Talk:Georgia (country)

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Page scope

Georgia (country) is the Country page for Georgia. It covers hemp as a field crop and a wild plant, from the crop lists of the Tiflis and Kutais governorates and the herbarium sheets of 1871–1900 to the seed of subsp. spontanea from Khevsureti; the uses of the plant named in Georgian reference works; drug use in the Georgian SSR as Anzor Gabiani's surveys found it; the Constitutional Court rulings of 2015–2018 and 2026; the drug laws in force after the amendments of 2025; and cultivation, use and enforcement since 2014. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Georgia (country) as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

Statutes. The law on narcotic drugs (No. 6245-Iს of 22 May 2012, consolidated to 14 April 2026) and the Criminal Code (No. 2287 of 22 July 1999, consolidated to 25 June 2026) were read in the English translations on matsne.gov.ge. The English text of the Administrative Offences Code there is the edition of 9 February 2023, which predates the laws of 2025; the page follows the final Georgian text of the code, read on the same site. The Georgian text of the Criminal Code was not compared with the English.
Constitutional Court. The judgment of 24 October 2015 was read in the English text on the court's site, and that of 30 July 2018 in the court's English PDF. For the judgments of 14 July 2017 and 30 November 2017 the court publishes only English abstracts (the judgments are in Georgian) and the abstracts were read. The ruling of 24 June 2026 is known from the court's own news summary; its judgment text and number were not seen. Case numbers follow the court's document IDs (N1/4/592, N1/3/1282); the 2015 page also prints "N1/5/592" in one heading, and the 2018 PDF heads its text "N1/5/1282".
The amendments of 2025 were read in the Parliament of Georgia's release on the first reading of 1 July 2025, in the reports of Civil.ge and OC Media of 2 July 2025, in the INCB report for 2025 (p. 102, para. 604) and in the amendment lines printed under the articles of the codes.
Surveys. The 2015 general-population survey and the seizures of 2017 are from the English executive summary of The Drug Situation in Georgia 2016–2017 published by Alternative Georgia; the full Georgian report was not read. Kirtadze and colleagues (2018), Nadareishvili and colleagues (2024) and Mgebrishvili and colleagues (2025) were read in their abstracts on Europe PMC, with their bibliographic details from Crossref.
Soviet period. Lee (1991) was read in the Wilson Center PDF; its tables are poorly scanned, so the page takes Gabiani's findings from Lee's text. Gabiani's own books (Narkotizm, Tbilisi 1977; Narkotizm vchera i segodnya, Tbilisi 1988; Na krayu propasti, Moscow 1990) were not read; the titles are from the Georgian Encyclopedia's entry on him.
Reference works. The Brockhaus and Efron entries (Tiflis and Kutais governorates; Georgia) and the Granat entry on the Kutais governorate were read in the Wikisource transcriptions. The Georgian Encyclopedia entries კანაფი and გაბიანი ანზორ ალექსანდრეს ძე were read in their PDF exports, which carry no author, volume or year.
Herbarium and genebank. The Moscow sheets MW0661549, MW0661550 and MW0661551 were read on the Moscow Digital Herbarium and in their GBIF records. The Gatersleben accession CAN 22 was read through its GBIF records (the institute's and the Svalbard deposit's) and through the USDA's record G 33598, which reproduces its passport; the institute's own catalogue page was not read. The Azechi (1998) and Lakhamula (2014) plants are Missouri Botanical Garden records on GBIF.
Akhalkatsi and colleagues (2012) were read in the publisher's PDF; the cannabis passages are on pp. 62 and 69. De Candolle was read in the Project Gutenberg text of the English translation, which has no page numbers. The wild-hemp operation of 2014 is known from Trend's report of what the Ministry of Internal Affairs told it; the ministry's own release was not found.

Where the sources differ

Hryniewiecki's date. The label of MW0661549 is dated 17/30 July 1900, the Julian and Gregorian days; the herbarium's catalogue gives the Julian 17 July. The page gives 30 July.
Lifetime use in 2015. The national report gives 15–16 per cent of respondents aged 18–64 as having tried cannabis; Kirtadze and colleagues give 17.3 per cent from the standard self-report question in the first household survey (their abstract does not give its year). Nadareishvili and colleagues give 17.3 per cent for those aged 18–29 in 2015. The page gives each figure with its source and population.
The small amount. A correction note on Civil.ge's report of 2 July 2025 defines a small quantity as five to 70 grams of dried marijuana. The parliament's release and the notes to Annex 2 of the narcotics law put the small amount at up to 5 grams and call 5–70 grams the starting amount for criminal liability; the page follows the law. The English table of Annex 2 heads its columns "Small", "Large" and "Particularly large" while its notes define four bands; the page follows the notes.
Sale. Frontnews reported on 16 April 2025 that the sale of cannabis and marijuana would carry three to six years; the consolidated text of Article 260³ reads five to ten years. The page gives the code's text.
The meeting of 2018. OC Media's report dates the officials' meeting with the Patriarch to "2 October", though it was published on 2 November 2018; Civil.ge gives 2 November. The page gives 2 November.
The cultivation article. The Ministry of Internal Affairs' releases of 2025 cite "Article 265"; the consolidated code numbers the cultivation article 265¹.
Dates and terms of the rulings. The page uses the dates in the court's own records: 24 October 2015, 14 July 2017, 30 November 2017 and 30 July 2018. Nadareishvili and colleagues describe the position after 2018 as legalisation for recreational use; the page gives what the court held.
"Kenaf". Akhalkatsi and colleagues use the English name "kenaf", usually that of Hibiscus cannabinus, for Cannabis sativa L.; their Latin name and the Georgian kanafi show that the plant is hemp.
Seizures of 2017. The national report gives 115 kg of cannabis plant and 48 kg of marijuana in the sentence after the one naming 2017; the page reads them as figures for 2017.

Not used, and why

Bussmann and colleagues (2016), on the ethnobotany of five Georgian regions: Cannabis sativa appears only in table cells, with no use described.
Vavilov's wild-hemp thickets (1926) and a passage of 1951 in the Bulletin on Narcotics on cannabis use "north of the Caucasus": both concern the North Caucasus, in Russia.
An Armenian etymological entry reproduced on the Calfa dictionary site reports, after Aghayan (1889), that Georgian kanapi was borrowed from Armenian. The site does not name the dictionary it reproduces.
Popular accounts of Svan dishes made with cannabis: no scholarly source for them was found. The Georgian Encyclopedia's sentence on use as a spice, especially in Svaneti, is used.
The INCB report for 2025 (para. 615) on heroin routed through Georgia and across the Black Sea: not about cannabis.
Eurasianet (2016) on the police's warning of six to 12 years for organised group cultivation: a statement of the law of the time, which the page takes from the court rulings instead.

Open questions

Soviet law. The provisions of the Georgian SSR's criminal codes on hemp and its drugs have not been read.
Seizures and eradication. No yearly series of cannabis seizures or wild-hemp destruction has been found beyond the figures for 2014 and 2017.
The survey of 2022. A general-population survey launched on 21 February 2022, with results due in February 2023, has not been found.
Floras and medical books. The treatment of Cannabis in the Flora of Georgia has not been read; no entry on hemp has been found in the medieval Georgian medical books.
Archaeology. No cannabis find from an archaeological site in Georgia is known from the sources read.
Azechi, 1998. The record names the plant to genus only and does not say whether it was wild or sown.
The 1883 label. The abbreviation "бак. ж. д." on the label of MW0661551 has not been read with certainty.
Industrial hemp. No law on industrial or medical cannabis has been found.