Talk:Issyk-Kul

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Discussion for: Issyk-Kul • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Issyk-Kul treats Issyk-Kul Region of Kyrgyzstan, round Lake Issyk-Kul, as a cannabis growing area. It covers the wild cannabis of the region, the survey and raid figures, and the hashish made by hand in the Karkyra valley. Kyrgyz drug law is treated at Kyrgyzstan.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why Issyk-Kul is a growing area

The UNODC's Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (April 2008) reports surveys of 1998 and 1999 that found wild growth and cultivation of cannabis in five Kyrgyz provinces, the most in Issyk-Kul (2,444.2 hectares), and that Issyk-Kul's cannabis had a higher THC content (p. 23). It does not separate wild growth from cultivation.
Gulzat Botoeva's PhD thesis (University of Essex, 2016), from fieldwork in 2009 and 2010 in a village of Tyup district, describes villagers gathering wild cannabis each summer and rubbing hashish from it by hand (pp. 132–136, 147, 154).
The regional police's raid figures (24.kg, 23 July 2014), the UNODC (2015) and 24.kg (26 June 2026) report wild cannabis found and destroyed in the region.
The cannabis is wild, as the sources say; Botoeva writes that no one in her village cultivated it. It is harvested for hashish, which is why the region is treated as a growing area.
The status is Active: the sources report the stands and the harvest from 1998 to 2026. Eradication raids do not change it, since no source says that the cannabis has gone.

Extent and border

The UNODC survey reports the area by province, so the area is drawn at province scale. Botoeva places the largest stands of the late-1990s mapping in three districts, Jeti-Oguz, Tyup and Issyk-Kul (p. 70); the raids of 2015 and 2026 were in Ak-Suu and Tyup districts.
The map border is approximate. It is Issyk-Kul Region, as mapped in OpenStreetMap, and covers about 42,000 km², the lake included. The infobox area is rounded from the border.
The region's high mountains fall inside the border, though no source read places cannabis there.

Accessions not filed here

Three herbarium sheets from inside the border are not filed under this area, as none records cultivation or harvest: Regel's sheet from near Karakol (1877), Popova's sheet from a street in Pokrovka (1950) and Gubanov's sheet of a weed in the forestry nursery at Karakol (1956). Regel's sheet is named on the page for its place in the botany of the wild plant.

Sources

UNODC (2008). The cannabis section (pp. 23–28) was read in full. The figure of 2,444.2 hectares covers wild growth and cultivation together.
Botoeva (2016). The opening pages (pp. 2–6), the sections on the post-Soviet cannabis market and drug control (pp. 69–76), the chapter on hashish production (pp. 131–136, 147, 154) and the account of eradication (pp. 188–189) were read. The village name Toolu and the names of people in it are her pseudonyms. Her figures of 8,322 and 1,931.6 hectares come from Zelichenko (2003), which was not read; they do not match the UNODC's figures for what may be the same mapping, and both are given by source.
Botoeva's location. The thesis places Tyup "in north-west Kyrgyzstan" in one sentence (p. 3) and in the north-eastern part of Issyk-Kul oblast in its map caption (p. 5); the page follows the map.
24.kg (2014). The raid figures for the whole of Mak-2014 in the region (19,883.1 hectares surveyed, cannabis on 4,083.3) come from the regional police.
GBIF. The record for Regel's sheet gives no date; the year 1877 comes from the sheet's own page on this wiki.

Sources not used

The Dublin Group's report of 2012 (p. 28) is cited only for its sentence on wild cannabis around Lake Issyk-Kul.
Kaktus.media reports of police burning cannabis near the Kazakh border in Tyup district and of the national raid of July 2024 could not be read (the site did not load) and are not used.