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Turkmenistan

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Turkmenistan
Türkmenistan
The Kopet Dag in Ahal Region
The Kopet Dag in Ahal Region
Capital Ashgabat
Continent Asia
Subregion Central Asia
Cannabis Status
Legal Status Illegal
Status Since 2017
Enforcement Prison terms for sowing or growing hemp (Criminal Code art. 330)
Documentation
Growing Regions 0
Growing Areas 0
Accessions 0
Conservation
Populations none documented yet


Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia. In 2008 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) wrote that it had no data on cannabis cultivation or wild growth in Turkmenistan, and none on eradication.[1][2]: 24 The United States Department of State's yearly drug-control reports from 2000 to 2010 said that small-scale cannabis cultivation was thought to occur in remote mountain and desert areas.[3][4] The Criminal Code punishes the sowing or growing of hemp, which its Turkmen text calls kenep, with up to five years in prison, and on an especially large scale with ten years or more.[5][6]

Geography

In 1901 the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia's article on Turkestan, a region that then included the Transcaspian oblast, wrote that wild relatives of hemp had been found in many places in its foothills.[7]

The US reports place the plant in the mountains and the desert. In its report for 2002 the State Department relayed sources inside the government who said that "the Indian cannabis plant" was grown on small patches in remote areas, above all in Gary Gala, a mountain village 304 kilometres west of Ashgabat in the Kopet Dag, and on a larger scale at Takhta Bazar, 541 kilometres east of the capital.[8] Later editions repeated the claim without the village names.[9]

Agriculture

The Brockhaus and Efron article on the Khanate of Khiva (1903) listed hemp among the crops grown widely there, with sesame, flax, tobacco and cotton. Yomud and Chaudor Turkmens lived in the khanate's western and south-western steppe.[10] The same encyclopedia's Turkestan article counted hemp among the region's oil plants: its seed went to oil, and its fibre had only a very limited use, for ropes.[7]

The law on narcotic drugs of 2017 bans the cultivation of the plants on the national control list. Only enterprises and institutions may grow them, within state quotas, and only for industrial, medical and scientific purposes.[11]

Cannabis in Turkmenistan

The Russian text of the Criminal Code names the plant конопля (konoplya); the Turkmen text calls it kenep and the opium poppy göknar.[5][6] The law of 2017 names "opium poppy and hemp (cannabis)" among the narcotic plants whose gathering counts as acquisition of a drug, and it covers the gathering of both wild and cultivated plants.[11]

History

Bronze Age Margiana

Viktor Sarianidi, who led excavations at Gonur Depe and Togolok in ancient Margiana, in today's Mary Region, reported that laboratory tests had found traces of hemp in vessels set into a brick platform in the Gonur temenos, in a chamber he took to be for preparing a cult drink. Tests also found a large quantity of hemp in gypsum-lined tubs in the houses around the temenos's small temple, where, he wrote, it had probably been retted.[12]: 194–197 In 2007 he wrote that every temple of Margiana had yielded remains of ephedra, hemp and poppy pollen, which he took for the ingredients of a drink of the haoma type, and that the palaeobotanist N. R. Meyer-Melikyan had made the analyses in a Moscow University laboratory.[13]: 174–175

The identifications were disputed. C. C. Bakels examined impressions inside vessels from Gonur and Togolok 21 and identified them, tentatively, as broomcorn millet.[14] Meng Ren and colleagues, in their study of cannabis burned at Jirzankal in the Pamirs, wrote that follow-up studies had shown the original identifications from Gonur to be wrong.[15] Sarianidi held to his reading: answering earlier doubts from A. Parpola and F. Hiebert, he wrote that the material re-tested had lain in the open for five years.[13]: 175

A popular cannabis encyclopedia by Oleg Vidi relays an interview in which Sarianidi said that a cloth found at Margush in 2002 had turned out, on preliminary analysis, to be hemp.[16] The textile analyses printed in Sarianidi's Necropolis of Gonur (2007), of cloth from a warrior's grave at Gonur, found flax; one of the three laboratories allowed that the fibre might be hemp but thought flax more likely.[13]: 330–337 A materials study of a cloth taken from a Gonur warrior's grave in 2001 found it to be probably flax.[17]

Russian rule (1881–1917)

Brockhaus and Efron wrote in 1901 that in Turkestan hashish was made from the flowering parts of hemp and was smoked with tobacco or eaten in sweets.[7]

Soviet Turkmenistan (1924–1991)

Writing on the Kirghiz SSR, the legal scholar A. T. Akmatova notes that similar decrees on destroying wild-growing hemp were adopted five years later in the Turkmen SSR and three other republics.[18]: 24 Citing K. Sh. Kurmanov, she names Turkmenistan first among the Soviet republics worst affected by drug addiction before the Union broke up, with 152.3 addicts per 100,000 people in 1986 and 129.9 in 1987.[18]: 28 The figures cover all drugs. The health ministry registered 3,704 drug users in 1989.[19]

Independent Turkmenistan (since 1991)

Turkmenistan acceded on 21 February 1996 to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and its 1972 amending protocol, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and the 1988 convention against illicit traffic.[20][21][22][23] A new Criminal Code replaced the Soviet-era code of 22 December 1961 on 1 January 1998.[24] A revision signed on 20 May 2010 removed the article that punished the acquisition or possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use.[25] Since 1 January 2014 the Code on Administrative Offences has punished them with a fine or up to fifteen days' arrest.[26] The law on narcotic drugs of 25 November 2017 replaced a law of 9 October 2004 and came into force on 1 January 2018.[11] A new edition of the Criminal Code, approved on 17 April 2022, has been in force since 1 January 2023.[5]

Cultivation

The State Department's report for 1996 said only that cannabis "also is grown in Turkmenistan".[27] Its report for 2000 added that each spring the government searched outlying areas from the air for illegal plantings, which were destroyed at once.[3] The 2002 report said the cultivation was "solely for domestic consumption".[8]

A State Department summary of a report in the weekly Adalat tells of a man accused of buying cannabis seed at a bazaar in Tejen in March 2008, planting it in his own garden and selling the 153 grams of marijuana it gave for $100. The seller and the buyer of the seed were sentenced to ten and eleven years in prison.[4]

Preparations and consumption

The State Department's report for 2002 said that much of the country's male population smoked the dried flowering tops of the plant.[8] Bernd Rechel and Martin McKee, writing on health under the Turkmen dictatorship, write that drug use had a long tradition in Turkmenistan, the users being mainly elderly men who took marijuana and opium.[19] Of 31,683 drug users registered in 2008, 856 used hashish; heroin users made up nearly 94 per cent.[28] From 2014 onwards the State Department's reports said that the government had published no drug-use statistics since 2006.[29]

Trade and commerce

Turkmenistan lies on smuggling routes from Afghanistan and Iran.[30]: 275 In 2003 cannabis resin from Afghanistan was trafficked to Iran and to Central Asia, to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.[31]: 89 The State Department reported 12 tons of hashish seized in 1996,[27] and 5,245 kilograms in 2000.[32] Turkmenistan reported 154.3 kilograms of cannabis seized in 2006, about one per cent of the Central Asian total; the UNODC noted that seizures had been rising since 2002, but that in the late 1990s they had been 79 to 245 times as large.[2]: 25–26 In 2010 the government reported 102.2 kilograms of hashish, most of it in Ahal Region, and 46.2 kilograms of marijuana seized across all five provinces.[28] In 2017 the State Department relayed the local authorities' statement that street prices of heroin, opium and marijuana remained among the highest in the region, which it could not verify independently.[30]: 275

On 31 March 2023 Uzbek customs at the Shavat crossing, between Daşoguz Region and the Uzbek province of Khorezm, found 159 kilograms of marijuana hidden in a lorry from Turkmenistan.[33] In March 2022 a Turkmen court sentenced ten people for smuggling; according to the judgment, which Turkmen.news obtained, the main defendant had flown dozens of kilograms of opium, marijuana and tramadol across the border from Iran by drone.[34]

Under the law of 2017, cultivating narcotic plants means sowing and growing plants on the national list, which follows the international conventions; it is banned except for licensed enterprises within state quotas.[11] Article 330 of the Criminal Code punishes the sowing or growing of poppy, hemp or other banned plants that contain narcotics, and the cultivation of their varieties. The penalty is up to two years of corrective labour or two to five years in prison. Repeated, group or large-scale growing carries five to ten years, and growing on an especially large scale ten years or more.[5]

Making, acquiring, keeping or carrying drugs to sell them, or selling them, carries five to twelve years under article 327; without intent to sell, article 328 sets a fine of 40 to 100 base amounts or up to five years. Other legal acts set the large and especially large amounts.[5] An "insignificant" amount kept without intent to sell, or drug use, is an administrative offence under article 82 of the Code on Administrative Offences. The same code punishes breaches of the rules for sowing, growing and guarding crops of poppy and hemp.[26]

Enforcement

In January 2008 President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov set up a State Counter Narcotics Service.[35] It was renamed the State Service of Turkmenistan for the Protection and Security of a Healthy Society in August 2012,[36] and became a department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2016.[30]: 275 The eradication operations named in the State Department's reports, such as "Black Poppy" in 1998 and "Opium Poppy 2015", were aimed at the opium poppy.[37][38] The operation of 2013 set out to destroy "both wild and illegally cultivated narcotic plants", without naming the plants.[29] Seized drugs are burned; a new furnace 100 kilometres north of Ashgabat opened on 2 December 2020.[39]

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.

Accessions

No accessions documented yet.

Conservation status

In 1995 the Vavilov Institute's genebank, which needed southern sites to grow out its hemp seed, most of it of southern-ripening types, was exploring work with its former research stations in Turkmenistan, near Iran and Afghanistan.[40] John McPartland and Ernest Small called the collection and conservation of germplasm of the indigenous landraces of Central and South Asia, in their centres of diversity, "urgently needed".[41]

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

References

  1. ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (April 2008). Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (PDF) (Report). Paris Pact Initiative. p. 23.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (April 2008). Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (PDF) (Report). Paris Pact Initiative.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (1 March 2001). "Europe and Central Asia". 2000 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2010). "Turkmenistan". 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Уголовный кодекс Туркменистана (новая редакция)(No. 456-VI), 17 April 2022, art. 330.Turkmenistan.Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Türkmenistanyň Jenaýat kodeksi (rejelenen görnüşi)(No. 456-VI), 17 April 2022, art. 330.Turkmenistan.Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Туркестан". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. XXXIV. St Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. 1901. pp. 174–203 – via Wikisource.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (1 March 2003). "Europe and Central Asia". 2002 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  9. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2005). "Europe and Central Asia". 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  10. ↑ "Хивинское ханство". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. XXXVII. St Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. 1903. pp. 189–194 – via Wikisource.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 О наркотических средствах, психотропных веществах, прекурсорах и противодействии их незаконному обороту(Закон Туркменистана), 25 November 2017.Turkmenistan.Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  12. ↑ Sarianidi, Viktor (2002). Margush: ancient Oriental kingdom in the old delta of the Murghab River (PDF) (in Türkmençe, русский, and English). Ashgabat: Türkmendöwlethabarlary. ISBN 5-7270-0100-5.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Sarianidi, Victor (2007). Necropolis of Gonur (PDF). Athens: Kapon Editions. ISBN 978-960-7037-85-5.
  14. ↑ Billings, Traci N.; Cerasetti, Barbara; Forni, Luca; Arciero, Roberto; Dal Martello, Rita; Carra, Marialetizia; Rouse, Lynne M.; Boivin, Nicole; Spengler, Robert N. (2022). "Agriculture in the Karakum: an archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 10 995490. doi:10.3389/fevo.2022.995490.
  15. ↑ Ren, Meng; Tang, Zihua; Wu, Xinhua; Spengler, Robert; Jiang, Hongen; Yang, Yimin; Boivin, Nicole (2019). "The origins of cannabis smoking: chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs". Science Advances. 5 (6) eaaw1391. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw1391.
  16. ↑ Vidi, Oleg (2010). "Туркменистан". Конопляная энциклопедия (in русский) (2nd ed.). Ypres: Weedy Publishing. ISBN 978-2-9600283-1-7 – via Wikisource.
  17. ↑ Reynaud, Corentin; Thoury, Mathieu; Dazzi, Alexandre; Latour, Gaël; et al. (2020). "In-place molecular preservation of cellulose in 5,000-year-old archaeological textiles". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (33): 19670–19676. doi:10.1073/pnas.2004139117.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Akmatova, A.T. (2024). "Правовая политика Советской Киргизии в сфере социальной безопасности (на опыте борьбы с распространением наркомании)". Вестник Ошского государственного университета. Право (in русский) (1(4)): 18–31. doi:10.52754/16948661_2024_1(4)_4.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Rechel, Bernd; McKee, Martin (2007). "The effects of dictatorship on health: the case of Turkmenistan". BMC Medicine. 5 21. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-5-21.
  20. ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 15. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  21. ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961: status". United Nations Treaty Collection. United Nations. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  22. ↑ "Convention on Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 16. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  23. ↑ "United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 19. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  24. ↑ О порядке применения Уголовного кодекса Туркменистана(Закон Туркменистана), 6 February 1998.Turkmenistan.Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  25. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2011). "Turkmenistan". 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Кодекс Туркменистана об административных правонарушениях, 2013, art. 82.Turkmenistan.Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 1997). "Europe and Central Asia". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1996 (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2012). "Turkmenistan". 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2014). "Turkmenistan". 2014 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2017). International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (PDF) (Report). Vol. I: Drug and Chemical Control. United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  31. ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2006). World Drug Report 2006. Volume 1: Analysis (PDF) (Report). United Nations. ISBN 92-1-148214-3.
  32. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2002). "Europe and Central Asia". 2001 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  33. ↑ "Таможенники Узбекистана задержали грузовой автомобиль из Туркменистана с 159 кг марихуаны". Хроника Туркменистана (in русский). 18 April 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  34. ↑ "Наркотики на… дронах. В Туркменистане десятерых наркоторговцев приговорили в совокупности к 166 годам". Turkmen.news (in русский). 4 August 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  35. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2009). "Turkmenistan". 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  36. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2013). "Turkmenistan". 2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  37. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (February 1999). "Europe and Central Asia". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1998 (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  38. ↑ Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 2016). "Turkmenistan". 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Report). United States Department of State. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  39. ↑ "Президент Бердымухамедов открыл новую печь для сжигания наркотиков (видео)". Хроника Туркменистана (in русский). 2 December 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
  40. ↑ Lemeshev, N.; Rumyantseva, L.; Clarke, R.C. (1995). "Report on the maintenance of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) germplasm accessioned in the Vavilov Research Institute Gene Bank – 1994". Journal of the International Hemp Association. 2 (1): 10–13.
  41. ↑ McPartland, J.M.; Small, E. (2020). "A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives". PhytoKeys. 144: 81–112. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.144.46700.
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