Greece
More actions
| Greece | |
|---|---|
| Ελλάδα (Elláda) | |
| |
| Triopetra beach, Crete | |
| Capital | Athens |
| Continent | Europe |
| Subregion | Southern Europe |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Legal Status | Illegal (medical use licensed) |
| Status Since | 2018 |
| Enforcement | Criminal outside licensed medical cultivation |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 0 |
| Growing Areas | 0 |
| Accessions | 6 |
Greece is a country in Southern Europe on the eastern Mediterranean. For several decades around the turn of the twentieth century it was one of the region's significant hashish producers. Cultivation, importation and use were banned in 1890, yet the country remained a substantial exporter of hashish to Turkey and Egypt well into the 1920s.[1]
The ban was aimed at a visible urban culture. Hashish was treated as an imminent threat to society, particularly among the urban poor and the rebellious young men known as manges, who gathered in the tekedes, the cafés frequented by hashish smokers in the harbour district of Piraeus and in central Athens.[1]
That experience gave Greece a voice in the making of international cannabis control. When the Egyptian delegate Mohamed El Guindy moved at Geneva in 1925 to bring cannabis within the scope of the opium convention, Greece supported him, alongside Turkey, South Africa and Brazil, as one of the countries that had already banned the drug. Most states at the conference had little experience of cannabis and deferred to those that did, Egypt, Turkey and Greece among them.[1]
The standing scholarly treatment of Greek hashish use is the chapter by Costas Stefanis, C. Ballas and D. Madianou in Cannabis and Culture, the same 1975 volume that carries the region-defining chapters on Southeast Asia and southern Africa.[2]
The wiki documents three Greek landrace accessions, from Arcadia and Messenia in the Peloponnese and from Rethymno on Crete.
Geography
Greece is a mountainous, heavily indented country of peninsulas and islands on the eastern Mediterranean.[citation needed] Its three documented landraces come from the southern end of it. Two are Peloponnesian: one from Mantineia in Arcadia, in the mountains of the interior, the other from the country around Kalamata in Messenia, both at about 37° N.[3][4]
The third is Cretan, from the mountains of Rethymno at about 35° N. The Real Seed Company describes that line as adapted to conditions at 400 to 500 metres, where summer days reach 40 to 45 °C and the wind is strong.[5]
Demographics
Agriculture
Cannabis in Greece
History
Cultivation, importation and use of cannabis were banned in Greece in 1890, a response to high prevalence of the kind that also produced strong legal measures in Egypt and Turkey.[1] The ban did not end the trade. Hashish went on being widely used. The country remained a significant exporter to Turkey and to Egypt into the 1920s.[1]
Greek supply and Egyptian prohibition were bound together. Egypt had forbidden the cultivation, use and importation of cannabis from 1868 and through a series of later decrees, which had little effect in part because hashish was cheap and could be grown easily or smuggled in from Greece.[1] The Egyptian ban reshaped the whole eastern Mediterranean, drawing in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.[1]
The Real Seed Company places its Arcadian line within that export trade, describing the region as a producer of high-quality sieved hashish when Greece was the main supplier to the eastern Mediterranean markets, with a smuggling route from Greek ports to Cairo and Alexandria running from the 1860s to the 1920s. That account is the seed company's and is given as such.[3]
Cultivation
The Greek drug crop was processed by sieving rather than smoked as herbal material, which is the method of the eastern Mediterranean and North African hashish trade generally.[3] The Real Seed Company suggests its Arcadian accession may represent kannàvi, the drug-type cannabis it says was grown on a large scale around Mantineia for more than sixty years.[3]
The Messenian line has a documented end. According to the company, a farming family grew it in their village for more than thirty years until enforcement pressure ended cultivation there. The village is now abandoned. The line had been a well-known underground brand in the 1970s and 1980s. The same account treats the origin of the line as unverified and names the wider Balkans and eastern Mediterranean as its likely source, allowing that influence from tropical landraces introduced to Greece in the 1970s is possible.[4]
Preparations and consumption
The preparation the nineteenth-century sources describe is sieved hashish, smoked socially in the tekedes.[1][3]
Trade and commerce
Greece's place in the regional hashish trade was as a producer and exporter rather than a transit country, supplying Turkey and Egypt, which was among the largest consumer markets of the period, into the 1920s.[1]
Legal status
Recreational cannabis is prohibited and medical cannabis is licensed. The narcotics code is Law 4139/2013, under which cannabis varieties containing up to 0.2 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol are not classified as narcotic drugs.[6][verification needed]
Law 4523/2018 introduced the exception that permits the production of Cannabis sativa above that threshold, exclusively for medicinal products, so first allowing medical cannabis cultivation in the country. Two instruments of the same year set the terms: a joint ministerial decision on the cultivation and processing of medicinal cannabis, plus a decision of the Minister of Health on the production and circulation of the finished products.[6][verification needed]
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
| Accession ID | Name | Priority | Collected | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEL-GRC-ARC-0120050001 | Arcadian General Population 2005 | |||
| RSC-GRC-ARC-0120050001 | 2005 RSC Arcadian IBL | Low | ||
| DEL-GRC-MES-0120040001 | Kalamata Red General Population 2004 | |||
| RSC-GRC-MES-0120040001 | 2004 RSC Kalamata Red IBL | Critical | ||
| DEL-GRC-RET-0119900001 | Cretan General Population 1990 | |||
| RSC-GRC-RET-0119900001 | 1990 RSC Cretan IBL | High |
Conservation status
The one account the wiki holds of a Greek landrace population ending is the Messenian case: cultivation in the village that grew the line stopped under enforcement pressure and the village was abandoned, so the accession records a population no longer in the ground where it was collected.[4] The same source treats hybridisation as an open question for Greek material, allowing that tropical landraces brought into the country in the 1970s may have influenced it.[4]
Both statements are the seed company's and neither has been tested against an independent study. No survey, genetic characterisation or chemotype work on Greek landrace cannabis was found.
Recent news
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 "The history of cannabis in the international drug control system". The Rise and Decline of Cannabis Prohibition: The history of cannabis in the UN drug control system and options for reform (PDF) (Report). Transnational Institute. 2014.
- ↑ Stefanis, C.; Ballas, C.; Madianou, D. (1975). "Sociocultural and Epidemiological Aspects of Hashish Use in Greece". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 303–326. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.303.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Arcadian". The Real Seed Company. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Kalamata Red". The Real Seed Company. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
- ↑ "Cretan". The Real Seed Company. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "The legal framework on the cultivation of medical cannabis in Greece". VDI Law Firm. 29 January 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2026.