Talk:Ghana

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Discussion for: Ghana • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Ghana is about cannabis in Ghana. It covers where cannabis is grown (the Eastern, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Western and Volta regions and the places named in police reports and field studies); how it is farmed and sold; the accounts of its arrival and the record of the 1960s; the Pharmacy and Drugs Act of 1961, the law of 1990, the Narcotics Control Commission Act of 2020, the Supreme Court judgment of 2022 and the licensing of low-THC cultivation from 2023; enforcement; and the herbarium specimens and seed line from the country. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Ghana as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

Sagoe (1966) is cited from the UNODC site, where the paper carries no printed page numbers. The volume number (18, no. 2) is from du Toit's reference list; du Toit gives the author as "E. C. Sagoe", the UNODC page as "T. E. C. Sagoe".
The Pharmacy and Drugs Act, 1961 and its amendment of 1963: the page gives sections 47, 49 and 57 as Sagoe quotes them, and does not give the Act's number.
The law of 1990 (PNDCL 236) was seen only as an image scan of the revised edition in the Parliament of Ghana repository, with no text layer. The page gives its minimum sentences from a summary by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (2017). Act 1019, section 114, repeals it.
Act 1019 is cited from the original 2020 text in the Parliament of Ghana repository (sections 39, 41, 43 and 114 and the Second and Sixth Schedules). That text still carries the section 43 struck down in 2022. Its definition of "possession for use" reads "which does exceed the quantity which can reasonably be used by an individual in a day", as printed.
The Supreme Court judgment of 27 July 2022 (Ezuame Mannan v Attorney-General and Speaker of Parliament, Writ No. J1/11/2021): the page relies on the report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2023 (para. 188), on Graphic Online (28 July 2022) for the vote of four to three, and on the memorandum to the amendment bill of 2023, which quotes the judgment. Graphic names the majority as Dotse, Honyenuga, Mensa-Bonsu and Kulendi and the minority as Amegatcher, Kotey and Amadu; another listing names a different panel.
Act 1100 (2023). Its number and title are from the Minister for the Interior's statement at the launch of the licensing programme (Ghana News Agency, 27 February 2026). The date of 2 August 2023 for the amendment appears only in a third-party legal database and is not used.
L.I. 2475. A third-party legal database gives its full title as the Narcotics Control Commission (Cultivation and Management of Cannabis) Regulations, 2023, assented on 8 November 2023, gazetted on 9 November and in force from 11 December 2023; the Ghana News Agency prints "(Conservation and Management of Cannabis)". The page gives neither title in full.
Léonard (1998) is cited from the IRD repository copy (Autrepart 8, pp. 79–99). Its section on Ghana is drawn mainly from a report by Laurent Laniel for the Observatoire géopolitique des drogues (1995); the page attributes those statements.
The Drug Nexus in Africa (1999) is cited from its PDF, pp. 21–23 and 80. Its account of farming and trade in Ghana rests on fieldwork of 1997 and 1998 and on reports of the Observatoire géopolitique des drogues; its grades of cannabis come from one trader.
United Nations reports. The Bulletin on Narcotics of 2006 (pp. 70–71) and UNODC's Cannabis in Africa (2007, p. 6) are cited from their PDFs; the report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2023 from its PDF (paras. 188 and 449).
Recent studies. Dovlo et al. (2026), Douvris et al. (2022) and Salifu et al. (2026) are cited from the Europe PMC full texts. Bentil et al. (2026) is a preprint on Research Square, not peer-reviewed. Its two regions are given as codes and are not named in the text; the page does not name them.
News reports (Ghana News Agency, Ghanaian Times, Graphic Online) are cited for licences, destructions, a farm found and what officials said.
Herbarium specimens are known from their GBIF occurrence data: four records with country Ghana. Two of them, a second record of Akpabla's gathering of 1961 and a record from "Hatcho" of 1969, carry coordinates that fall outside Ghana and no institution code.
The seed line is described from the seller's listing, as on its accession page.

Where the sources differ

When cultivation began. Sagoe (1966): the first illicit cultivation reported by the police was in 1960. The Drug Nexus in Africa (1999): cultivation began in the 1940s and 1950s near Accra. Laniel, quoted by Léonard (1998): spread in Ashanti and Brong Ahafo from about the mid-1960s.
Who brought it. Sagoe: soldiers back from the Far East and East Africa, and seamen, from the name wee. Laniel: conscripts back from Burma. The Drug Nexus in Africa: West African soldiers back "from service in South Africa".
Use in 1998. The Bulletin on Narcotics (2006) gives 22 per cent; the annex of UNODC's Cannabis in Africa (2007) gives 21.5 per cent for the same year.
The threshold in Act 1019. Owusu, Arthur and Aboagye (2021) write that the Act allows industrial hemp "which has THC > 0.3%", while their own quotation of section 43 reads "not more than 0.3%". The page follows the Act.
Brong Ahafo and Bono. The older sources name the Brong Ahafo Region; Douvris et al. (2022) name the Bono Region. The page keeps each source's name.

Other reports

Owusu, Arthur and Aboagye (2021): see the threshold above. Its statement that most Ghanaian cannabis was exported comes from Bernstein (1999), citing a report of 1995.
Other reports of the Afram Plains farm, which give the number remanded as four: only the Ghanaian Times report is cited.
A first-person account of smoking in Ghana on the seller's product page for the Cannabiogen line: an advertisement, not a source on Ghana.
The Wikipedia article on cannabis in Ghana: a tertiary source.

Open questions

Colonial law. Whether any ordinance of the Gold Coast named Indian hemp is open.
Names. The sources give no Twi, Ga or Ewe name for the plant; the interviews of Dovlo et al. were held in Ewe and published in English.
Licensed farms. Where the two licensed farms are, their size and the origin of their seed are not given in the report of the licences.