Talk:Greece

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Discussion for: Greece • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Greece is about cannabis in Greece. Its cannabis material is the hashish cultivated for local use and export by the late 19th century, the bans on it, and Greece's part in the Geneva conference of 1924–25.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Where the sources disagree

The page gives each account below under its source's name and adjudicates none.

Greek exports

The Transnational Institute (Bewley-Taylor, Blickman and Jelsma, 2014, p. 5 of the chapter PDF): "Nonetheless, hashish continued to be widely used, and Greece remained a significant exporter of hashish to Turkey and Egypt well into the 1920s." Its endnote 12, on this paragraph, cites Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou (1975).
Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou (1975), the chapter the institute cites, write that by the last decades of the 19th century hashish "was being openly and systematically cultivated for local use and export" (p. 313). They quote the report of 1887 by the mayor of Orchomenus: "Abroad the price is triple or quadruple" (p. 314). Searched in full for export, Egypt, Turkey and smuggling, the chapter names no destination for Greek hashish and gives no date for exports in the 1920s. Its account of the 1920s concerns hashish use after the war in Asia Minor (p. 315).
J. Bouquet (Bulletin on Narcotics, 1951, issue 1): "Until some thirty years ago the main sources of supply were Turkey and Greece. Clandestine supplies to Egypt consisted of Turkish and Greek hashish together with a certain amount of Indian charas." The same paragraph: "In French North Africa, the Indian product was extremely rare; chira came mainly from Greece, though some consignments arrived from Istanbul."
A. Ahmed El Hadka (Bulletin on Narcotics, 1965, issue 4): "In 1926 Syria, Lebanon and Greece became major sources of supply and enormous quantities of hashish, especially from Syria and Lebanon, began to enter Egypt."

When Greece banned hashish

The Transnational Institute (2014, p. 5): "Cultivation, importation, and use of cannabis was banned in Greece in 1890."
Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou (1975, p. 314): "On March 27, 1890, following a decision of the Medical Council, the Department of Interior issued a circular prohibiting the importation, cultivation, and use of hashish as an imminent threat to society". The same page calls it a "restrictive law, in force until 1920". On p. 315: "From 1932 until 1970, the narcotics laws of Greece became increasingly severe".
J. Bouquet (1951): "Greece having forbidden the cultivation of cannabis in 1920, Greek hashish became rarer on the market, although it did not entirely disappear as might have been hoped." He dates a new law to 1932, "more drastic than that of 1920 and providing for the destruction of stocks".

The lead says only that the sources date the prohibition of cultivation to 1890 or to 1920.

Sources

Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou 1975 is cited from pp. 311–315 of the Mouton volume (DOI 10.1515/9783110812060.303).
Transnational Institute 2014: the chapter PDF named in the citation (rise_and_decline_ch1.pdf). The authors, the co-publisher (Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea University) and the date (March 2014) are from its colophon (p. 39). Its printed page numbers run four lower than those of the full report (rise_and_decline_web.pdf); the page's pinpoints follow the chapter PDF.
Bouquet 1951 and El Hadka 1965 are cited from the UNODC web edition of the Bulletin, which prints page ranges but no page numbers, so they carry no pinpoints.

Open questions

Turkey as a destination. Among the sources read, only the Transnational Institute names Turkey as a market for Greek hashish. The chapter it cites for the statement does not carry it. Bouquet describes Turkey as a producer "both for internal consumption and for secret exportation". Whether Greek hashish went to Turkey is not settled by the sources read.
Orchomenus and Mantinea. The 1887 report that Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou quote says that "Ten years ago the cultivation of hashish was disseminated to Orchomenus from the surrounding boroughs of Mantinea" (p. 313). It bears on the Arcadian accession (RSC-GRC-ARC-0120050001) from Mantineia and is not yet used on the page. The chapter places the town "in Peloponnesus" and its bibliography lists the report as "On hashish: a report by the Mayor of Orchomenus in Mantinea", so the page links the Arcadian Orchomenus.

Statements removed and why

"That experience gave Greece a voice in the making of international cannabis control": a thesis in the article's voice. The Geneva proposal is now placed at the Second Opium Conference (1924–25): the Transnational Institute puts it on the second day of a conference convened in November 1924, not in 1925.
"The standing scholarly treatment of Greek hashish use" for the Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou chapter: no source ranks it. The same sentence displayed "Southeast Asia" on a link to the Laos page.
"The wiki documents three Greek landrace accessions" and "its three documented landraces": statements about the wiki's holdings. The three lines are now introduced as The Real Seed Company's.
That the Greek crop was sieved "rather than smoked as herbal material, which is the method of the eastern Mediterranean and North African hashish trade generally": a regional generalisation cited to one seed-company page.
"The preparation the nineteenth-century sources describe is sieved hashish": the sources cited (the Transnational Institute, 2014, and the seed company) are not nineteenth-century, and the institute does not mention sieving. Each statement is now attributed to the source that makes it.
"The one account the wiki holds of a Greek landrace population ending", and "so the accession records a population no longer in the ground where it was collected": a statement about the wiki and an inference from the company's account. The company's remark on tropical landraces concerns the Messenian line, not Greek material in general.

Sections needing work

Demographics is a section stub. What the Transnational Institute says about the manges and the tekedes concerns a nineteenth-century urban culture and is under History. Nothing sourced describes who uses cannabis in Greece now. The epidemiological part of the Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou chapter, beyond the pages read (pp. 311–315), is the likely source.
Agriculture is a section stub. Nothing has been found on cannabis or hemp among Greece's crops: no area figures, no place in the rural economy, nothing on fibre hemp.
Conservation status. Both statements in the section are the seed company's. No survey, genetic characterisation or chemotype study of Greek landrace cannabis has been found.