Portal:Americas

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Introduction

The Museo Comunitario Cáñamo Aconcagua, a community hemp museum at San Felipe, Chile, June 2026.

This portal covers the ten countries filed here under the Americas: Canada and the United States in North America; Honduras, Mexico and Panama in Central America; Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean; and Brazil, Chile and Colombia in South America.

The plant first came with Europeans, for its fibre. The Spanish grew it under the name cáñamo in Mexico from the 16th century, and in the 17th century hemp from the valleys of Quillota and La Ligua in Chile was made into rigging for the ships of the Pacific. Hemp was sown in New France from the 1660s, and it was a major fibre crop of the colonies that became the United States.

The drug plant arrived by other routes. In Jamaica its name, ganja, came in the 19th century with indentured labourers from India. In Brazil, where the plant is called maconha and, in some regions, diamba, most 20th-century scholars held that enslaved Africans brought it across the Atlantic; the geographer Chris S. Duvall has questioned the evidence for that account.

The accessions documented here are still few. They include seed lines from Quindío in Colombia and from Jamaica, and herbarium sheets gathered from Canada to Chile.

30 accessions · 11 news items · 5 growing regions · 8 growing areas

Countries

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1 accession · 1 news item

Brazil

1 accession · 1 news item

Canada

3 accessions · 0 news items

Chile

9 accessions · 1 news item

Colombia

1 accession · 0 news items

Honduras

6 accessions · 1 news item

Jamaica

2 accessions · 2 news items

Mexico

3 accessions · 0 news items

Panama

0 accessions · 1 news item

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

4 accessions · 4 news items

United States

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United States is a country in North America where Cannabis sativa was a major fibre crop in the colonies and grew in Kentucky into the 20th century. The plant is introduced and native to Asia. Escapes from former cultivation have established populations that do best in the prairies and plains. Federal law has listed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act since 1970. On 28 April 2026 marijuana in a product approved by the Food and Drug Administration, or "subject to a state medical marijuana license", was moved to Schedule III; all other marijuana stayed in Schedule I. As at 27 June 2025, 24 states, three territories and the District of Columbia had enacted measures to regulate and allow cannabis use for non-medical purposes.

In Hawaii the plant is called paka lōlō, literally "numbing tobacco". A seed line from the islands, Pakalolo General Population, was listed by the Vibes Collective as a landrace of "unknown but pacific influences" with a flowering time of 12 to 15 weeks. read more →

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From the articles

...that the Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle wrote in 1646 that Chile supplied all the ships of the South Sea with cordage and the armies of Peru with cord for their firearms, because the hemp they were made from grew in no other land?
...that committees of officials in the Panama Canal Zone reported in 1925 and 1932 that marihuana grown there was not habit-forming in the way opium and cocaine were, and advised against legislation?
...that Rio de Janeiro's city council, in Brazil, forbade the sale and use of the pito do pango in 1830?
...that in Hawaii, in the United States, cannabis is called paka lōlō, literally "numbing tobacco"?
...that a cannabis plant gathered at the Falls of Niagara in September 1858 became number 84 of Lawson's Canadian Plants, and that one sheet of it, Lawson 84 (1858), is at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh?
...that Mexico prohibited the growing and sale of marihuana throughout the country by a sanitary decree published in 1920?

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The Blue Mountains of eastern Jamaica.

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Growing regions: Cordillera Central (Colombia) · Midwestern United States · Northern Colombia · Polígono da Maconha · Sierra Madre Occidental
Growing areas: Ariari · Lower Missouri Valley · Northern Cauca · Provincia de Ocaña · Quindío · Serranía del Perijá · Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta · Tolima

Sources

All sources

A Hashish-House in New York (Kane 1883) · Bulletin on Narcotics · Ganja in Jamaica (1975) · Pharmakologisch-medicinische Studien über den Hanf (1856)

Regional portals

Latest news

1 Oct 2026Policy

Medicinal Cannabis Authority announces a consultation for traditional cultivators at the Methodist Church Hall in Kingstown on 8 October

The St Vincent Times reported on 1 October 2026 that the Medicinal Cannabis Authority (MCA) would host a consultation for traditional cultivators on Thursday 8 October from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Methodist Church Hall in Kingstown. The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Transformation, Israel Bruce, was expected to attend. The report says the meeting follows a series of nationwide meetings with traditional cultivators and would discuss the Strategic Integration Plan and a proposed framework for bringing traditional cultivators into the legal medicinal cannabis value chain.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Kingstown

Source

10 Sep 2026Policy

Supreme Court rules that authorised users may prepare cannabis food for personal consumption

Mexico News Daily reported that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation ruled by seven votes to two on 10 September 2026 that a person already holding a personal recreational use authorisation issued by the federal health risk regulator may prepare food containing tetrahydrocannabinol for their own exclusive consumption. The reasoning reported is that incorporating cannabis into food for personal use amounts to ordinary cooking rather than the manufacture of a regulated health product. The ruling directs the regulator to issue corrected authorisations, after it had granted a self consumption permit while expressly barring food preparation. The outlet reported that the ruling does not permit sale, distribution or supply to any third party, and does not extend to cannabis in medicines, cosmetics, vaping products or supplements, and it described the practical effect as limited.

Mexico

Source

3 Sep 2026Trafficking

CBSA seizes 44 kg of hashish and 13 kg of cocaine from luggage bound for Sri Lanka at Toronto Pearson

CTV News Toronto reported on 24 September 2026 that the Canada Border Services Agency had seized 44 kilograms of hashish and 13 kilograms of cocaine from suitcases at Toronto Pearson International Airport. A CBSA spokesperson told CTV that the seizure took place on 3 September, and a CBSA post reproduced in the article says the drugs were in a traveller's luggage destined for Sri Lanka. One person was arrested and handed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and no details of charges or of the suspect were available. The report does not say where the hashish came from.

Canada · Ontario · Toronto Pearson International Airport

Source

6 May 2026Policy

Brazil's Superior Court of Justice rules that a writ of injunction cannot authorise home cannabis cultivation

The Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) reported that its Corte Especial, with Minister Og Fernandes reporting the case, unanimously held in case MI 379 that a mandado de injunção (writ of injunction) cannot be used to obtain authorisation for an individual to import and cultivate cannabis at home for medicinal purposes. The writ had been filed against the Ministry of Health and the health regulator Anvisa. The STJ reported that the court found no absolute regulatory omission, since partial rules already cover industrialised cannabis products, exceptional importation by individuals and authorisations for legal entities, and that creating a home cultivation regime by court order would take over a regulatory function belonging to the legislative and executive branches. It also reported that the court judged preventive habeas corpus, which the Third Section (Terceira Seção) already handles, the more suitable route, denied the order and declared moot the internal appeal against the refusal of an interim injunction.

Brazil

Source

16 Apr 2026Policy

Cannabis Licensing Authority launches fee-free special permit programmes for traditional ganja growers in Kingston

The Jamaica Information Service reported that the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) launched its Medical Cannabis Special Permit Programmes at the AC Hotel by Marriott Kingston on Thursday 16 April 2026, under the Dangerous Drugs (Cannabis Licensing) (Interim) (Amendment) Regulations, 2025. CLA chief executive Farrah Blake said the Special Community Permit allows traditional and small-scale farmers to enter the industry together as a community or group. She said the Cultivator's Transitional Special Permit gives small-scale farmers two years to reach at least Tier One cultivator status. She said no fee is charged for either permit. Minister of State Delano Seiveright spoke at the launch.

Jamaica

Source

1 Aug 1990Eradication

DEA, Hawaii's land department and the National Guard spray and cut marijuana in Operation Wipeout

The United States Department of Justice reported that in 1990 the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the National Guard ran a special enforcement operation called Operation Wipeout against growers of high-grade cannabis throughout Hawaii. Using herbicidal spraying and manual eradication, the operation destroyed more than 700,000 marijuana plants, which the department estimated at three-quarters of the state's summer crop. William W. Mendel of the Army's Foreign Military Studies Office wrote in 1992 that the operation ran from August to October 1990 and that the DEA's experimental spot-spraying from helicopters used glyphosate.

United States · Hawaii

SourceHerbicide spraying in the United States