Talk:Bhutan
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Place names of the 1838 mission
Griffith's Sasee, Ghoomkurrah and Oongar are identified in D. G. Long, "The Bhutanese itineraries of William Griffith and R. E. Cooper" (1979), with Sassi (27°08′ N, 91°25′ E), Ghunkarah (27°24′ N, 91°34′ E) and Unjar (27°31′ N, 91°05′ E). Long matched the names against Karan's map of 1967. He gives no district, so the article names none. Griffith's 1847 journals list Cannabis sativa at "Sassee" and give barley as the crop there; the 1839 journal and Pemberton's report give barley, buckwheat and hemp. The Ghoomkurrah and Oongar entries are plant lists and say nothing about use.
The Bhutan Hills in the 1893–94 evidence
- The Commission's sentence that the plant "is cultivated in the Bhutan Hills" comes in a paragraph on the hill tracts in and bordering Assam and names no witness or place. The Assam excise memorandum (vol. III, p. 18) says the same of the Bhutan Hills. Neither names a place inside present-day Bhutan.
- The Assam witnesses disagree. Driberg and Anderson speak of ganja from Bhutan; McCabe reports what a minor Raja of Bhutan told him; Gordon, for Goalpara, had never heard of hemp imported from Bhutan. "Bhutias" in this evidence is the witnesses' word and may not mean people of Bhutan.
- In 1838 Bhutan held the Assam and Bengal Duars (Long 1979, p. 356). Accounts of hemp in the Duars, such as Rennie's note of rice, mustard, tobacco and hemp at "Kyrantee" on the march to Dalimkote during the Duar War (Bhotan and the Story of the Dooar War, 1866, p. 168), concern plains now in India and are not used here.
Wild stands and harvesting
- No source consulted reports villagers planting cannabis. The Serthig gewog official quoted by The Bhutanese (7 May 2016) says that it "grows of its own" and is uprooted and dried for sale. The licensed research plantation in Samtse is the one deliberate planting reported.
- The BBS report of 20 July 2020 on Bumthang is headlined "marijuana harvesting"; its text describes arrests for possession of hashish and cannabis and an uprooting campaign, not the stands harvested.
- Reports naming places, not used in the article because they describe possession or seizures and not where the plant grows or is gathered: Rabuna (Bjena gewog, Wangdue Phodrang, BBS 15 July 2019); Yajugang, two hours' walk from Haebisa, where hashish was processed (The Bhutanese, 13 November 2018; the report does not say plants grow there); Genekha, where two men from Kabesa were found rubbing plants in a paddy field (BBS 20 September 2016); Mongar, named as the source of a kilogram of hashish (The Bhutanese, 20 April 2016); Changshingpek and Autsho (BBS 4 November 2020).
- The Bhutanese (9 September 2017) describes Chumithangka village under Jimina gewog as "densely covered" with cannabis, cleared of about three acres by its villagers; the report does not name the district.
- A Northeast Now report of 22 August 2018 says that Bhutanese farmers have traditionally used marijuana to fatten pigs. The sentence is the paper's own background, without a source, and is not used; the 2005 UNODC profile is cited for pig feed instead.
The 2018 leaf samples
The NCBI BioSample database returns 95 records (BTN001–BTN095) for Cannabis sativa from Bhutan, all collected between 11 July and 23 August 2018 at 17 sites and all recorded as female; 36 of them name a voucher at the Bhutan National Herbarium (THIM). The records belong to a European Nucleotide Archive project titled "Whole-genome re-sequencing of Cannabis from Bhutan" (PRJEB62863), submitted by Wageningen University and suppressed from public view at the time of writing; no publication from it has been found.
Figures and dates
- The 2017 census figures are from the national report (National Statistics Bureau, 2018). The projected 2026 population and the land and relief figures are from the Statistical Yearbook of Bhutan 2025. The Flora of Bhutan (1983) puts the lowest ground at about 150 m and the highest peak at 7,554 m; the yearbook gives 160 m and Jhomo Lhari at 7,314 m. The article uses the yearbook's range.
- Wexler and Tshering (2025) cite a Kuensel report on the research plantation in Samtse dated 6 July 2024; Kuensel's page for a report with the same title carries the date 18 July 2023, and BBS reported questions in parliament about the cabinet's authorisation on 10 October 2023. The article gives no start date.
- Not consulted: Karin Altmann, Fabric of Life: Textile Arts in Bhutan (2015), cited elsewhere for hemp textiles; Sowa Rigpa materia medica; INCB and UNODC annual reports for Bhutan; Kuensel reports, whose text was not available.