Bangladesh
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| Bangladesh | |
|---|---|
| বাংলাদেশ | |
| |
| Lalbagh Fort in the old city portion of Dhaka, Bangladesh | |
| Flag | 
|
| Capital | Dhaka |
| Continent | Asia |
| Subregion | South Asia |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Legal Status | Illegal |
| Status Since | 2018 |
| Enforcement | Seizures, arrests and destruction of plants |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 2 |
| Growing Areas | 3 |
| Accessions | 4 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Bangladesh (বাংলাদেশ) is a country in South Asia on the combined delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. About 94 per cent of its land border is with India and the rest with Myanmar.[1] Cannabis there is called ganja.[2] Under British rule the licensed ganja tract of Bengal lay in what is now north-western Bangladesh: the Ganja Mahal round Naogaon, a tract confined by the 1890s to a radius of about sixteen miles in the districts of Dinajpur, Rajshahi and Bogra.[3] Licensed growing there continued through the Pakistan period and ended in 1987.[2]
Cultivation, trade and possession of cannabis are offences under the Narcotics Control Act, 2018, which sets prison terms by the number of plants grown and the weight of the drug.[4] In 2023 cannabis remained the most prevalent drug type in Bangladesh.[5]: para. 770 Most of the ganja seized in the country is smuggled in from India and Nepal. Some is grown in the country; in 2005, for example, cannabis was still cultivated in the hill districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, among other places.[6][7]
Geography
Most of Bangladesh is low alluvial land laid down by three river systems: the Ganges–Padma, the Brahmaputra–Jamuna and the Surma–Meghna. Two raised tracts, the Madhupur and the Barind, break the plain inland. Rows of hills rise in the north-east and the south-east. The highest ground, 1,280 m on the Saichal Range, is in Rangamati district.[1] The hills of the south-east, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, border the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram and Myanmar.[8]
In 1894 wild hemp was common in the Dacca and Chittagong divisions east of the Ganges, more so under the Garo Hills and along the Brahmaputra than elsewhere. One witness before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission had seen it growing more or less thickly over twenty or thirty acres in Durgapur thana of Mymensingh; another said it was dense in places in the Chittagong Division.[9] In the Ganja Mahal the crop needed a light, well-drained soil and could not be grown on the same land for more than a year or two running. The tract held only a limited quantity of thoroughly suitable ground.[10]
Demographics
Bangladesh had a population of 169.83 million in 2022. Muslims made up 91.04 per cent of it and Hindus 7.95 per cent. Bangla is spoken by 99.5 per cent of the people.[1] Some 45 tribal groups, with a population of just over 1.2 million, live in Bangladesh, among them the Chakma, Garo, Hajong, Khasi and Santal; they live mainly in Khagrachhari, Bandarban, Rangamati and other districts.[1]
Communities with cannabis relationships
The licensed ganja of Naogaon was grown by local cultivators organised from 1917 in a cooperative, the Ganja Society, which registered 7,740 farmers in 176 villages in its first year. Women of the Santal minority worked at preparing the ganja.[11] Folk healers use the plant in several communities. Santal healers in Thakurgaon district call it vang and give its leaf juice for bloating, cough and mucus.[12] A Garo practitioner in Madhupur, Tangail district, called it shindhik and gave its macerated root, with the leaves of Chromolaena odorata, for fever.[13]
Agriculture
Rice, jute, wheat, maize, sugarcane, potatoes, pulses and oilseeds are the main crops of Naogaon subdistrict, where the Ganja Mahal lay.[11] In 1873 ganja fetched 15 rupees a maund against 0.66 to 2 rupees for rice, pulses, oilseeds and wheat, and a bigha of ganja yielded as much as a bigha of rice.[2] When the Ganja Society ran the crop, a field grew ganja once in three years and carried upland rice, jute, tobacco, wheat, potatoes or vegetables in the years between. The farmers said there were fewer weeds after ganja and better yields from the crops that followed it.[11]
Hemp cultivation remains banned. A review by Rahman and colleagues argues for reviving hemp as an industrial crop.[14]
Cannabis in Bangladesh
Licensed ganja growing at Naogaon supplied the legal market of Bengal, then of East Pakistan and Bangladesh, until 1987. Since then the cultivation and sale of cannabis have been prohibited. Cannabis remains the most prevalent drug in the country.[2][5]: para. 770
History
The earliest cannabis cultivation in Bengal that Rahman and colleagues traced was a fibre-crop trial made by the East India Company at Muradpur village, Naogaon, in 1722. By 1809 cannabis was grown on fallow land in Jessore.[2] Cultivation in Jessore was suppressed in 1875.[3] The government took over the licensing of the crop in 1876, and in 1896 the parts of Bogra and Dinajpur districts in the tract were merged into Naogaon. The growers registered their cooperative, the Ganja Society, in 1917.[2]
In 1893 wild hemp grew in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and manufactured ganja was imported there for the workmen and craftsmen from northern India who wanted it.[15] The Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation of 1900 made it an offence to cultivate, import, possess or sell ganja there without a licence from the Deputy Commissioner, while allowing a person to keep three tolas for domestic use.[16]
The partition of 1947 put the tract in East Pakistan and separated it from many of its consumers in western Bengal and elsewhere in India.[17]: 222 Production fell from 170 tonnes in 1947 to 20.97 tonnes in 1951.[2] Between 1947 and 1950 more than three-quarters of the licensed ganja was burnt or lost in cancelled transactions, and from 1950 to 1970 East Pakistan allowed cultivation to continue on about a hundred bighas under the Society. Workers skilled in the ganja fields began to leave for Nepal in the 1970s.[17]: 228 A former ganja doctor told Rahman and colleagues that some had been hired to train farmers in Nepal.[11]
Rahman and colleagues date the decision to end the crop to a drug-control commitment entered into in 1974, which required cultivation to stop within 15 years.[2] Bangladesh acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 25 April 1975, reserving the right to permit temporarily in its territory the use of cannabis for non-medical purposes and the production and trade that served it.[18] Production nonetheless rose, to 67.48 tonnes in 1981. The last crop entered in the Society's stock book is that of 1986, and sales are entered until 1989.[2] Bangladesh acceded to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and ratified the 1988 convention on 11 October 1990.[19][20]
Cultivation
The Naogaon tract was worked on a rotation of three circles centred on the villages of Kirtipur, Gobindapur and Muradpur, each of which grew the crop once in three years. Seedlings were transplanted in late September and early October at about 100,000 plants a hectare. The male plants were pulled before they flowered by a specialist, the poddar or ganja doctor, leaving about 60,000. The farmers never removed all of them, because the Society needed seed for the next sowing and the households ate the seed.[11]
After 1987 cultivation went on outside the law. In 2005 cannabis was still grown in the districts of Naogaon, Rajshahi, Jamalpur and Netrokona and in the hill districts near Cox's Bazar, Bandarban, Khagrachhari and Rangamati, and growing in the Chittagong Hill Tracts was said to be increasing.[7] In the north-west, which lies in the North Bengal Plains growing region, police found plants grown in a vegetable field in Dinajpur District in 2019 and in an areca-nut garden in Kurigram District in 2026.[21][22] Security forces destroyed cannabis fields on about 200 bigha in Matiranga upazila, Khagrachhari, in a drive reported on 2 January 2020.[23] In January 2024 police destroyed about 3.5 acres in the Chowdhuripara area, 15 km from Guimara. In January 2025 the army burnt a field of two acres in the hills of Guimara upazila.[24][25] In the plains, police and narcotics officers found plants on small plots: 55 plants on three katha of fallow railway land at Bheramara, Kushtia, in July 2020, and more than 170 on 15 katha beside a house at Gangni, Meherpur, the same month.[26][27] For growing on the river islands of the Jamuna, see Brahmaputra chars. Law-enforcement agencies seized 39,395 ganja plants in 2022.[28]
Preparations and consumption
The Ganja Society sold its ganja in two forms: flat (chapta), cut into lengths of 30 to 60 cm, dried and pressed, and round, rolled on the stem. The farmers made more of the flat, for its quality and price.[2] In 1985 the Society sold through 17 authorised shops, each a gaza gola, spread over the country.[2] Before tobacco reached Bengal, smoking there included cannabis, and the hooka served for cannabis and allied narcotics before it was adapted to tobacco.[29] The seed, kept from the crop, was eaten and pressed for oil in Naogaon.[11]
Folk practitioners use the plant as medicine. Of more than 200 Bangladeshi ethnomedicinal surveys reviewed in 2021, 18 mention Cannabis sativa, most often its leaf, then its root and its seed.[30] Practitioners in Rangamati district, who call the plant bhang or siddhi, make an oil from its leaves to massage on the scalp for a schizophrenia-like illness. In severe cases they have the patient inhale a vapour of the leaves.[31]
Religious and cultural use
The worship of Trinath put the shared smoking of ganja at the heart of its gatherings in eastern India; in Bangladesh Trinath congregations still gather occasionally.[17]: 181 In 2004 a three-day ganja festival was held at Mahasthangarh near Bogra from the last Thursday of the Bangla month of Boishakh, a custom said to have been introduced more than a hundred years before by Hindu sadhus. Visitors came with kalki pipes, and ascetics with tridents received devotees who called them Baba. The police had pressed harder on the festival in the previous three years.[32]
Trade and commerce
In 1980 growers received 50 taka a kilogram, the Society sold at 207 taka and the government at 300; by 1984 the government's price had risen to 600 taka, about ten times the 58.5 taka the growers received.[2]
In 2021 most of the cannabis seized was smuggled from India and Nepal through the north-eastern and eastern states of India.[6] Seizures by all law-enforcement agencies rose from 48,749 kg of ganja in 2010 to 69,989 kg in 2017 and 115,368 kg in 2022, and stood at 114,345 kg in 2024.[28] Dhaka, Cox's Bazar, Chattogram, Comilla and Brahmanbaria are among the districts the Department of Narcotics Control names as most drug-prone.[5]: para. 770 In 2026 officers at Dhaka's international airport intercepted cannabis carried by passengers from Bangkok. The same year Border Guard Bangladesh seized 12 kg at Satkhira that was being smuggled into India.[33]
Legal status
The Narcotics Control Act, 2018, in force from 27 December 2018, lists ganja and bhang in class kha of its first schedule. Cultivating up to 50 plants carries one to five years' imprisonment and a fine, 51 to 500 plants five to seven years and more than 500 seven to ten years. Supplying, selling, buying or possessing a drug made from the plant carries six months to five years up to 5 kg, five to seven years up to 15 kg and seven to ten years above that. Consumption carries three months to two years. The Act allows a drug or plant to be licensed for medicine, industry, treatment or scientific research.[4] It replaced the Narcotics Control Act, 1990, which had set terms of up to 15 years for more than 5 kg of ganja or more than 25 plants.[34]
Growing Regions
Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki:
| Region |
|---|
| Indo-Burman Range |
| North Bengal Plains |
Growing Areas
Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki:
| Growing Area | Has growing region | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Chittagong Hill Tracts | Indo-Burman Range | Active |
| Ganja Mahal | North Bengal Plains | No longer grown |
| Jamuna chars | North Bengal Plains | Active |
Accessions
Map
List
| Accession ID | Name | Collected | Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarke 21810 (1874) | Clarke 21810 herbarium specimen, Jessore (1874) | ||
| Clarke 7538 (1868) | Clarke 7538 herbarium specimen, East Bengal (1868) | ||
| Clarke 8150 (1868) | Clarke 8150 herbarium specimen, East Bengal (1868) | ||
| Wallich 4665A (1809) | Wallich Catalogue 4665A herbarium sheet, Hamilton, Sadullahpur (1809) |
Conservation status
No ganja has been grown under licence since the 1986 crop, and the knowledge of the Naogaon growers survives with the last generation who worked the tract. Rahman and colleagues interviewed 45 of them between 2017 and 2020. By then the knowledge was being lost year by year, and the Society's papers were disintegrating in a locked room without electricity.[11][2]
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Bangladesh". Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Rahman, A.M.; Nemoto, K.; Matsushima, K.; Uddin, S.B.; Sarwar, A.K.M.G. (2022). "A History of Cannabis (Ganja) as an Economic Crop in Bangladesh from the Late 18th Century to 1989". Tropical Agriculture and Development. 66 (1): 21–32. doi:10.11248/jsta.66.21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IV, "Extent of cultivation, and its tendency to increase or decrease", paras. 89–91, pp. 35–36 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "মাদকদ্রব্য নিয়ন্ত্রণ আইন, ২০১৮ (২০১৮ সনের ৬৩ নং আইন)" [Narcotics Control Act, 2018 (Act No. 63 of 2018)]. Laws of Bangladesh (in Bengali). Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division, Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 International Narcotics Control Board (2024). Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2023 (PDF) (Report). Vienna: United Nations. ISBN 978-92-1-003052-6. E/INCB/2023/1.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Department of Narcotics Control. Annual Drug Report Bangladesh 2021 (PDF) (Report). Dhaka: Department of Narcotics Control, Security Services Division, Ministry of Home Affairs.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for South Asia (September 2005). "Bangladesh" (PDF). South Asia Regional Profile (Report). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
- ↑ "Physiography". Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. III, "The existence, prevalence, and character of the spontaneous growth", paras. 26–29, 45, pp. 19–20, 24 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ O'Malley, L.S.S. (1916). Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi. Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. ch. XII, pp. 134–144 – via archive.org.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 Rahman, A.M.D.; Matsushima, K.; Uddin, S.B.; Sarwar, A.K.M.G.; Nemoto, K. (2023). "Traditional Cultivation and the Production System of Cannabis by the Ganja Society in Naogaon, Bangladesh". Tropical Agriculture and Development. 67 (4): 99–109. doi:10.11248/jsta.67.99.
- ↑ Rahmatullah, M.; Mollik, M.A.H.; Azam, A.T.M.A.; Islam, M.R.; Chowdhury, M.A.M.; Jahan, R.; Chowdhury, M.H.; Rahman, T. (2009). "Ethnobotanical survey of the Santal tribe residing in Thakurgaon District, Bangladesh" (PDF). American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. 3 (4): 889–898.
- ↑ Rahmatullah, M.; Azam, M.N.K.; Rahman, M.M.; Seraj, S.; Mahal, M.J.; Mou, S.M.; Nasrin, D.; Khatun, Z.; Islam, F.; Chowdhury, M.H. (2011). "A survey of medicinal plants used by Garo and non-Garo traditional medicinal practitioners in two villages of Tangail District, Bangladesh" (PDF). American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. 5 (3): 350–357.
- ↑ Atiar, Rahman M.; Matsushima, Ken-Ichi; Uddin, Shaikh Bokhtear; Sarwar, A.K.M. Golam; Nemoto, Kazuhiro (2025). "Reviving industrial hemp in Bangladesh: Opportunity, challenges, and prospects". Indian Journal of Natural Products and Resources. 16 (1): 60–70. doi:10.56042/ijnpr.v16i1.13163.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Jogmohan Bhattacharya, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector and Personal Assistant to the Commissioner, Chittagong, with remarks by the Commissioner". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. Bengal witness no. 51, p. 119 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "The Chittagong Hill-tracts Regulation, 1900 (Regulation No. I of 1900), section 13: Intoxicating drugs". Laws of Bangladesh. Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division, Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Chattopadhyaya, Utathya (June 2026). Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India. Oakland: University of California Press. doi:10.1525/luminos.276. ISBN 9780520425699.
- ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 15. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "Convention on Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 16. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 19. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "32 cannabis plants seized from vegetable field". The Daily Star. Dhaka. 19 June 2019. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Karim, Md. Rezaul (9 July 2026). "গ্রীনহাউজ পদ্ধতিতে গাঁজা চাষ, পুলিশের অভিযানে প্রায় অর্ধশতাধিক গাঁজা গাছ উদ্ধার" [Ganja grown by the greenhouse method: some fifty cannabis plants recovered in a police raid]. Somoychitro (in Bengali). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "200 bigha cannabis fields destroyed in Khagrachari". The Business Standard. Dhaka. 2 January 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Over 30,000kg marijuana destroyed in Khagrachhari". The Daily Star. Dhaka. 16 January 2024. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "দুই একর জমিতে গোপনে গাঁজা চাষ, আগুনে পুড়িয়ে ধ্বংস" [Ganja grown in secret on two acres, destroyed by burning]. Prothom Alo (in Bengali). 21 January 2025. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "কুষ্টিয়ায় পতিত জমিতে গাঁজার বাগানের সন্ধান!" [Ganja garden found on fallow land in Kushtia]. The Daily Star (Bangla) (in Bengali). 23 July 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "মেহেরপুরে ১৫ কাঠা জমিতে গাঁজা বাগানের সন্ধান" [Ganja garden found on 15 katha of land in Meherpur]. DBC News (in Bengali). 30 July 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 "অপারেশনস্ ও গোয়েন্দা কার্যক্রমের পরিসংখ্যান" [Statistics of operations and intelligence activities] (in Bengali). Department of Narcotics Control. Narcotics recovered by all law-enforcement agencies, 2010 to 2024. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Islam, Sirajul. "Hooka". Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Shakil, S.S.M.; Gowan, M.; Hughes, K.; Azam, M.N.K.; Ahmed, M.N. (2021). "A narrative review of the ethnomedicinal usage of Cannabis sativa Linnaeus as traditional phytomedicine by folk medicine practitioners of Bangladesh". Journal of Cannabis Research. 3 (1) 8. doi:10.1186/s42238-021-00063-3.
- ↑ Ahmed, M.N.; Azam, M.N.K. (2014). "Traditional knowledge and formulations of medicinal plants used by the traditional medical practitioners of Bangladesh to treat schizophrenia like psychosis". Schizophrenia Research and Treatment. 2014 679810. doi:10.1155/2014/679810.
- ↑ Bilu, Hasibur Rahman (13 May 2004). "Pot extrava-ganza". The Daily Star. Dhaka. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "A kush trail is emerging through Bangladesh. But is the country a gateway, a market or both?". bdnews24.com. Dhaka. 7 September 2026.
- ↑ "মাদকদ্রব্য নিয়ন্ত্রণ আইন, ১৯৯০ (১৯৯০ সনের ২০ নং আইন)" [Narcotics Control Act, 1990 (Act No. 20 of 1990)]. Laws of Bangladesh (in Bengali). Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division, Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. Retrieved 20 October 2026.