Talk:Niugini Gold

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Page scope

Niugini Gold covers the cannabis of Papua New Guinea known as Niugini Gold: its names and spellings, the published description of the plant and the seedless flower heads, the highland cultivation it comes from, and its sale in Australia from the 1970s to its disappearance from the main Australian markets by the early 2000s. The wider history of cannabis in the country, its law and the guns-for-drugs debate belong to Papua New Guinea.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

Thomas (2006). The review in the Papua and New Guinea Medical Journal (49(1–2): 52–56) was not read in full; it is cited for its PubMed entry. Its description of Niugini Gold, the passage on seedless flower heads and the comparison with sinsemilla are quoted as they appear in Kelly, Mathers, Kawage and Vallely (2012), pp. 17–18, whose reference 7 is this paper.
Kelly and others (2012). The report of the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research and the University of New South Wales was read in the PDF hosted by the United Nations in Papua New Guinea; pp. 9, 17 and 18 are used.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The Bulletin on Narcotics review of the world cannabis situation (vol. LVIII, 2006) was read at p. 80; the World Drug Report 2006, volume 1, in the passage on Papua New Guinea with its footnotes 56 and 57.
Alpers (2005), Small Arms Survey Special Report No. 5, was read in full; the passages used are on pp. 27, 59 and 62.
Bourke and Harwood (2009). Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea (ANU Press) was read in the publisher's open-access chapter files: section 3.5 (p. 227) and section 5.17 (p. 394).
Time (Michael Ware, "Savage Harvest", 9 April 2001) was read on the magazine's archive. Its prices are given with the currency signs as printed; the figures for 1995 are the magazine's report of what the Australian federal Director of Public Prosecutions found.
International Narcotics Control Board. The chapters on Oceania of the reports for 2001 (para. 564) and 2007 (para. 713).
Halvaksz and Lipset (2006) is cited for its title only, from its Crossref metadata; the article was not read.

Where the sources differ

Strain or product. The United Nations review of 2006 calls Niugini Gold "a distinct cultivar characterized by its red stem". Thomas, as quoted in 2012, describes a strain with a red stem and also says the term "refers exclusively to the inflorescences of female cannabis plants" harvested before they set seed. The article gives both senses.
Spelling. Niugini Gold (Kelly and others; Alpers), Niugini gold (Time), Nuigini Gold (World Drug Report 2006), nuigini gold (Bulletin on Narcotics 2006), "New Guinea Gold" among some Australian users (Bourke and Harwood).
When it was in the Australian market. Alpers calls it the cannabis of the 1970s and reports that it was gone from the main markets by 2004; Time gives a Sydney street price in 2001 and a resale price in Cairns in 1995; the International Narcotics Control Board reports that most of the cannabis seized by Australian customs in 2005–2006 came from Papua New Guinea. The Board does not name the strain.
The Kompri Valley plant. Time describes the plant it was shown near Henganofi without naming it as Niugini Gold. The article places it under cultivation in the highlands for that reason.
Introduction. The UNODC review says "allegedly" after the Second World War; Kelly and others, citing Thomas, write "It is reported that" it was first introduced after the war; Bourke and Harwood say "probably" in the mid to late 1960s. Kelly and others give the statement that cannabis is not indigenous to Papua New Guinea in their own words, with a footnote to Halvaksz (2007, their ref. 6), whose full text was not read here. None of the three gives its evidence for the date in the passages read; the earliest dated event in them is the Arawa prosecution of early 1970 (Bourke and Harwood, p. 227, footnote 5).
Earlier cannabis west of New Guinea. Rumphius, on Ambon, described Ginji Papoua, a short, curled-leaved cannabis brought to Ambon from the Papuan and Sula Islands, and wrote that it was named mostly for its curled foliage (Herbarium Amboinense, vol. 5, 1747, p. 211; written in the late 17th century). He also wrote that garden cannabis in the eastern islands was raised from Javanese seed (p. 209). Swadling (Plumes from Paradise, 2019, p. 33) identifies the Papuan Islands of the period as the Raja Ampat group, distinguished from the mainland of New Guinea from 1602; the Sula Islands lie in North Maluku. The sources on Papua New Guinea date the plant's arrival in that country to after the Second World War or to the 1960s, and Kelly and others (2012), citing Halvaksz, say it is not indigenous there. None of them discusses Ginji Papoua, and none connects it with Niugini Gold, so the article attributes the statement on indigenousness to the 2012 report and lists Ginji Papoua under See also without claiming descent.

Not used, and why

The Wikipedia article on cannabis in Papua New Guinea: its figure of AU$12,000 a kilogram for "PNG Gold" in 1990 carries no source.
The Encyclopedia of Drug Policy (SAGE, 2011): a search engine shows the phrase "New Guinea Gold" on p. 630 of the entry on Papua New Guinea, but the page could not be read, so nothing from it is used.
Seed sellers' descriptions of lines named after Papua New Guinea: none is used for the strain's history or character.
Jiggens (2004), a doctoral history of cannabis in Australia from 1938 to 1988, was searched for the strain and for Papua New Guinea; it does not mention either in connection with the cannabis market.

Open questions

Chemistry and genetics. No chemical or genetic study of Niugini Gold, or of other cannabis from Papua New Guinea, was found. Kelly and others (2012, p. 18) report that locally grown cannabis is said to be high in THC, citing a further source.
Australian sources of the 1970s. Newspapers and drug-squad reports of the 1970s, where the name "New Guinea Gold" would first appear in Australia, were not searched; the main newspaper archives could not be reached.
Thomas (2006) in full. The full text would show what Thomas himself cites for the description and whether he gives a date for the name.