Talas
More actions
| Talas | |
|---|---|
| Talass | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Tian Shan (growing region) |
| Geography | |
| Country | Kyrgyzstan |
| Province/State | Talas Region |
| Coordinates | 42.43, 72.13 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 11,400 km² |
| Terrain | The valley of the Talas river with its foothills and side valleys; approximately Talas Region |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Talas is a cannabis growing area in Kyrgyzstan, in Talas Region in the north-west of the country. Cannabis grows wild there, and people also grow it on their own plots. The surveys of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 1998 and 1999 counted 93.9 hectares of wild growth and cultivation in Talas, the third largest figure of the five Kyrgyz provinces they list, after Issyk-Kul and Jalal-Abad.[1] The area belongs to the Tian Shan growing region.
Geography
Alexander Zelichenko, in his account of the mapping of illicit drug crops that the UNODC funded in the late 1990s, lists two districts of Talas Region among those with the largest wild stands in Kyrgyzstan: Manas, with 58.2 hectares, and Bakai-Ata, with 35.7. The project's tests found more than 2 per cent THC in plants from 89 per cent of the cannabis area it sampled, and these stands lay mostly in four provinces, with two districts in Talas. The drug police of the interior ministry chose to put their effort into the places where this stronger cannabis grew and where gatherers came most often.[2]
The stands mowed in Bakai-Ata district in 2024 grew in the foothills and along roads, irrigation ditches and rivers.[3]
A herbarium sheet, Il'in 288 (1930), was gathered on 25 July 1930 in floodplain forest in a river valley near Dimitrievka, the present town of Talas.[4]
Harvest and cultivation
Martha Brill Olcott and Natalia Udalova, writing in 2000, dated the cannabis season in Issyk-Kul and Talas provinces from 15 May to 15 June.[5] The Kyrgyz national report summarised by the European Union's drugs agency in 2014 names Talas among five provinces where some 10,000 hectares are overgrown with wild hemp, which local people make into marijuana and hashish.[6]
Gulzat Botoeva, a sociologist who studied hashish making in Issyk-Kul, cites newspaper reports that people in Talas, Jalal-Abad and Naryn provinces had begun to grow cannabis on their own plots, besides gathering it wild.[7]: 70 Zelichenko told her in 2014 that hashish in Talas and Jalal-Abad is not made from wild plants. There, she writes, the plants are cultivated and guarded, and the police are kept off the plots.[7]: 247–248
Eradication
The police and the local authorities mow and burn the stands in summer raids. On 15 July 2020 border guards of the Talas detachment and the drug police of the province destroyed more than 1,800 kilograms of wild cannabis near the state border, not far from the "Kyrgyzstan" rural administration.[8] In the Kara-Kuurai raid of July 2024 the interior ministry reported 2.5 hectares mowed and 1.8 tonnes burned in Talas Region.[9] In August that year the provincial drug police, the Bakai-Ata district police and the staff of the Bakai-Ata and Kumushtak rural districts mowed wild cannabis on 0.6 hectares and collected almost a tonne of it in two days.[3] In June 2026 the provincial police reported that about 10 tonnes had been mowed and burned in Talas district, in raids held with the local government.[10]
Accessions
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See also
References
- ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (April 2008). Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (PDF) (Report). Paris Pact Initiative. p. 23.
- ↑ Зеличенко, А. (14 August 2003). "История афганской наркоэкспансии 1990-х". Lib.ru (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Алымбаев, Н. (8 August 2024). "Почти тонну конопли сожгли наркоборцы в Таласской области". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Specimen MW0818709: Cannabis sativa L." Moscow Digital Herbarium. Moscow State University. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ Olcott, M.B.; Udalova, N. (March 2000). Drug trafficking on the Great Silk Road: the security environment in Central Asia (Report). Carnegie Endowment Working Papers. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. p. 9.
- ↑ "Kyrgyzstan country overview". European Union Drugs Agency. March 2014. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Botoeva, G. (2016). The local drug economy: the case of hashish production in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village (PhD thesis). Colchester: University of Essex.
- ↑ "Пограничники нашли и сожгли около двух тонн конопли". Kaktus.media (in русский). 16 July 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Сотрудники СБНОН сожгли более 85 тонн конопли (фото)". Kaktus.media (in русский). 12 July 2024. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ Айгыров, Т. (22 June 2026). "В Таласском районе уничтожили 10 тонн дикорастущей конопли". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.