Talk:Sudan

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Discussion for: Sudan • View • Links • Related changes

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

Page scope

Sudan is the Country page for the Republic of the Sudan within its borders since 2011. It covers where cannabis is grown (Radom in South Darfur, and the other places the sources name), how it is grown, prepared and named, its history from Browne's account of Darfur to the present, the trade, the laws of 1924 and 1994, the treaties and enforcement. Records from before 2011 that concern what is now South Sudan are given as such. The growing area of Radom has its own page, which treats the farms, the campaigns and the war years in detail. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Sudan as their country.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

• Browne (1799) was read in the Project Gutenberg text of the London edition, which has no page numbers. The hemp entry is no. 25 of his list of the plants of Dar-Fûr. His statement that the plants of the list are to be found chiefly in the southern districts, "where water abounds", covers the whole list, not hemp alone, and names no district.
• Broun and Massey (1929), Flora of the Sudan, entry no. 361, was read in the Project Gutenberg text. The provinces it lists (Upper White Nile, Bahr el-Ghazal, Mongalla) are all in what is now South Sudan. Its statement that growing was forbidden names no ordinance.
• Ohrwalder (1892) was read in the third edition (Project Gutenberg); the page number is from the book's own index ("Hashish, use of, 17"). Slatin, Fire and Sword in the Sudan (1896), was also read: it records the Mahdist bans on drink and on smoking tobacco but does not mention hashish.
• The law of 1924. Its Arabic title, قانون الحشيش والأفيون لسنة 1924 (the Hashish and Opium law of 1924), is known only from the repeal clause of the Act of 1994 (art. 2). Its text and its official English title were not found.
• The Act of 1994 was read in Arabic in the text published by mohamah.net (a private legal site) and checked against the Arabic of chapter 4 (arts 15–20) on the UNODC SHERLOC legislation database, which matches. The text reproduced on both sites refers in art. 18 to a law of 2009 on medicines and poisons, so it is a text as amended after 2009; the dates of amendment are not known. The English title used here is the one the State Department uses (2011); SHERLOC calls it the "Law on Drug Offences of 1994". The words bango and ganja do not occur in it; cannabis is defined under hashish.
• Mohamed, Karim and Mohamed (1998), Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal 4(1), pp. 114–121, was read in the WHO PDF, a scan without a text layer, page by page. The printed article names three authors; the DOI record (10.26719/1998.4.1.114) lists only the first, Hamid M. Mohamed. The first author is described as a police officer of the forensic laboratory in Khartoum. The dating of growing to the 1940s is what village leaders and sheikhs told the authors; the figures for 1994 are the authors' estimates.
• State Department reports. The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report has a Sudan entry in its 2011 edition (covering 2009) and none in any edition from 2012 to 2025; the 2012 edition has a South Sudan entry. The 2011 entry is the source for the places named in the Geography section.
• INCB and UNODC. The INCB reports for 2003, 2013 and 2017 are cited by paragraph. The UNODC figure for Egypt (35 per cent of the cannabis trafficked there coming from Sudan) is the Egyptian authorities' estimate as the review of 2006 reports it.
• Radio Dabanga, Sudan Tribune and Darfur24 are cited for what officials and police said; the Arabic articles were read in Arabic. The figures of 60 per cent of African production and 65 per cent of Sudanese consumption in Khartoum, and of US$7 billion of trade, are officials' statements, reported as such.
• The Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker (March 2026) names no author and rests partly on interviews made in October 2025. The Africa Organised Crime Index (ENACT) is cited for its 2023 and 2025 country profiles.
• Surveys of use. Osman et al. (2016) surveyed one private university in Khartoum State in February 2014 (410 students analysed); El Mahi (2018) is a review by a psychiatrist. Neither is a national survey, and none was found.

Where the sources differ

• The effect of the war. Darfur24 (2025) and the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker (2026) report that growing at Radom doubled after 2023 and that the trade became open in areas held by the RSF; the Africa Organised Crime Index (2025) writes that the war and the fall in incomes reduced the trade and use of cannabis in Sudan. The article gives both.
• The area under cannabis at Radom. Officials have given 34,000 km² (2012), "at least 30,000" km² (2017) and about 20,000 feddans (2022). These figures are discussed on Talk:Radom.
• Seizures of 2009. The State Department gives "over 17 metric tons of cannabis"; UNODC's World Drug Report 2011 lists Sudan's seizures for 2009, 17,255 kg, under cannabis resin. The article gives the State Department's wording.
• Where Sudan's hashish came from. In 2017 a senior police officer told Agence France-Presse that the hashish seized was usually grown in South Sudan and also came from Ethiopia; the drug administration had said in 2012 and 2016 that most of it was grown at Radom. Both are given, with who said them.

Places named at state level

• The State Department's report for 2011 names the south of Blue Nile State and Gedaref State, with the south of Darfur, as places where cannabis was grown in commercial quantities. The study of 1998 (p. 115) names Blue Nile State among the zones of cultivation, citing two earlier references. No source read names a place inside either state where it is grown; the Sudanese press reports read for them describe seizures, not farms.
• Sudan Tribune (19 December 2015) names the east of Jebel Marra, with Songo and Radom, as one of three main growing areas of South Darfur. No other source read says so.
• Before 2011 the State Department, the flora of 1929 and the United Nations summary of 1951 placed growing in provinces that are now in South Sudan (Upper Nile, Bahr el-Ghazal, Mongalla and Equatoria). The article gives them in its History section only.

Not used

• Chevalier (1944) on hemp brought "notamment du Soudan": in his usage the Soudan is the French West African colony, not Sudan.
• The Wikipedia article on cannabis in Sudan, used only to find sources.
• Seller lines and their place names.

Open questions

• The text and English title of the Hashish and Opium law of 1924, and the ordinance behind the statement of 1929 that growing was forbidden.
• F. W. Andrews, The Flowering Plants of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1950–1956): its cannabis entry may record herbarium sheets and localities. It was not reached.
• The League of Nations annual reports of the Sudan Government on the traffic in opium and dangerous drugs.
• Whether the Act of 1994 has been amended since 2009, and when.