Talk:Chittagong Hill Tracts
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Page scope
Chittagong Hill Tracts is a Growing Area in the Indo-Burman Range growing region. It covers the three hill districts of south-eastern Bangladesh: Khagrachhari, Rangamati and Bandarban. The country as a whole is at Bangladesh and Cannabis in Bangladesh; the neighbouring hills across the border are at Tripura Hills and Mizo Hills.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the area's extent and the news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the area is on the map
- The UNODC South Asia Regional Profile of September 2005 (Bangladesh chapter, section 3(a)) says cannabis "is still cultivated" in "the hilly districts near Cox's Bazaar, Banderban, Khagrachhari and Rangamati in the southeast (bordering Myanmar)", and that "cultivation in the Chittagong Hill Tract region is reportedly on the increase". It names the districts, not places within them, and gives no area.
- Field destruction since 2000 has been reported from Khagrachhari district only: Matiranga upazila (The Business Standard, 2 January 2020, about 200 bigha), the Chowdhuripara area near Guimara (The Daily Star, 16 January 2024, about 3.5 acres) and Guimara upazila (Prothom Alo and Independent Television, 21 January 2025, two acres). Reports of eradication in Bandarban district concern opium poppy, and a seizure in Rangamati's Longadu upazila (November 2025) concerned ganja the army described as Indian, carried by smugglers.
- The area takes in all three districts because the UNODC profile names all three. Rangamati and Bandarban rest on that profile alone.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy: the three hill districts, from their OpenStreetMap administrative relations (Khagrachari Hill District 3824617, Rangamati Hill District 3824602, Bandarban Hill District 3824576). The outline measures about 13,140 km², rounded to 13,100 in the infobox; Banglapedia gives the tract's area as about 13,184 km².
- The hills near Cox's Bazar, which the UNODC profile also names, are left out: no field report from Cox's Bazar district was found.
Growing status
The status is Active: cannabis fields were destroyed in Khagrachhari district in reports of 2020, 2024 and 2025. No source read says that growing has ended.
Earlier record
- In the evidence before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893), the Commissioner of Chittagong described ganja as imported into the Hill Tracts, where workmen from Hindustan wanted it, while wild hemp grew there; a deputy magistrate gave the local names jamya and kaua ganja for the wild plant.
- The Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation of 1900 (section 13) brought the cultivation and sale of ganja there under licence from the Deputy Commissioner.
Sources not used
- A Jagonews report of 2 January 2020 of fields at Duillatali in Matiranga and Kalabunia in Mahalchhari could not be retrieved.
- Ethnobotanical surveys of Bandarban and of the Garo hills read for this page make no mention of cannabis. A survey of practitioners in Rangamati (Ahmed and Azam, 2014) does, and is cited.
- None of the reports names the people who grew the fields; the 2024 and 2025 reports attribute them to drug traders.