Talk:Senegal

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Discussion for: Senegal • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Senegal is about cannabis in Senegal. It covers where cannabis is grown (Casamance, the Karone islands, the islands of the Saloum, the Niayes and the other places the sources name); how it is grown and by whom; the study of 1962 and the earlier evidence; how it is smoked and named; the trade to Dakar, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau; the laws of 1963, 1972, 1987, 1997 and 2007 and the debate over them; enforcement; and the herbarium sheets from the country. The growing region of Casamance has its own page, which treats the army's operations there and the claims about the separatist rebellion and the crop. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Senegal as their country.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

• Collomb, Diop and Ayats (1962) is cited from the page text that Persée serves for each page of the article (pp. 139–144). The text is an OCR layer that drops apostrophes, some punctuation and some numbers: the number of plants in one place at Sédhiou, the day of the decree of April 1951 and the price of a kilogram are lost, so the article gives none of them. The place list on p. 139 runs together without commas; where a word is garbled (the text reads "Niayes uga Kébemer") the article names only the places that read cleanly.
• Tubiana (1963) is a one-page critical note on the study of 1962, read on Persée. He calls the Muslim hypothesis a working hypothesis; the article keeps it as his.
• Duvall (2019), The African Roots of Marijuana, is cited for p. 13 only, from the publisher's preview. The 19th-century primary sources behind his statement about Senegal and the Gambia are in an endnote outside the preview and are not named on the page. His EchoGéo article of 2019 is on OpenEdition; it is cited by paragraph number, the form the online edition uses.
• Evans (2003), Ni paix ni guerre, is cited from the ODI PDF. Page numbers are the printed ones (the PDF page less one). The NGO officer on contract growing is in note 13, p. 22.
• Tine and Diatta (2018) is cited from the copy on the repository of the Université Assane Seck de Ziguinchor, which holds the whole journal issue. The article's own running head reads vol. 8, no. 10 (October 2018) and numbers its pages 1–13; the issue's front matter reads no. 11 (November 2018) and places the article at p. 31. Page numbers given are the article's own. The DOI printed in the running head resolves to a different paper, so it is not given. The production figures (at least 67.5 tonnes a season for four villages, several hundred tonnes for the commune) are the authors' estimates, with no method or year stated.
• The drug code (Law 97-18) is cited from the copy published by CENTIF, the national financial intelligence unit, with a second copy on the UNODC SHERLOC database; both give the text as enacted in 1997. The Journal officiel issue (no. 5777) is not cited; its contents list gives the law at p. 539 and the decrees creating the CILD and OCRTIS, of 17 December 1997, at pp. 554–555.
• Law 2007-31 is cited from the National Assembly's text as adopted on 30 November 2007 (no. 40/2007), with the bill's statement of reasons and the committee report, in a scan published by the CILD. The promulgated text in the Journal officiel (no. 6391, 16 February 2008, p. 141) is not cited. The articles cited (95, 97, 99, 103 ter) are the Assembly's text.
• Earlier laws. The law of 1972 and its amendment of 1987 (Law 87-12, which merged cultivation with the other offences and set two to ten years) are cited from Assembly scans on Vie-publique.sn. The law of 5 February 1963 is known only from the contents list of Journal officiel no. 3589, which gives its title; its penalties are not given here.
• Treaties are from the United Nations Treaty Collection status pages, read 21 October 2026. The page for the 1961 Convention as amended prints Senegal's date without the accession mark.
• Press. Senegalese reports are cited for what officials said and for single operations. Agence France-Presse is cited from reproductions in Malay Mail (2020) and Dakaractu (2026). The police report for 2021 and the customs figures for 2023–2024 are known from Ndarinfo; the national seizure table for 2013 from SenePlus.
• Herbarium sheets are known from GBIF: two preserved specimens with country Senegal, at Meise (Vanden Berghen 9803, 1993) and at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (P06829796, Kaichinger, "Kaolak", undated).

Where the sources differ

• When cannabis came. Duvall cites 19th-century sources for psychoactive cannabis in Senegal and the Gambia; the UNODC review of 2006 says it may have been introduced earlier in the 20th century by Arab traders, without a source; Tubiana suggested that Muslims spread its use in West Africa. The article gives all three, attributed.
• Cannabis and the rebellion. Evans (2003) judged the importance of cannabis to the rebels debatable and their revenue from it probably overstated; UNODC (2006, 2007) calls its importance debatable and says the issue may have been exaggerated for political purposes; Duvall (2019), citing a gendarmerie officer's thesis of 2006, says a rebel group persisted because it controlled a production zone. Officials and the army make the link in stronger terms. The article states that the matter is disputed and gives the main positions; the Casamance page gives the others.
• The penalty for growing. AFP (2020) wrote that cultivation carries ten years. The Assembly text of 2007 sets ten to twenty years of hard labour for growing the high-risk drugs of the first schedule; the code of 1997 set five to ten years' imprisonment; growing a small quantity for one's own use carries two months to one year (art. 109, not amended in 2007). Press accounts of the law of 2007 differ on its date (30 November, 17 December or 27 December 2007) and on its maximum.
• Seizures. AFP, citing UNODC, gives 12.8 tonnes of cannabis or resin for 2017; Dakaractu, citing the WENDU network, gives 12,798 kg. Neither the UNODC figure nor the WENDU report was read, so the article does not give 2017.

Other reports

• A cable of the United States embassy in Dakar of 2006 on the drug situation, known only from a leak reproduced by a news site.
• A press report of 2022 relaying unnamed sources on a trafficking network said to own cannabis fields in rebel-held Casamance: an unproven allegation about named private individuals.
• The claim that the rebels taxed growers for several million dollars a year by 1995: a claim made only in secondary sources.
• A diaspora ethnobotany (Senegalese in Turin, 2012) listing cannabis seed infused for asthma: it concerns migrants in Italy.

Open questions

• Whether cannabis is in the first schedule of the drug code depends on Decree 97-1220, which fixes the list of narcotics.
• The 19th-century sources behind Duvall's statement are not identified.