Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea
Papua Niugini
Forest at Hambraure, East Sepik Province
Capital	Port Moresby
Continent	Oceania
Subregion	Melanesia
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	2021
Enforcement	Cultivation and possession up to 40 years' imprisonment or a fine of K1,000,000; police uproot plots
Documentation
Growing Regions	1
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	1
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Papua New Guinea is a country in Melanesia where cannabis is grown illegally, mostly in the highlands, for sale in rural and town markets.^: 227 It is the most commonly used illicit drug in the country. Its name in Tok Pisin is spak brus, "tobacco that makes you drunk". A strain called Niugini Gold is recognised by its red stem.^: 80

Accounts of cannabis's arrival differ, but they credit expatriates: "allegedly" Australians after the Second World War, or "probably" young expatriates in the mid to late 1960s. There was a prosecution for possession at Arawa on Bougainville in early 1970, and highlanders were using cannabis by the late 1970s.^: 80: 227 Cannabis is listed in the Schedule of the Dangerous Drugs Act. An amendment of 2021 raised the maximum penalty for cultivating or possessing it to 40 years' imprisonment, a fine of K1,000,000 or both. The Controlled Substance Act 2021 places cannabis in its Schedule I, among substances with "no medical value".

Geography

In Papua New Guinea cannabis is found as high as about 2,600 metres, though little of it is planted in the lowlands. The main growing belt lies at roughly 1,400 to 2,200 metres, in highland places with a dry season in parts of Eastern Highlands, Simbu, Western Highlands and Central provinces. The plant is commonest where the highlands are driest. Highland plants from seasonally dry sites are reputed to carry more of the active ingredient than coastal ones.^: 227 In 2001 cultivation was still primarily in the highlands.^{: para. 564} By 2025 cannabis was grown in the Highlands and the coastal regions, and Lae and Vanimo were major transit points for smuggling.^: 4

In 2001 Time called the cannabis grown in the ranges around Mount Wilhelm "some of the most potent marijuana on earth". Police operations from 2019 to 2026 uprooted or seized the plant in Sinasina-Yongomugl in Simbu, at Wapenamanda in Enga Province, near Siraka village on the edge of Port Moresby and at Gaima village near Balimo in Western Province.

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

Cannabis is not indigenous to Papua New Guinea and its use is not customary. Its use was at first confined to the expatriate community and is believed to have spread to Papua New Guineans during the 1970s and 1980s, reaching young people in the towns first and then others.^: 9 A high proportion of young men in the main producing locations probably grow or use the plant.^: 227

A special issue of the journal Oceania in 2006 brought together ethnographies of cannabis in three parts of the country. In the delta of the Purari in Gulf Province, where the plant is called kuku dipi, young men trade it down the river through networks of friends. It is consumed locally and, by rumour, traded for guns; Joshua Bell places the trade among the informal exchanges that grew up beside the province's logging and oil projects. In the Wau–Bulolo valley of Morobe Province, the anthropologist Jamon Halvaksz found young people distinguishing the drug by strength and colour and comparing it with plants their ancestors once used. Young men near the town of Wau imagined themselves as successful entrepreneurs in the drug trade. In the Murik Lakes at the mouth of the Sepik, David Lipset recorded young men arguing with middle-aged and senior men over the moral value of marijuana and the moral standing of their community.

Agriculture

Cannabis is an illegal cash crop. How much is grown and what it is worth have not been measured, but it is an income source for some people in rural areas.^: 394 It proved easy to grow and cultivation was widespread by the mid-1980s.^: 17 Time reported in 2001 that most villages in the highlands and some on the coast grew cannabis as a cash crop with no fixed season, needing little or no tending and ready to harvest within months. In the Kompri Valley near Henganofi in Eastern Highlands, a reporter for Time saw a plant 2.5 metres tall in a kitchen garden among cassava, pumpkins and beans, with others standing alone or in pairs on the hillside behind it. Large plantings were uncommon, being easier to detect and harder to protect.

Cannabis in Papua New Guinea

History

Main article: History of cannabis in Papua New Guinea

In the late 17th century Georgius Rumphius, writing on Ambon, found cannabis here and there in gardens in the eastern islands, raised from Javanese seed; seed from the Ambon plants would not propagate beyond two generations. He described a third kind, Ginji Papoua, with a short stem and small narrow leaves in bundles, brought to Ambon from the Papuan and Sula Islands. He wrote that it took its name mostly from its curled foliage, which he likened to the hair of Papuans.^{: 209, 211} Hasskarl made this form the type of a variety, crispata, in 1866; Merrill and Robinson judged it "apparently merely a variant of the common hemp". The Papuan Islands of the period were the Raja Ampat Islands off the western tip of New Guinea; a distinction between Papua, meaning that group, and the mainland of New Guinea is recorded from 1602.^: 33

Under Australian administration the Territory of Papua and New Guinea had a Dangerous Drugs Act of 1952 (No. 21 of 1953). It was amended in 1960, 1962, 1968, 1970 and 1973. Australia ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 1 December 1967 and on the same day notified its application to Papua and the Trust Territory of New Guinea, among its other territories.

David McDonald of the Australian National University wrote in 2004 that it is not known when cannabis was introduced to Papua New Guinea. From his own experience he placed it there before the 1970s: by the late 1960s smoking it was common among young expatriates, some of whom grew it for their own use. He quotes a report of 1991 by W. Iamo for the National Research Institute. Iamo concluded that the evidence suggested cannabis reached upper Simbu only in the mid to late 1970s and judged that, though it had probably been grown elsewhere in the country earlier, it was unlikely to have been in the country for more than 50 years. A review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2006 says that it was "allegedly introduced to the area by Australians after the Second World War" and reached some of the present cultivation areas only in the 1970s; its source for this is an unpublished paper by Benjamin Thomas.^{: 80, 146} A report of 2012 for the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, also citing Thomas, says that cannabis was reportedly first introduced after the war.^: 9 The volume edited by R. Michael Bourke and Tracy Harwood says that young expatriates "probably" introduced it in the mid to late 1960s. In early 1970 police at Arawa on Bougainville prosecuted an expatriate for possession; the prosecution failed because the police could not recognise the product. One of the book's contributors was then asked to grow cannabis in a greenhouse at the Lowlands Agricultural Experiment Station at Keravat from 1970 to 1972 so that police officers could learn to recognise the crop.^: 227

By the late 1970s highlanders were using it; its smoke could be smelt in some public places in Kainantu. By the early 1980s it was readily available in Port Moresby and other lowland towns. By the early 1990s expatriate field workers in Eastern Highlands and Simbu were regularly offered it in rural areas, sightings of plants in village gardens were reported more often and social workers spoke of the harm heavy use did to young men in some highland places.^: 227 A police superintendent at Wewak told Time in 2001 that in his area cannabis had become a problem only in the previous four or five years, before home-brewed alcohol. By 2007 cannabis cigarettes were sold openly or barely hidden in the markets of Goroka, Kundiawa and Mount Hagen.^: 227

Papua New Guinea notified its succession to the Single Convention on 28 October 1980, with a reservation on referring disputes to the International Court of Justice. It has been a party to the Convention as amended by the 1972 Protocol from the same day and acceded to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 20 November 1981; Australia had excluded its non-metropolitan territories from that convention. The National Narcotics Control Board Act 1992 set up a policy board and the National Narcotics Bureau. After a mission in January 2003, following an earlier one in 1995, the International Narcotics Control Board found that a revision of the drug laws had been pending for over a decade and that the national board was not functioning as the law provided. It urged the government to accede to the 1988 Convention.^{: paras. 589–590}

Cultivation

Niugini Gold is commonly cultivated.^: 18 It has red stems, compact golden-yellow flower heads up to 15 centimetres long and a pungent smell.^: 18 The United Nations review of 2006 calls it "a distinct cultivar characterized by its red stem" and spells the name nuigini gold.^: 80 Some users in Australia called cannabis from Papua New Guinea "New Guinea Gold".^: 227 The grower in the Kompri Valley showed Time flowering tips of up to 15 centimetres and said the plant grew very easily; the police commander of Western Highlands, Superintendent Allan Kundi, said that it grew everywhere, "it grows wild". By 2005 Niugini Gold was no longer sold in the main Australian markets; Philip Alpers of the Small Arms Survey called it "PNG's fabled cannabis of the 1970s".^: 27

Preparations and consumption

Cannabis is usually smoked as a cigarette. Both the flowering buds and the leaves are smoked, the buds holding more tetrahydrocannabinol.^: 227 A "roll" is a homemade cigarette weighing less than a gram. Mari-brew is home-brewed alcohol made with cannabis leaves, alcohol and yeast.^: 17

The United Nations put annual use at 30 per cent of people aged 15 to 64 in 1995, the latest survey available in 2006, among the highest levels in the world. The International Narcotics Control Board reported that Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia had the highest prevalence of cannabis use in Oceania,^{: para. 635} each above 29 per cent.^{: para. 718} Bourke and Harwood, citing a figure of 29.5 per cent from the World Drug Report of 2007, judge it unlikely to be accurate but an indication of relatively high use.^: 227 McDonald wrote in 2004 that the published prevalence studies were limited in scope and that the most-cited one was of questionable accuracy. A rapid assessment that McDonald carried out in 1998 and 1999 with the National Narcotics Bureau found the main substance problems to be alcohol (licit and home-brewed) and high-potency cannabis.

Trade and commerce

Significant quantities are sold, particularly in the larger towns. The returns for some middlemen are large.^: 394 In the early 1990s cannabis was offered in rural parts of the highlands at K5 to K7 for a cigarette pouch of 30 to 50 grams; in 2007 the price in highland markets was 50 toea a cigarette or K15 for a one-kilogram rice bag holding perhaps 300 to 500 grams.^: 394 Production remains largely domestic; loose local networks carry the trade, sometimes in exchange for firearms.^: 4

The International Narcotics Control Board reported in 2001 that cannabis from the highlands was smuggled into other countries, mainly Australia, often in exchange for small arms.^{: para. 564} In 2006 it noted reports of drugs bartered for arms in the coastal cities of Lae, Madang, Wewak and Port Moresby.^{: para. 632} In 1995 Niugini Gold bought for $250 a pound was resold for up to $2,250 in Cairns, an Australian federal prosecutor found; members of a Sydney syndicate were caught in April 1995 flying 55 kilograms from Mount Hagen to Bamaga in north Queensland.

Alpers traced the "guns for drugs" story across the Torres Strait to local newspaper reports of the early 1990s "based almost entirely on conjecture". The Australia–Papua New Guinea cross-border crime conferences noted a continuing low level of weapons smuggled into Papua New Guinea from Australia, generally in exchange for cannabis; the conference of 2003 heard that the old story was "almost history". Alpers concluded that rumours of a large-scale trade between the two countries lacked basis in fact.^{: 27, 59, 61–62} Bourke and Harwood judge the international trade, including the guns-for-drugs trade, probably overstated.^: 394 Australian Customs intercepted 30 kilograms of cannabis shipped from Papua New Guinea in 1998–99 and less than one kilogram in 2003–04. In 2005–06 Australian customs seized more than 47 kilograms of cannabis, most of it from Papua New Guinea, against less than five kilograms in 2004–05.^{: para. 715}

Legal status

The Dangerous Drugs Act (Chapter 228) lists "Cannabis and Cannabis resin, and extracts and tinctures of Cannabis" in its Schedule of dangerous drugs. Under section 3 a person who cultivates a plant from which a dangerous drug can be made or who possesses or conveys such a plant or part of one, commits an offence unless authorised under the Act. The penalty was three months' to two years' imprisonment. The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 2021, made by Parliament on 25 November 2021, replaced section 3 and raised the penalty to a fine of up to K1,000,000, imprisonment for up to 40 years or both. It came into operation on its certification by the Speaker on 13 January 2022.

The Controlled Substance Act 2021 was passed on 2 December 2021 by an absolute majority, with 71 members of Parliament voting for it, and certified on 7 February 2022. It comes into operation on a date set by notice in the National Gazette. It defines "cannabis" as any part of a plant of the genus Cannabis except cannabis resin and cannabis fibre. It lists cannabis, cannabis resin, cannabis oil and Cannabis sativa plants in Schedule I, whose substances "have no medical value and have a high dependency and are strictly prohibited". A controlled plant in Schedule I may not be cultivated. Its penalty schedule sets, for fewer than five plants, up to two years' imprisonment or a fine of K15,000; for more than five, up to 15 years or K25,000; for more than 20, from 16 years to life or a fine of K26,000 to K2,000,000.

In June 2021 the National Research Institute signed an agreement with the Department of Justice and Attorney-General, through the National Narcotics Bureau, to research the effects of cannabis use. The Attorney-General, Eric Kwa, said that some leaders had raised the question of whether hemp could be grown and made into products commercially.

Enforcement

In March 2019 police and soldiers of the Defence Force uprooted 193 plants at Wapenamanda; Enga's provincial police commander said that marijuana contributed to tribal fighting in the province. In April 2019 the Simbu police drug squad, the "Operation Weedim Grass Team", uprooted 132 mature plants at a village in Sinasina-Yongomugl. Police chasing a stolen vehicle in September 2019 uprooted close to a thousand plants near Siraka village. In October 2026 a dawn raid at Gaima village near Balimo seized 500 kilograms and led to the arrest of five suspects and their spouses.

In August 2026 the Tari District Court in Hela Province fined a man K30,000, with 20 years' imprisonment if he did not pay, after police and soldiers at the Magarima checkpoint intercepted about 4.7 kilograms, in 60 rolls.

In 2001 the Eastern Highlands village of Numuzafove made a dozen young men whom the elders thought were smoking too much live together for a month in a hut at the centre of the village. In January 2008, 100 people formerly involved in growing, selling and using cannabis in Simbu gave public testimony and promised to help the police keep others out of the trade.^{: para. 748} A village in West New Britain Province set out in 2013 to end marijuana use among its young people.

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki:

Region
New Guinea Highlands

Growing Areas

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

Accessions

List

Accession ID	Name	Collected	Area
VIB-PNG-UNK-0100000001	Papua New Guinea General Population

Conservation status

One herbarium sheet of cannabis from Papua New Guinea is indexed in GBIF: a specimen gathered by J. R. Croft on 14 February 1978 at Boundary and Huon Roads in Lae (Morobe Province) and held by the Queensland Herbarium (BRI AQ0328048). An earlier sheet in the National Herbarium at Lae was collected by R. B. Dodd on 23 October 1973 on the Moem Barracks road in East Sepik Province, of a plant 12 inches high with a thin stem (LAE 206417). Cannabis sativa is on the Census of Vascular Plants of Papua New Guinea, a draft list drawn mainly from the PNGplants database.

Recent news

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See also

• Australia
• Fiji
• Indonesia
• Landrace Cannabis
• New Caledonia