Talk:Cannabis in Bhutan
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Possession threshold: 50 g or 7 g
Schedule VII of the 2015 Act, unchanged in the consolidated 2018 text published by the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority, gives 50 grams for cannabis, 7 grams for hashish, 3 ml for hashish oil and five plants. A 2016 report in The Bhutanese on a court case also gives 50 g for cannabis. Two BBS reports (20 July 2020 and 19 September 2023) instead say that the 2018 amendment makes possession of up to 7 grams of cannabis and its derivatives the offence of illegal possession. The article gives the figures of the Act. The two readings are recorded here and not harmonised.
Which minister spoke in 2021
BBS on 11 June 2021 reports the Foreign Minister saying that the government was exploring ways to legalise marijuana for medicinal use. BBS on 19 September 2023, recalling the same summer session of Parliament, attributes the statement to the finance minister. The article follows the 2021 report. The parliamentary record of the session has not been consulted.
Subspecies indica at the Gamri Chu
The Flora of Bhutan (1983, p. 134) says that subsp. indica occurs in Bhutan in Tashigang district at the Gamri Chu. Grierson 2089 (1979), collected by the flora's authors at the Gamri Chu in 1979, is labelled "Low much branched herb up to 1 m". The flora's entry cites no specimen, so the article does not connect the two.
Pig feed, fibre and textiles
- The UNODC profile of 2005 reports "some residual traditional use of wild cannabis in pig feed and making hemp fibre products" without a source. A BBC News report (Alastair Lawson, 30 May 2002) and a Guardian feature (14 June 2003) repeat the pig-feed account; as news features they are not used for the ethnographic claim. Neither the profile nor the 1983 flora describes how the plant is used.
- Hemp textiles in Bhutan are attributed elsewhere to Altmann (ed.), Fabric of Life: Textile Arts in Bhutan (De Gruyter, 2016), p. 235, which has not been consulted.
- A Dzongkha name for the plant (kenam in some compilations) was not found in the flora or in any primary source consulted. The flora gives only the Shachop Phagpa Nam, the Nepali bhang and the English hemp.
- No published ethnobotanical survey of Bhutan consulted (Wangchuk and Tobgay 2015; the Dagala, Lower Kheng, Merak, Sakteng and Kanglung plant surveys) lists cannabis. These are lists of other plants and say nothing about whether cannabis is used.
Travel accounts without a hemp passage
Full-text searches of J. Claude White's Sikhim and Bhutan (1909), Ashley Eden's 1864 report in Political Missions to Bootan (1865), Charles Bell's Tibet Past and Present and the Bogle and Manning narratives found no passage on hemp, ganja or bhang in a Bhutan context. Samuel Turner's Account of an Embassy (1800) mentions a bowstring of "hemp" without saying which plant. Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (vol. 2, 1889) does not name Bhutan in its Cannabis entry. All of these searches were made on OCR texts, not page images.
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission witnesses
- The heading of the evidence of Assam witness no. 5 (McCabe, p. 538) has not been read on the page; his office is not given in the article.
- Bengal witness no. 98 (Ghosha, Registrar, Calcutta, p. 258) lists the "Bhutan Duars" among places where the plant grows spontaneously. The entry concerns the Duars plains and is not used for Bhutan.
- "Bhutias" in the evidence of McCabe, and in Greer's evidence for Darjeeling (p. 60), is the witnesses' term and may not mean people of Bhutan.
Other open points
- The Penal Code text consulted is the 2004 text as first enacted (WIPO Lex). Its drug sections (496 to 501) refer to controlled substances and do not name cannabis. Later amendments, and any change to the sentencing bands, have not been checked.
- Section 130 of the 2015 Act leaves the fibre and animal-feed exception to rules and regulations. Neither the Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Substance Abuse Regulation 2024 nor the draft Rules and Regulation 2026, both published by the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority, contains the words cannabis, hemp or fibre, and no rule under section 130 has been located.
- A 2024 Asia News Network report on the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority mentions a "Cannabis Framework for Medicine, research, and export". No text of such a framework has been located.
- The 36 BioSample records of the 2018 leaf samples publish locality coordinates to six decimal places. The article gives districts only. The records carry no study title and no sequence data.
- No law on cannabis before 2005 has been located. The UNODC profile names none, and the 2005 Act's repeal clause names no earlier statute.
- Not consulted: Wexler and Tshering 2025 beyond its abstract; D. G. Long, "The Bhutanese itineraries of William Griffith and R. E. Cooper" (1979); UNODC World Drug Report and INCB annual reports for Bhutan.