Talk:Bangladesh
Discussion page of Bangladesh
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Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Page scope
Bangladesh is a Country page: the root of the geographic and administrative ladders for Bangladesh. It summarises the country's cannabis record and lists the growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news items that name Bangladesh. The fuller account of cannabis in the country is at Cannabis in Bangladesh; the licensed tract round Naogaon is at Ganja Mahal and its cooperative at Ganja Society; growing on the Jamuna chars is at Jamuna chars.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the sources, the figures and the places named here.
Discussion
Sources
- Licensed cultivation, 1722 to 1989. The main sources are Rahman and colleagues (2022, 2023). Their figures before 1951 come from Bengali-language local histories (Ali 2014, Uddin 2006, Khansaheb 2007, Micher 2007); from 1951 they come from the Ganja Society's own stock book. Ganja Matters (Chattopadhyaya 2026) is cited for its passages on partition, East Pakistan and Trinath (pp. 181, 222, 228).
- Law. The Narcotics Control Act, 2018 and the Narcotics Control Act, 1990 are cited from their official Bangla texts on the Laws of Bangladesh site (section 36 table, rows 18, 19 and 21 of the 2018 Act; section 19 table, serials 7 and 8 of the 1990 Act). The 2020 amendment of the 2018 Act moved drug trials from tribunals to ordinary courts; it did not change the cannabis rows. No English text of the 2018 Act was available.
- Treaties. Accession dates and Bangladesh's reservation are from the United Nations Treaty Collection status pages, as it stood on 20 October 2026.
- Seizures. The 2010 to 2024 figures are from the Department of Narcotics Control's table of seizures by all law-enforcement agencies; the figures are taken from the page image, whose text layer carries only the numbers. The department's own annual report for 2022–23 gives far lower figures (8,534.877 kg of ganja in 2022–23), which appear to be its own seizures alone; they are not used.
- Present-day cultivation. The 2005 UNODC regional profile is the only official source found that names districts. In the hill tracts, press reports of fields destroyed were found for Khagrachhari district only (Matiranga 2019–20, Guimara 2024 and 2025); reports from Bandarban concern opium poppy. Reports of plants grown in fields and house yards in the north-west (nine districts of the Rangpur and Rajshahi divisions, 2007–2026) are set out on Talk:North Bengal Plains. A Jagonews report of January 2020 on fields at Matiranga and Mahalchhari could not be retrieved.
Where the sources disagree
- When licensed growing ended. Rahman and colleagues (2022) write in their text that ganja has not been grown in Naogaon since 1987, and the stock book records no crop after 1986; their Table 1, taken from Ali (2014), gives 1984 for the ban on cultivation and 1987 for the ban on sales. The page follows the stock book.
- The 1974 commitment and the Single Convention. Rahman and colleagues date the end of cultivation to a drug-control commitment of 1974 that set a limit of 15 years. The United Nations records Bangladesh's accession to the Single Convention on 25 April 1975, with a reservation under article 49 for the temporary non-medical use of cannabis; article 49 sets 25 years for ending such use, and 15 years only for the quasi-medical use of opium. The page reports both without identifying one with the other.
- Area under the crop. The Business Standard (24 December 2021) wrote that more than 7,000 farmers grew cannabis on about 10,000 hectares; the figures Rahman and colleagues compiled give 193 to 338 hectares in the 19th century and 236 hectares for the 1978–79 crop. The newspaper figure is not used.
- Penalties under the 1990 Act. A 2010 law column in The Daily Star gives six months to ten years for up to 5 kg of ganja; the statute gives six months to three years.
Not used
- Bauls and fakirs in Bangladesh. Openshaw's Seeking Bauls of Bengal (2002) rests on fieldwork in West Bengal; the author states that it was not carried out in Bangladesh, so the book is not cited for practice in Bangladesh. Reports of police action against cannabis at the Lalon festival in Kushtia (October 2026) and of an attack on a shrine at Kumarkhali (September 2024) were not used: neither describes the use of cannabis by the practitioners themselves.
- Fakirs at the Naogaon fields. Villagers near Naogaon told the Travelling Archive project in 2015 and 2019 that fakirs used to gather at the plantations when ganja was grown. The posts do not name their author and the account is oral, so it is left here.
- A death penalty for cannabis. Neither the 1990 Act nor the 2018 Act sets death or life imprisonment for ganja or cannabis plants; under the 1990 Act those penalties applied to cannabis resin above 2 kg, classed with opium.
- Banglapedia on clandestine growing. The encyclopedia's undated entry Hemp says cannabis had "recently" been reported as grown in Jamalpur and Sherpur districts; with no date it is not used for present-day growing.