Portal:Europe

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Introduction

Lake Dus-Khol in Tuva, southern Siberia, Russia.

This portal covers the four countries filed here under Europe: Denmark and Sweden in Northern Europe, Greece in Southern Europe, and Russia, which spans Eastern Europe and northern Asia.

Hemp is an old crop across the continent. In Denmark it was retted for its fibre in pits and wells from the Iron Age, and in Sweden from the first centuries AD. In the middle of the 18th century hemp fibre was Russia's most important export after grain, and in 1928 the country had 966,000 hectares under hemp, more than any other. Cannabis also grows wild in Russia: a United Nations country profile of 2003 put the largest stands in southern Siberia, the Far East and the North Caucasus.

Hashish appears later, in the south. Greece produced it for local use and for export by the last decades of the 19th century, and was still a significant exporter of hashish to Turkey and Egypt in the 1920s. At Geneva in 1925 it supported Egypt's motion to bring cannabis under the opium convention.

Most of the accessions documented here are herbarium sheets from Russia, many of them gathered in Siberia, and landrace seed lines from Greece: from Arcadia and Messenia in the Peloponnese and from Rethymno on Crete.

34 accessions · 7 news items · 2 growing regions · 5 growing areas

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1 accession · 0 news items

Denmark

0 accessions · 4 news items

France

8 accessions · 1 news item

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Italy

23 accessions · 2 news items

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Sweden

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France is a country in Western Europe. It grew hemp on a large scale for its navy, its rope-works and its cloth: the crop covered about 176,000 hectares in 1840, fell to 26,000 hectares by 1900 and to 632 hectares in 1960, by which time it survived mainly in the Sarthe and the Loire valley. Breeding of monoecious fibre varieties and new uses brought the crop back. In 2024 France grew 22,600 hectares, more than half the hemp area of Europe.

The first French measure against the drug was an order of General Menou, issued in occupied Egypt on 9 October 1800, which forbade drinking hashish and smoking hemp seed. In Paris in the 1840s the physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau studied hashish and gave it to the writer Théophile Gautier, whose account of an evening at the Hôtel Pimodan appeared in 1846. A law of 1916 brought hashish under the rules on narcotics; the law of 31 December 1970 made the use of drugs an offence. Use remains a criminal offence, which can be settled by a fixed fine of 500 euros since August 2026. read more →

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From the articles

...that the oldest accession documented here, Münchenberg 361, was pressed in a bound herbarium book from fields on Gotland, Sweden, in 1702?
...that hemp may again be grown in Sweden since 15 March 2003, but only of an approved variety and with an application for farm support, and that growing hemp without one is the production of narcotics in law?
...that from the mid-1970s an open cannabis market stood in Pusher Street in the Free Town of Christiania, Denmark, which the government called Northern Europe's largest, until the organised hash trade there closed on 6 April 2024?
...that in Greece the rebellious youths called manges gathered in the tekedes, cafés of the Piraeus harbour and central Athens frequented by hashish smokers?
...that each year Russian police and other agencies search out and destroy wild cannabis in Russia in an inter-agency operation called Mak, "poppy"?

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Stuor Dáhtá lake on the Kungsleden trail near Kvikkjokk, Sweden.

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Growing regions: Amur basin · Transbaikal
Growing areas: Argolis · Central Tuvan Basin · Mantineia · Messenia · Mylopotamos

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14 Oct 2026Policy

Saint-Denis appeal court raises the sentences of three of four men in a zamal trafficking case between Réunion and Mauritius

Le Quotidien de La Réunion reported that on 14 October 2026 the appeal court of Saint-Denis raised the sentences of three of four men prosecuted for trafficking zamal from Réunion to Mauritius between July 2023 and April 2025. The prosecution had appealed against first-instance sentences of four to five years. Le Quotidien gave seven years each to the former chief of staff of the Sainte-Suzanne mayor and a second defendant, five years to a third and four years, unchanged, to the fourth. Zinfos974 gave the former chief of staff six years. Zinfos974 said all four remain in detention.

France · Réunion · Saint-Denis

Source

5.10.2026-korinthia-entopismos-fyteias-posothta-kannavhs-3-e1791197551301.webp

4 Oct 2026Eradication

Police uproot 330 cannabis plants at a forest plantation in Erymanthos municipality, Achaea

A Hellenic Police release, reproduced by the regional news site Aigiovoice, said that officers of the Corinth Subdirectorate for the Prosecution and Investigation of Crimes, assisted by the Corinthia Crime Prevention and Suppression Team (OPKE), searched an inaccessible forest area of Erymanthos municipality on the morning of 4 October 2026. The officers found a cleared plantation of 330 cannabis plants up to about 2.10 m tall, which were uprooted and seized. They also seized cut branches and plant parts spread out to dry, weighing about 50 kg, and irrigation equipment. The release said the search for the people who cultivated the plantation continues.

Greece · West Greece · Achaea · Erymanthos

Source

10 Sep 2026Trafficking

Customs seize 140 kg of Thai cannabis from air freight in transit at Roland Garros Airport

The French customs administration reported that officers of the Saint-Denis Aeroport customs office selected a commercial air freight consignment in transit at Roland Garros Airport, Reunion, on 10 September 2026 and X-rayed two pallets made up of 40 cartons. Behind a cover load of everyday consumer goods they found 258 vacuum-sealed pouches of herbal cannabis wrapped in black bubble wrap, weighing 140 kilograms in total. According to the communique of 15 September 2026 the consignment had been dispatched from Bangkok, Thailand, on a Bangkok to Reunion to Amsterdam routing and was bound for continental Europe, and customs described the interception as the first seizure of Thai herbal cannabis made in Reunion in air freight transiting to Europe. The communique places the seizure within a week in which Reunion customs seized more than 200 kilograms of narcotics in three separate operations, and records no arrest in connection with the freight consignment.

France · Réunion · Roland Garros Airport

Source

26 Jul 2026Trafficking

Gendarmes seize about 156 kg of zamal bound for Mauritius at Bras-Panon

Zinfos974 reported that gendarmes arrested two men at the mouth of the Rivière du Mât in Bras-Panon, La Réunion, on the afternoon of 26 July 2026, and seized about ten bags of zamal that investigators said were to be loaded onto a boat bound for Mauritius. A gendarmerie helicopter spotted a vessel that fled. Free Dom later reported that the bags held 156 kg of herbal cannabis, and listed the Bras-Panon brigade, the Saint-Benoît research brigade, the gendarmerie air section, a dog unit, the Le Port nautical brigade and the departmental flow-control squadron among the units involved. The two men were brought before the public prosecutor and a judicial investigation was opened. Mauritian media, which have followed the related Mauritian investigation, give the quantity as 155.7 kg.

France · Réunion · Bras-Panon

Source

20 Jul 2026Eradication

Primorsky Krai police use drone-sprayed herbicide on wild cannabis in the first stage of Operation Mak-2026

PrimaMedia reported on 20 July 2026, citing the Interior Ministry directorate for Primorsky Krai, that the first stage of the inter-agency Operation Mak-2026 had ended in the region. Police said they had destroyed 35 stands of wild cannabis covering more than 18 hectares, and that in a number of districts herbicides sprayed from drones were used against the thickets. The largest stands, five covering 13 hectares, were in Khankaysky District; others were destroyed in the Khorolsky, Oktyabrsky, Pogranichny and Mikhaylovsky districts and in the Spassky urban district. Over the whole stage police reported destroying more than 28,000 cannabis and opium poppy plants and seizing more than 11 kilograms of plant-based drugs.

Russia · Primorsky Krai

Source

11 Jul 2026Trafficking

Irish pair jailed after arriving on Réunion from Bangkok with 38 kg of cannabis in their suitcases

Customs officials at Roland Garros Airport on Réunion arrested an Irish man aged 48 and an Irish woman aged 27 on 11 July 2026 after finding a 19 kg package of cannabis in each of their suitcases on arrival from Bangkok, 38 kg in total with an estimated value of €760,000. Cork Beo reported that the suitcases contained no clothes, that the pair had been promised €50,000 each and that the man said he had been recruited in Dublin before asking the woman, a friend of his son, to take part. Both admitted guilt before the court in Saint-Denis within days of the arrest. Each received a two-year prison sentence with a lifetime ban on returning to Réunion. The outlet counted almost 30 large cannabis seizures at the island's main airport this year and described Réunion as a smuggling route from Thailand towards Africa. Reported by Cork Beo on 23 July 2026, citing local reports.

France · Réunion · Roland Garros Airport

Source