-30/Enforcement/east-java-police-arrest-a-man-for-growing-about-148-cannabis-plants-in-a-greenhouse-at-his-home-in-sidorenggo	30 September 2026	East Java	Enforcement
News:2026-09-29/Policy/brin-head-says-the-agency-will-coordinate-a-study-of-medical-cannabis-regulation-with-the-health-ministry-and	29 September 2026	Jakarta	Policy
News:2026-09-28/Trafficking/muaro-jambi-police-seize-about-30-85-kg-of-cannabis-at-a-house-in-mendalo-darat-and-arrest-a-suspected-courier	28 September 2026	Jambi	Trafficking
News:2026-09-18/Eradication/polres-gayo-lues-destroys-an-estimated-26-5-hectares-of-cannabis-in-the-pining-mountains	18 September 2026	Aceh	Eradication
News:2026-09-17/Eradication/army-intelligence-detachment-says-it-burned-about-3-500-cannabis-plants-on-1-5-hectares-in-lambada-seulimeum	17 September 2026	Aceh	Eradication
News:2026-09-15/Eradication/aceh-besar-police-destroy-about-3-500-cannabis-plants-on-one-hectare-at-pulo-in-seulimeum	15 September 2026	Aceh	Eradication
News:2026-09-15/Trafficking/bnnp-sumbar-seizes-29-85-kg-of-cannabis-at-koto-baru-in-agam-and-arrests-two	15 September 2026	Sumatera Barat	Trafficking
News:2026-09-09/Eradication/tni-border-task-force-clears-21-400-cannabis-plants-in-kurima-in-yahukimo	9 September 2026	Highland Papua	Eradication
... further results

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Growing Regions

Main article: Landrace cannabis growing regions of Indonesia

No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Main article: Landrace cannabis growing areas of Indonesia

No growing areas documented yet.

Conservation status

Main article: Landrace cannabis conservation in Indonesia

Indonesia's traditional cannabis landraces face compounding threats:

• Eradication campaigns: Annual destruction of millions of plants across Acehnese highland districts eliminates cultivated populations, destroys irrigation infrastructure and disrupts seed-saving. Close to three million cannabis plants were seized in Aceh across 2006 and 2007.
• Genetic erosion through modern varieties: Modern hybrid varieties entering the domestic market carry a risk of displacing and hybridising with traditional landraces. No survey measuring the extent of this has been located.
• Cultural disruption: The criminalisation of a multi-generational agricultural and culinary practice severs the intergenerational transmission of cultivation knowledge, selection criteria and use practices.^{[original research?]}
• Synthetic substitutes: As enforcement made cannabis harder to find, synthetic cannabinoids such as "Gorilla tobacco" became popular as a substitute, peaking between January and May 2015.^: 10
• Absence of ex situ preservation: No confirmed ex situ preservation programme for Indonesian landrace cannabis exists. Material claiming Indonesian provenance in international collector networks lacks reliable provenance verification or population-representative sampling.

Indonesia: Landrace cannabis eradication map

Conservation status: Endangered. Active eradication targeting primary producing regions; no known preservation efforts; genetic erosion ongoing; traditional cultivation knowledge under sustained structural pressure.^{[original research?]} No assessment of cannabis populations around Lake Toba or in Papua has been located.

See also

• Southeast Asian Gene Pool
• Herbarium Amboinense
• Ginji Papoua
• Australian Bastard Cannabis
• Aceh (province-level article)
• Lake Toba
• Batak people
• Portal:Current Events

Bibliography

The following works constitute the essential bibliography for cannabis in Indonesia. Items marked * are highest-priority sources for further research.

• * Rumphius, G.E. (1747). Herbarium Amboinense, Vol. V, t. 77. Amsterdam. Digitised at Botanicus.org. The foundational botanical source; contains the Ginji Papoua description and Ambon medicinal/recreational use documentation. The only pre-modern botanical description of Indonesian cannabis.
• * Putri, D. and Blickman, T. (January 2016). Cannabis in Indonesia: Patterns in consumption, production, and policies. Drug Policy Briefing No. 44. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. [1] The most useful modern overview; covers traditional use, legislation, cultivation, enforcement and civil society. Primary source for legal and enforcement sections.
• * Boorsma, W.G. (1917). Pharmacologisch laboratorium. Jaarboek van het departement van landbouw, nijverheid en handel 1915. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, pp. 21–29. The colonial government's own commissioned assessment; found no significant cannabis problem. Critical for understanding that the 1927 prohibition was not driven by domestic policy need.
• * Boorsma, W.G. (1892). Eenige bijzonderheden omtrent cannabis sativa, var. indica. Teysmannia, III, pp. 792–799. A general review of Cannabis sativa var. indica with Indonesia-specific content. Contains: (1) Rumphius quotations in full Dutch on effects, preparations and the Malay word ginji; (2) documentation that cannabis was formerly cultivated near Batavia (Jakarta) but had disappeared without trace by 1892; (3) Bantam (Banten) as the 17th-century export origin of Indian hemp to Europe; (4) first chemical characterisation identifying cannabine, cannabinon and choline as active components. The Rumphius passages here differ in detail from those available in English translation of the Herbarium Amboinense and should be treated as a primary source in their own right.
• * Boorsma, W.G. (1915). Verslag van den Chef, Dr. W.G. Boorsma: Pharmacologisch Laboratorium [Report of the Chief of the Pharmacological Laboratory]. In: Jaarverslag van het Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel [Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade], pp. 21–29. Leiden University Digital Collections, item 1180739. The primary source: the original internal government report commissioned by directive of 23 August 1913, No. 9031. Signed by Boorsma as "Chef van het Pharmakologisch Laboratorium." Contains the complete survey findings including: Aceh herbarium identified as Cannabis indica; full list of cannabis lookalike species; Acehnese cultivation ceremony and wrapper hierarchy; conclusions on foreign (Klingalese/Bengali/Arab) vs indigenous use. Subsequently adapted as the 1918 Teysmannia article. The 1915 report is the earlier and more authoritative version.
• * Boorsma, W.G. (1918). Over het voorkomen en het gebruik van Indische hennep in Ned.-Indië. Teysmannia, afl. VI, pp. 324–334. The most extensive colonial survey of cannabis distribution across the entire Netherlands East Indies, conducted jointly by the Opium Regie and the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens. Key findings: (1) Cannabis confirmed present only in Salatiga, West/East Sumatra coasts and Aceh; absent from Bantam, Bali, Lombok, Timor, Sulawesi, Ambon, New Guinea and most of Java; (2) most plants called gendji/gandja across Java were not Cannabis (Clerodendron, Leonurus, Artemisia, etc.); (3) Aceh cultivation was primarily by Klingalese (Tamil)/Bengali/Arab immigrants rather than indigenous Acehnese; (4) Acehnese cannabis of relatively low potency vs. Indian forms; (5) Lampung documented as sole fibre-use location; (6) detailed Acehnese cultivation ceremony, preparation methods and wrapper hierarchy (nipah < maize < banana leaf with glutinous rice). Indispensable for understanding the pre-prohibition distribution of cannabis across the archipelago.
• Cribb, R. and Kahin, A. (2004). Historical Dictionary of Indonesia. Scarecrow Press. Contains the 10th-century Java reference.
• Heyne, K. (1922). De nuttige planten van Nederlandsch-Indië: Tevens synthetische catalogus der verzamelingen van het museum voor economische botanie te Buitenzorg. Batavia: Ruygrok & Co. Major colonial botanical inventory of the useful plants of the Netherlands East Indies. Index verified against the digitised 1922 edition (Internet Archive, denuttigeplanten1922heyn): Cannabis is entirely absent, the index running Canangium odoratum → Canna → CANNACEAE → Cannacorus → Cardamomum minus. This confirms that by 1922, nine years after Boorsma's survey was commissioned, colonial botanical authorities did not consider cannabis a "useful plant" in any economic category: not fibre, not food, not medicine. The strongest negative evidence for cannabis's marginal status in the colonial economic botany of the archipelago.
• Kingsbury, D. and McCulloch, L. (2006). "Military Business in Aceh." In Reid, A. (ed.), Verandah of Violence: The Background to the Aceh Problem. Singapore: Singapore University Press, in association with University of Washington Press, pp. 212–217. Documents military involvement in illegal commerce including cannabis trafficking in the conflict period.
• Narayana, D., Syarif, I.M. and Ronald C.M. [Tim LGN] (2011). Hikayat Pohon Ganja: 12,000 tahun menyuburkan peradaban manusia. Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama / Lingkar Ganja Nusantara. ISBN 978-979-22-7727-2. A global history of cannabis civilisation directed at an Indonesian audience, covering China, the Middle East, India, Africa, Europe and America, plus medical, industrial and drug policy chapters. Does not contain an Indonesia/Nusantara-specific chapter; two brief Acehnese references only. Most useful for the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibition history (Bab 10) and as primary documentation of LGN's civil society arguments.
• Schulze, K.E. (2004). The Free Aceh Movement (GAM): Anatomy of a separatist organization. Policy Studies, No. 2. Washington: East-West Center. Contains the estimate that Aceh produced 30% of Southeast Asian cannabis in 2004; authoritative on the GAM conflict structure.
• Veth, P.J. (1867). Schets van het eiland Sumatra. Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen. Leiden University Digital Collections, item 129225. Early Dutch ethnobotanical survey of Sumatra. The cannabis passage (p. 41) reads: "De hennep (ganja) wordt door hen aangekweekt, niet om de vezels, maar ter bereiding van een bedwelmende stof, bang geheeten, die zij met tabak rooken" ("Hemp (ganja) is cultivated by them, not for the fibres, but for the preparation of an intoxicating substance called bang, which they smoke with tobacco"). Appears in the useful plants / medicinal plants section, immediately after the ipoeh/upas-tree poison passage, placing cannabis in the same category as known toxins. Veth also authored the preface to the 1861 Aardrijkskundig Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indië and is the same Veth cited by Boorsma (1918) as a background source.

Archival leads

• Aardrijkskundig en Statistisch Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indië (Geographical and Statistical Dictionary of the Netherlands East Indies). 3 vols. Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen, 1861. Preface by P.J. Veth. Digitised at Internet Archive (Vol. 1: aardrijkskundige01amst; Vol. 2: aardrijkskundige02amst). The Achin (Aceh) entry in Vol. 1 is extensive and lists all major agricultural products and exports (pepper, salt, gold, cotton, raw silk, tobacco, benzoin, camphor, betel nuts) alongside a note on Acehnese opium addiction, but contains no reference to cannabis. This represents the baseline for what Dutch colonial observers knew and recorded about Acehnese commerce in 1861, predating Boorsma's surveys by three decades and the Aceh War by twelve years. The compiler is Veth, who later authored Schets van het eiland Sumatra (1867). Volume 2 (K–Z) would contain entries for Salatiga, Sumatra's Westkust and other confirmed cannabis-present regions identified by Boorsma 1918; these have not been examined.
• Leiden University Digital Collections (digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl): Holds the *Jaarverslagen van het Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel* (Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade), the departmental series in which Boorsma's cannabis survey results were published. Item 1182543 is the 1924 annual report (signed Director Rutgers, Buitenzorg, 30 April 1925), with pages XX–XXII covering Industry division activities including Aceh pine resin/turpentine quality research. Cannabis is entirely absent from the 1924 report. The *Mededeelingen* (Communications) subseries (in which Boorsma's 1915 cannabis survey appeared as no. 14) should be in the immediately neighbouring items. The 1924 report confirms: two years before the 1927 Verdoovende Middelen Ordonnantie, the department that had commissioned the cannabis surveys had entirely dropped the subject from its annual reporting.
• Nationaal Archief, The Hague: Colonial administrative records of the Netherlands East Indies (Gouvernement van Nederlandsch-Indië). Contains administrative correspondence on cannabis, narcotics regulation and the drafting of the 1927 Ordonnantie. Catalogue search terms: Indische hennep, ganja, gandja, Verdoovende Middelen.
• Delpher (KB National Library of the Netherlands, digitised Dutch colonial press): De Sumatra Post is extensively digitised and contains documented cannabis-related articles including the 1924 Aceh ordinance announcement ("Een gandja-verordening in Atjeh," 26 November 1924) and 1930s enforcement records. OCR search for gandja, ganja, hennep across the Dutch East Indies newspaper collection has not been systematically conducted.
• Tijdschrift voor Nijverheid en Landbouw in Nederlandsch Indië and Teysmannia: Dutch colonial scientific journals containing Boorsma's articles and potentially other botanical and pharmacological documentation of Indonesian cannabis. JSTOR and Hathi Trust have partial holdings; Leiden University library (KITLV collection) likely holds complete runs.
• PKPA (Pusat Kajian dan Perlindungan Anak): Administrator (2010). "Keterlibatan Anak Dalam Penanaman Ganja." http://www.pkpa-indonesia.org/. Indonesian child welfare NGO that documented children's involvement in cannabis cultivation in Aceh in 2010. Cited in the LGN book (fn. 525) in the context of Acehnese cannabis as a companion plant in plantation agriculture. Potentially a primary source on household cultivation practices; original URL may be archived.
• KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies), Leiden: Holds the Colonial botanical collections and related archival material, including records of the Buitenzorg (Bogor) botanical garden which registered Cannabis sativa.
• Jaarboek van het departement van landbouw, nijverheid en handel (Annual reports of the Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade): Contains Boorsma's 1917 pharmacological laboratory report and potentially additional annual reports on cannabis surveillance mandated by the colonial government post-1912. Held at Leiden and partially digitised.

References

Southeast Asian Gene Pool Endangered Southeast Asia Indonesian Herbarium Amboinense (1690)