Creepy (cannabis)
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| Kind of name | Product name |
|---|---|
| Also called | Cripy Cripi Cripa |
| Language | English, used in Colombian Spanish[1] |
| Refers to | Hybrid types of cannabis high in THC and the marijuana made from them |
| Country | Colombia Chile |
|---|---|
| Places | Northern Cauca Corinto (appellation) Toribío (appellation) Ariari Provincia de Ocaña Rovira (appellation) |
| First recorded | 2011[2] |
Creepy (also cripy, cripi or cripa) is a name used in Colombia for hybrid types of cannabis high in THC and for the marijuana made from them. The plants are raised from imported seed or from cuttings.[3]: 58, 87[4] Growers, the police and the press use it mainly for marijuana from Northern Cauca, where the peace institute CAPAZ links a boom in growing in the early 2010s to its arrival.[5]: 3 It has also been reported from Ariari in Meta,[6] from Rovira in Tolima[7] and from the Provincia de Ocaña in Norte de Santander.[8] In Chile the name is used for marijuana brought from Colombia.[9] The Chilean authorities report its price apart from that of other cannabis herb.[10] People interviewed in Toribío and researchers describe creepy as a generic name covering several types, not a single variety.[3]: 58[11]
Name
The press and the police use four spellings. Creepy is the form of El Tiempo, the Truth Commission, the CAPAZ policy brief and the Dejusticia researchers Luis Felipe Cruz and Isabel Pereira;[12]: 194[5]: 3[3]: 58[13] cripy is used by the weekly Semana and in police statements of seizures, which speak of "marihuana tipo Cripy";[1][8] cripi by the journalist Diana Maria Pachón and the Cali daily Diario Occidente;[4][14] and cripa by El Colombiano, which also writes cripy.[15] The investigative site InSight Crime called the same strains "cripa", "cripy" or "creepy" in 2019.[16]
Semana derived cripy from the English word creepy, which it glossed de miedo ("frightening").[1] InSight Crime wrote in 2011 that the strain was known in Colombia as creepy for its high levels of THC.[2] In 2023 it quoted a Costa Rican police official who said the name came from its potency and strong psychoactive effect.[11]
Colombian drug-treatment statistics count admissions for "marihuana creepy" apart from those for "marihuana". In the figures of the Colombian Drug Observatory for 2012 to 2017, Cruz and Pereira found 3,463 admissions for creepy.[3]: 76
What the name covers
A person interviewed in Toribío in 2017 told Cruz and Pereira that every indica type raised from cuttings without seed is called creepy. Creepy, the interviewee said, is not a variety but a generic name; of the four kinds under it, the interviewee named patimorada, blanca rusa and manzanita; others were called diésel, guaiguiro or Santa María. Patimorada was the most common, because it was adapted to the place and did not suffer from fungus.[3]: 58 A police characterisation published by the anti-narcotics study centre Ciena in 2017, which Cruz and Pereira reproduce, counts Black Jack, Blueberry and "Súper Skan" among the creepy types: crosses between naturalised and foreign types, less adapted to the climate than the native varieties of Cauca but yielding more per plant and harvested in four to five months against seven to eight for the native varieties.[3]: 86–87 Cruz and Pereira call creepy a variety that is not endemic, vulnerable to pests and in need of heavy pesticide use.[3]: 87
Pachón, visiting a greenhouse near Tacueyó, found 200 plants of "white widow" and "skunk #11" under 15-watt bulbs. Pachón counted these among thirty cripi varieties grown in the country, with others such as "super star", "american golden", "purple #1" and "blueberry". The seed, Pachón wrote, was bred in laboratories in Europe, above all in the Netherlands and Spain. It reached Colombia hidden in cooking pots, toys and televisions; a packet of five seeds cost between 50,000 and 250,000 pesos, against 10,000 pesos for a pound of the seed of the native corintiana. A farmer with 5,000 plants of the native corinto type told Pachón that growing imported seed was a habit of white people.[4] El Colombiano called cripa or cripy a genetic cross with more THC than the native criolla plant.[15]
The Truth Commission's report on the north of Cauca calls creepy a variety created through genetic engineering, high in THC and harvested every three months.[12]: 194 In 2021 the director of the anti-narcotics police, General Herman Alejandro Bustamante, said that growing in the area had been made more technical through greenhouse-type covered crops. The networks trafficking creepy, the general said, had achieved a "mezcla de híbridos genéticos" (mixture of genetic hybrids) that gave faster harvests, more weight and higher THC.[13] A grower told Semana in 2018 that electric light let a plant reach 70 centimetres and bring the harvest in less than three months; the grower lit 1,500 plants with 30 bulbs.[1] A neuroscientist quoted by InSight Crime in 2019 put the THC content of creepy at 15 to 25 per cent, against single figures for ordinary marijuana.[16]
Speaking to InSight Crime in 2023, the former anti-narcotics police colonel Miguel Tunjano said that all marijuana leaving Colombia was sold as creepy "whether it truly is or not". Cruz said that no one could call marijuana creepy without testing its THC. The site reported that growers had begun to sell any marijuana under the name as demand for it rose.[11]
History
Before creepy, the marijuana of Cauca came from native types, among them those the police call cominera, corinto, mango biche and punto rojo.[3]: 86 A seed and supplies dealer interviewed in Toribío in 2018 said that marijuana first reached the vereda (rural district) of La Quebradiza, in Corinto, around 1980. Of creepy, the dealer said: "ahí también llegó la creepy" ("creepy arrived there too").[3]: 58 InSight Crime wrote in 2019 that the strains later known as creepy began arriving from Europe in the early 1980s; their cultivation, it wrote, took off only in the 2000s, with money from trafficking groups.[16]
In June 2011 InSight Crime called creepy a new strain, "reportedly bred from seeds native to the U.S. and Europe", whose kilo could fetch 100,000 pesos, ten times the usual price, citing El Tiempo.[2] In July 2013 the army reported destroying 3,000 cripi plants in six greenhouses in the vereda of Las Guacas, in Corinto.[14] In September it reported 900 more in two buildings in Santa Helena, in Corinto, and El Vergel, in Caloto.[17]
Cruz and Pereira trace most of the marijuana now supplying Colombian cities to crosses between Colombian varieties and seed that illegal businessmen distributed in Cauca in the early 2010s.[3]: 85 The CAPAZ brief links the expansion of growing in the north of Cauca in those years to creepy, which needed little land and sold for close to 400,000 pesos a pound.[5]: 3 The native varieties fell out of use because they needed more work, yielded less and suffered more from pests. One person interviewed in Toribío said that people sowed creepy because it paid well: "así fue como la gente perdió hasta las semillas" ("that was how people lost even the seeds"). In another interview quoted by Cruz and Pereira, punto rojo and patimorada were said to have died out when creepy and feminised seed arrived, because the native plants, described as hermaphrodite, could pollinate and spoil the crops grown from feminised seed.[3]: 85–86
In 2016 the police characterisation priced a kilogram of native marijuana at 50,000 to 200,000 pesos and a kilogram of creepy at 160,000 to 1,000,000 pesos, by quality; creepy could be harvested up to three times a year.[3]: 86–87 Semana, citing the Colombian Drug Observatory, reported that the price of a kilogram of cripy rose by 45 per cent in 2015, from 778,900 to 1,094,100 pesos.[1] By 2018, the Truth Commission states, creepy was the main variety grown in the north of Cauca.[12]: 194 In 2021 the anti-narcotics police put a kilogram of creepy at 300,000 pesos in Cauca, 700,000 in Quindío and 1,240,000 in Antioquia.[13] Indepaz reported in 2024 that a pound of the creepy type, the type mostly produced in the north of Cauca, could sell for up to 460,000 pesos in Bogotá, Cali or Medellín.[18]: 27
Where it is grown
Semana called cripy "la variedad de marihuana más potente y apetecida en el mundo" (the most potent and sought-after marijuana variety in the world) and placed it in the mountains between Corinto, Miranda and Toribío.[1] A survey by the anti-narcotics police, reported in 2021 under the headline "the largest centre of creepy marijuana growing", located 347 hectares of marijuana in Cauca, most of it in Toribío, Corinto, Caloto, Miranda and Jambaló.[13]
In January 2016 El Tiempo reported that the army had destroyed a field in Lejanías, in the Ariari, where creepy, punto rojo and the traditional plant grew side by side, the creepy under a kind of greenhouse holding 380 plants; the paper noted that the first two had been grown historically in Cauca.[6] In rural Ábrego, in the Provincia de Ocaña, the police found 500 kilograms of "marihuana tipo Cripy" ready for sale on a farm in January 2015.[8] The newspaper La Opinión reported that at least five tonnes of cripy had been seized there in the first three months of 2016.[19] In November 2017 the police seized 737 kilograms of "marihuana tipo Cripy" on the road from Ibagué to Rovira and said that it came from a rural part of Rovira.[7]
Outside Colombia
In Chile the Ministerio Público's drug-trafficking observatory learned of a marijuana that the police called "gourmet" from a survey it made of all the country's MT0 units. In a presentation of 2018, under the heading "Creepy", it described how it had judged the marijuana to be of foreign origin, probably brought from Colombia through Ecuador and Peru, or through Peru and Bolivia, and had published that finding at the end of the previous year.[9] In January 2018 Chilean customs reported 41 kilograms of "marihuana creepy" found in a vehicle at the Chacalluta border post, near Arica. Citing the observatory's report for 2017, customs called it "marihuana creepy o también llamada 'colombiana'" (creepy marijuana, also called "Colombian") and said it was grown mostly in the Valle del Cauca.[20] In 2021 the Colombian anti-narcotics police put a kilogram of creepy at 6,000 US dollars in Chile and named routes by container from the port of Buenaventura and overland through Ecuador.[13] Chile reported 2024 retail prices of 9.82 dollars a gram for "marihuana creepy" and 6.88 dollars a gram for cannabis herb; its typical wholesale price for creepy was about 4,140 dollars a kilogram.[10]
InSight Crime reported in 2019 that creepy from Colombia crossed into Venezuela and had been seized in Bolivia.[16] In 2023 it reported that the authorities of Costa Rica and Brazil had seized shipments they called creepy. It put a kilogram of creepy at 1,754 dollars in Costa Rica and upwards of 1,500 dollars in Ecuador, where it cost up to eight times as much as ordinary marijuana.[11]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "El 'triángulo de oro' del cannabis". Semana (in español). 20 October 2018. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Pachico, Elyssa (21 June 2011). "Potent Colombian Pot Could Be Big Earner for FARC". InSight Crime. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Cruz Olivera, Luis Felipe; Pereira Arana, Isabel (November 2021). Laberintos de prohibición y regulación: los grises de la marihuana en Colombia. Colección Dejusticia (in español). Bogotá: Editorial Dejusticia. ISBN 978-958-5597-98-3. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Pachón, Diana Maria. "Marihuana de Corinto: Cien por ciento campesina" (PDF) (in español). Indepaz. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Granados, Diana; Rojas, Axel; López, William; Moriones, Germán; Anzola, Sebastián (August 2024). Regular para la paz: recomendaciones para la regulación del cannabis de uso adulto en el norte del Cauca (PDF) (Report). Policy Brief 10-2024 (in español). Bogotá: Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ). ISSN 2711-0346. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "En Meta, cultivos de coca dan paso a la marihuana". El Tiempo (in español). 13 January 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Se logró la Incautación de media tonelada de marihuana en Ibagué" (Press release) (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 23 November 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "La Policía Nacional descubrió 2.5 hectáreas de matas de marihuana" (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 16 January 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Muñoz Bravo, J. (8 August 2018). La recolección de información en el ámbito de control de la oferta de drogas (Report) (in español). La Antigua: Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, Organization of American States.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2026). "World Drug Report 2026, Statistical Annex: 8.1 Prices and purities of drugs". Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Shuldiner, Henry; Rosado, Yago (13 February 2023). "All of Colombia's Marijuana Is 'Creepy,' Until It Isn't". InSight Crime. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (August 2022). Colombia adentro: relatos territoriales sobre el conflicto armado. Valle y norte del Cauca (PDF). Hay futuro si hay verdad: Informe Final, tomo 11, vol. 12 (in español). Bogotá: Comisión de la Verdad. ISBN 978-628-7590-38-0. Retrieved 20 October 2026 – via Biblioteca Hegoa.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Méndez, Alicia Liliana (15 March 2021). "La Policía ubicó el mayor centro de cultivo de marihuana 'creepy'". El Tiempo (in español). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Cayó otro invernadero en el norte del Cauca". Diario Occidente (in español). 5 July 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Las mafias detrás de la ruta de la cripa entre Cauca y Medellín". Revelaciones del bajo mundo (in español). El Colombiano. 23 November 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Robbins, Seth (9 August 2019). "A Green Gold Rush: Potent Marijuana Big Business For Colombia Traffickers". InSight Crime. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Golpe a cultivos ilícitos en Cauca". Diario Occidente (in español). 13 September 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Espitia Cueca, Carlos Eduardo; Majbub Avendaño, Salomón (March 2024). La economía de la marihuana en el enclave productivo del Norte del Cauca (PDF) (Report) (in español). Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (Indepaz). ISSN 1909-0900. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ábrego: en medio del cultivo y el consumo de marihuana cripy". La Opinión (in español). 26 March 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Servicio Nacional de Aduanas (3 January 2018). "Aduana intercepta 41 kilos de marihuana creepy" (Press release) (in español). Retrieved 21 October 2026.