Talk:Indonesia

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Discussion for: Indonesia • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

This page documents cannabis in Indonesia — legal status, cultivation history, cultural context, and conservation. General country information belongs on Wikipedia.

Content guidelines

* Claims require sources — field reports, academic papers, news articles

• Data aggregates from accession pages where possible
• Legal/policy info needs dates and citations

Discussion

Statements taken out of the article

• Veth's Woordenboek and Aceh. The article said that the Aceh entry of the Aardrijkskundig en Statistisch Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indië (1861), prepared with a preface by P. J. Veth, lists Aceh's products and its opium use "but makes no reference to cannabis whatsoever". A source's silence is not evidence of absence, and the Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing (note 6) lists Veth's Schets van het eiland Sumatra (1869), an offprint from the same Woordenboek, among the Dutch sources for cannabis leaves smoked with tobacco, particularly in Aceh. The 1869 text has not been checked against either statement.
• Heyne's De nuttige planten van Nederlandsch-Indië. The article said Cannabis does not appear in the index of the 1922 second edition. The Transnational Institute briefing (p. 3, note 8) says Cannabis sativa is registered in the 1916 first edition. Whether the two editions differ has not been checked; the index statement stays here, not in the article.

• Mujarabat and Tajul Muluk on diabetes. The article said that these two texts, translated from Malay in the 16th century, recommend cannabis for "sweet blood" (diabetes) and that cannabis coffee and tea were taken for diabetes. Its only source was the Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing (p. 4, note 17). The briefing relays the claim from interviews in Aceh, among them one with a Lingkar Ganja Nusantara coordinator, and quotes no passage from either text. A 2022 study of the medical chapter of Tajul Muluk (Mohd Shafri and Nazarudin, Borneo Journal of Resource Science and Technology 12(2): 74–81) dates the printed text to a lithograph made at Mecca in 1893 and says it was assembled by the Acehnese scholar Shaykh Isma'il al-'Asyi. In that chapter cannabis appears only in compound formulations taken in small amounts, with no use for diabetes. No study quoting a cannabis passage in a Mujarabat was found. CNN Indonesia (2 February 2020) quotes a manuscript collector who places cannabis in a Tajol Mulok manuscript as a seasoning and food preservative and dates the manuscript to the 18th century; no passage is quoted there either. The diabetes claim and the 16th-century date stay off the article until a passage from either text can be cited. The article now describes Tajul Muluk from the 2022 study.
• Boorsma and Acehnese food. The article said that the Acehnese uses Boorsma describes include seeds in food, flowers in palm wine and leaves in coffee and tea. His 1917 report (pp. 21–29) describes the Acehnese plant as smoked, mainly to stimulate the appetite. The food and drink uses come from the Transnational Institute's briefing, whose note 16 cites Boorsma together with Lingkar Ganja Nusantara interviews and a 2015 newspaper report without saying which source supports which use. The sentence now gives what Boorsma reports and the culinary section gives the briefing's account under its name.
• Boorsma on Acehnese cultivation. The article said that Boorsma's surveys document seeds saved and replanted across generations and cannabis intercropped with rice, vegetables, coffee, cacao and other food crops in mixed smallholder plots, and that backyard growing for food and medicine has been recorded continuously from his time to the present. His report (1917, pp. 21–29; reprinted in Teysmannia in 1918, pp. 324–334) gives seedlings raised from seed and transplanted, the plant in most districts of Aceh with plantings in a few, and cultivation on no significant scale. The Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing (p. 8) reports backyard plants in present-day Aceh whose harvest is often not sold. The seed-saving and intercropping statements are in none of the three texts and were taken out; the two passages now give what Boorsma and the briefing report.
• Boorsma on the extent of use. The lead said that Boorsma found widespread consumption limited to Aceh and parts of Sumatra, and two later passages called Aceh the region his survey identified as the main centre of use and the main producing region. The first wording is the Transnational Institute's summary of the survey (2016 briefing, pp. 4–5). Boorsma's report (1917, pp. 21–29; reprinted in Teysmannia in 1918, pp. 324–334) concludes that hemp was grown in the residencies of Sumatra's West Coast, East Coast and Aceh "hoewel niet in belangrijke mate" (though not to any significant degree) and used there mainly by foreigners, very little by the indigenous population (p. 27). Of Groot-Atjeh and other parts of Aceh he writes that use was slight (p. 23). He does not single out Aceh as the main centre of use or production. The lead now gives his conclusion, the two later passages no longer rank Aceh on his authority, and the supply-chain sentence rests on the briefing's account of present-day production (p. 2).
• Price table, c. 1912 row. The table listed household or farmgate sale in Aceh around 1912, citing Boorsma. His report gives no sale in Aceh and no price. The one sale it mentions is a packet of gandjo sent with the cannabis material from Fort de Kock (now Bukittinggi) on Sumatra's West Coast, "gelijk dat daar ter plaatse wel verkocht wordt" (as it is sold there) (p. 25). The row now gives that.

Sources for the 2016 Transnational Institute briefing

• The warung sentence (shopkeepers mixing cannabis leaves and opium into tobacco in banana leaves) rests on the briefing's note 10, which cites the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, first instalment (1 January 1896). The Encyclopaedie has not been read. Boorsma (1918, p. 326) reports the leaves of gindje or gendji smoked in parts of Semarang (there with tobacco), Banyumas, Malang and Surakarta.
• The statements on the security forces promoting cultivation during the Aceh conflict rest on the briefing's notes 30–33 (Kingsbury and McCulloch 2006; Schulze 2004; Braithwaite et al. 2010).

Rumphius's names for the plant

The article formerly described a "two-variety system" in Rumphius: Ginji Maia, a taller fibre type, and Ginji Papoua, a compact resinous variety. Rumphius's chapter (vol. 5, pp. 208–211) and the legend to his t. 77 do not use the name Ginji Maia. He gives Ginji as the Malay name, describes male and female plants grown in Ambon from Javanese seed and a third form, Ginji Papoua, brought from the Papuan and Sula Islands, and his plate calls the male plant Ginji Lacki Lacki and the female Ginji Papoea, "a smaller kind than the former". He does not divide the plants into a fibre type and a resinous type; of the bark he says that it splits into threads too short to be strong (p. 210). Boorsma's 1892 article quotes the chapter but not these names. The article now follows Rumphius's text.

Topics not yet covered

The article does not yet cover the following.

• Modern cultivation. Aceh highland cultivation (small dispersed plots, seasonal land rotation, concealment); irrigation under prohibition (wells, water piping); intercropping with coffee, cacao and cover crops; the seasonal cycle against eradication campaigns and the wet and dry seasons; seed sourcing and selection under prohibition; processing and drying; the dwarf coffee-field phenotype, documented but uncharacterised; selection toward earlier flowering, smaller stature and concealment; whether Lake Toba cultivation differs from the Acehnese tradition; North Sumatran commercial operations against Acehnese household cultivation. The Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing and National Narcotics Board eradication data are leads.
• Quality. Acehnese domestic production against export grade; how Lake Toba material is described; documented aroma and effect profiles; chemotype data, with Boorsma's work as the only baseline and no modern analyses known.
• The current market. Structure from farmgate to retail (domestic and export); consumption in Jakarta, Surabaya and Yogyakarta; the Acehnese local market against the national network; the Sumatra to Java supply chain; airport and port transit between islands; the displacement of cannabis by synthetic cannabinoids ("gorilla tobacco") after 2015; seasonal price changes; change since the 1990s; the prison market documented by the National Narcotics Board.