Talk:Ivory Coast

Talk

Discussion for: Ivory Coast • View • Links • Related changes

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

Page scope

Ivory Coast is the Country page for Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire). It covers where cannabis is grown (the cocoa pioneer fronts of the south-west and the places named in field studies); how it is farmed and what it earns; its spread after the collapse of coffee and cocoa prices in 1988–1989; seed and supply from Ghana; how it is sold and smoked; the drug laws of 1988 and 2022; enforcement; and the herbarium specimens and seed line from the country. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Ivory Coast 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

The law of 2022 (Loi n° 2022-407 du 13 juin 2022) was read on loidici.biz, a private Ivorian legal site: articles 1 to 14 and 40 to 48. Its Journal officiel reference was not found; the official portals did not answer and a JuriCIV copy could not be loaded. Articles 1 to 14 and 40 to 48 do not name cannabis: the law classes drugs in four tables taken from the international conventions (articles 2 and 45), and the page does not say which table holds cannabis. Articles 15 to 20, among them the provisions on therapeutic injunction, were not read.
The law of 1988 (Loi n° 88-686) was read on the same site, under its list of repealed laws; articles 1 and 2 do not name cannabis.
The CILAD presentation (May 2024) is a slide deck by the committee's secretary-general, posted on the site of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals. Its treaty dates agree with the UN Treaty Collection.
Léonard (1998) was read in the IRD repository copy (Autrepart 8, pp. 79–99). Its Ivorian section rests on the author's survey of 41 growers in the south-west between April 1994 and June 1995. The Drug Nexus in Africa (1999, Box 3, p. 50) reports an investigation by the Observatoire géopolitique des drogues of 41 growers in the south-west over the same months; the page gives each source's figures under its own name.
Léonard (2001), "Du cannabis sous les cacaoyers" (Oléagineux, Corps gras, Lipides 8(6): 611–620), was read only in its abstract. Kroubo (2023) cites it for the first plantations in Bas-Sassandra.
Kroubo (2023) was read in the journal's PDF; its table of seizures counts operations against two gangs in Abidjan (source: CILAD, 2019–2022) and is not a national total. Its figure for drug users in 2020 is relayed from the national statistics institute, whose report was not read. It gives no figure for fields destroyed in 2021.
Agnimou and Kouadio Yeboua (2026) and Tia et al. (2025) were read in their journals' PDFs. Agnimou and Kouadio describe the law of 2022 as decriminalising personal use; article 10 of the law still punishes holding a drug for one's own use with one to three months' imprisonment and a fine. The page gives the article.
News reports. Fraternité Matin (28 June 2022) was read in full. The RFI report of June 2025 was read only in the free lead on AllAfrica.
Herbarium specimens are known from their GBIF occurrence data: eleven records with country Côte d'Ivoire, which appear to be about five gatherings, the same sheets listed under two codes of the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny herbarium (UCJ and CNF-UFHB).
The seed line is described from the archived strainguide entry, as on its accession page.

Where the sources differ

When cultivation began. Léonard (1998): local use from the 1950s and spread from the second half of the 1980s, with the start in the south-west seeming to rest on Ghanaian migrants of the late 1970s. Kroubo (2023), citing Léonard (2001): first plantations in Bas-Sassandra after the price collapse of 1988–1989.
Plot size. Léonard (1998): almost always under half a hectare, two thirds under a quarter (1994–1995). Kroubo (2023): half a hectare to a hectare. The figures are of different dates.
Seed from Ghana. Léonard reports it as rumour ("selon la rumeur"); Kroubo states it.
Méadji. Kroubo names the sub-prefectures of "Méadji" and Sassandra. Whether Méadji is the sub-prefecture now spelled Méagui is not confirmed, and the name is not linked.

Not used, and why

Two cannabis fields destroyed near Adzopé in September 2025: reported only by a local aggregator.
The photograph caption "Seized cannabis being destroyed in Côte d'Ivoire" in the report of the West Africa Commission on Drugs (2014): undated.
The seizure rows for Côte d'Ivoire in the annex of UNODC's Cannabis in Africa (2007): their years cannot be assigned in the copy read.
Names used in the fumoirs (Tia et al., 2025: "Boca, Gban, Eska, Over" among the cannabis sellers) and the users' word djonki: the paper does not say what each term means.
Ya, Kouassi and Dedou (2021), on the decriminalisation debate: the article could not be loaded.

Open questions

Colonial law. No regulation of French West Africa on chanvre indien was found.
Names. No Dioula or Baoulé name for the plant was found in the sources read.
Ethnobotany. The Ivorian medicinal-plant books of Kerharo and Bouquet (1950) and Bouquet and Debray (1974) were searched as text and have no entry for cannabis; the OCR of both was not checked page by page.
Chemistry and germplasm. No analysis of Ivorian cannabis and no genebank accession of Ivorian origin was found.
The two kinds grown in the 1990s. Léonard's fermented and dried kinds are described by how they were sold; no description of the plants themselves was found.