Talk:Laos
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Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Page scope
Laos is about cannabis in Laos. Its growing regions (Northern Laos, Central Laos, Southern Laos), growing areas, accessions and news items are listed on the page rather than counted in the prose.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Infobox fields
- Legal status.
legal_status = Illegalwithlegal_status_year = 2017: the Penal Code No. 26/NA of 17 May 2017 (Article 318) is the instrument in force. Prohibition itself is older. The Law on Narcotics of 2007 and its implementing decree of 2009 already prohibited the cannabis plant, so the year marks the governing instrument, not the start of prohibition. - Hemp. Decision No. 3789/MOH of 28 December 2022 is not treated as an exception to the prohibition of cannabis. It defines hemp (porkeo) as a separate low-THC category and regulates that, while ganja stays a prohibited narcotic under the 2007 and 2017 instruments. Read as a carve-out of the kind India's NDPS Act makes for bhang, the fields would become "Illegal (hemp excepted)" and 2022.
- Enforcement. "Possession under five grams directed to treatment" is Article 320 of the Penal Code, under which a person holding less than 5 g of dry cannabis for consumption "shall be regarded as victims and shall be treated or sent for treatment".
Sources
- Martin 1975. Most of the page rests on Marie Alexandrine Martin's chapter in Cannabis and Culture (1975), based on fieldwork of 1973. Its content is set out on Ethnobotanical Aspects of Cannabis in Southeast Asia (1975). The chapter gives the Lao prices without a place or a date, so the page gives neither.
- Cited through Martin. Charles Crévost and Charles Lemarié (1919–1921) and Christian Taillard's survey of the Nam Ngum and Mekong banks (the source of the Ban Het Kansa toponym) are cited through Martin, who reports them. They carry no reference of their own, and the prose attributes them to Martin's report.
- Herbarium sheets. The localities come from the GBIF records of the sheets held by the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, each cited to its own record. J. E. Vidal's sheet of 1952 is catalogued at "Sam Niou, 12 km de Xieng Khouang". The name resembles Sam Neua in Houaphanh, some 150 km away; the page follows the catalogue, as Vidal 1526 (1952) does. The catalogue places Ban Xay Fong "près Vientiane".
- Law. The Penal Code articles are cited to the English text published in the Lao Official Gazette. The Law on Narcotics of 2007, the decree of 2009 and Decision No. 3789/MOH are cited to the Tilleke & Gibbins notes, not to their own texts.
Statements removed and why
- That Martin's fieldwork was "the last systematic account of traditional Lao cannabis use", and that the chapter is "the only detailed price record for Lao cannabis": no source cited on the page ranks either.
- "Cannabis has been prohibited since the Penal Code of 2017": prohibition is older (see Infobox fields). The lead now names the 2017 code as the governing instrument.
- "Sam Neua in Houaphanh Province" for the 1952 sheet: its catalogue locality is Sam Niou, 12 km from Xieng Khouang.
- That the herbarium localities "trace" a division between uplands and river, and that the wiki's growing regions follow the same division: an inference drawn from the wiki's own pages, not from a source.
- That Ban Het Kansa "marks ground now out of cultivation": Martin's observation was made in 1973.
- That cannabis and opium were both "freely sold" when Martin wrote: no source on the page covers opium sales.
- That Lao "growers and buyers" sorted the harvest: Martin says only that several qualities were distinguished in Laos.
- That the Lao authorities "have treated cannabis as synonymous with the plant": the cited note says they usually take marijuana to be synonymous with the cannabis plant, whatever its THC content, and the sentence now says so.
- That cultivation in Laos was of greater importance "along the river and closer to Vietnam": in Martin (1975, p. 66) the sentence closes her account of cultivation in Cambodia.
Source discrepancies
- When the Hmong brought textile hemp. Two readings of Crévost and Lemarié give different centuries.
- Martin (1975, p. 73), citing their Catalogue des produits de l'Indochine in the Bulletin économique de l'Indochine (1919–1921, p. 116): "According to the authors, the meo, from China, would have imported textile hemp north of the Annamese chain in the seventeenth century."
- Cambodia, citing the Catalogue des produits de l'Indochine, tome II (1919, pp. 117–119): imported from China "in the course of the last century".
- The catalogue's French text has not been compared with either. The page gives Martin's date, attributed to her report, as Vietnam does.
Open questions
- Conservation status is a section stub. The cited sources include no assessment of Lao landrace cannabis populations: no cultivation survey, no genetic or chemotype characterisation and no account of hybrid displacement in Laos. The Real Seed Company's FAQ names Parvati Valley, much of Thailand and Cambodia as regions where modern hybrids have become common. It does not name Laos, and the page does not extend the statement to Laos.
- The modern record. The cited sources include no cannabis cultivation survey and no modern study of cannabis use in Laos. The page's modern material is legal.
- Geography. The physiographic first sentence carries a citation-needed tag.