Talk:Kazakhstan

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Page scope

Kazakhstan is about cannabis in Kazakhstan. It covers the wild cannabis of the south and east, above all the Shu Valley of Jambyl Region; the earliest archaeological finds; the records of naturalists, settlers and herbaria from 1840 to the Soviet period; Soviet drug law as it applied in the Kazakh SSR; the law since 1998, including licensed industrial hemp from 2025; the market, enforcement and the area estimates; and Kazakh seed in genebanks. The longer history named in the History hatnote is planned as a separate article. The tables of growing regions, growing areas and accessions fill from pages that name Kazakhstan as their country.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

Statutes and decrees are cited in Russian from the texts of the Adilet legal database, in the editions current on 12 October 2026: Law No. 279 of 1998, the Criminal Code and the Code on Administrative Offences of 2014, Government decrees No. 470 (2019), 780, 797 and 936 (2025) and 259 (2026), with Law No. 203-VIII of 2025. The growth of Article 22 of Law No. 279 was followed through its editions of 21 December 2022 and 2 January 2025 and the amending laws of 2023 and 2025. The threshold table of decree No. 470 is the one restated by decree No. 111 of 24 February 2026, as given in the database's table markup.
The criminal code of the Kazakh SSR is cited from the same database, which gives its approval as 22 July 1959 and its repeal from 1 January 1998. Articles 212-1 and 213 are quoted in the wording of the Ukaz of 30 July 1987, as the database's footnotes give it. The Soviet decree of 27 October 1934 is cited from Danilov (2015).
United Nations and other official documents are cited from the issuing bodies' own sites: the treaty status pages of the United Nations Treaty Collection; the UNODC's World Drug Report 2006 (p. 166), Illicit Drug Trends in Central Asia (2008, p. 23) and the cannabis chapter of the World Drug Report 2009 (p. 95); the INCB report for 2023 (p. 115); the Commission on Narcotic Drugs' record of statements of December 2020 (E/CN.7/2020/CRP.24, p. 23, where Kazakhstan's statement is in Russian); and the Council of the European Union document 10291/12, the Dublin Group's regional report of May 2012.
News reports (Kazinform, Zakon.kz, Caravan, Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, Inbusiness, Bizmedia, Informburo, Tengrinews and BES.media) are cited only for policy and enforcement events and the figures officials gave. BES.media relays Interfax-Kazakhstan. The foreign ministry's statement of December 2020 is cited from Informburo's report of it.
Journal articles: Zharylgassynova and Duisenbay (2026) on Karakuys; Nigmatova and Baitanaev (2019) on the Urdzhar kurgan; Badaev and Boltaev (2013); Kasymbekov and Faleev (2014); Sarsenbaev and Boribay (2014); Yekibayeva (2026); Ren and colleagues (2021); McPartland and Small (2020); McPartland (2018); Zhang and colleagues (2020); Balant and colleagues (2022); Sitpayeva and colleagues (2020); Stikhareva and colleagues (2021); Childibayeva and colleagues (2022); Grigoryev (2018); Golunov (2007); Danilov (2015). The phylogeographic study of Balant and colleagues is cited from the bioRxiv preprint of October 2024; the published version (Plants, People, Planet, 2025) is not cited.
Abstracts only: Kukenov, Demeuov and Zharokova (2008) and Zharokova and Demeuov (2008); Zábranský and colleagues (2014); Hillig (2005); McPartland, Hegman and Long (2019); Long and colleagues (2017). They are cited from their abstracts. Tiourebaev and colleagues (2001) is cited for what its title states.
Older works: the Brockhaus and Efron articles Апоцинум (1890), Кендырь (1895), Семиреченская область (1900) and Туркестан (1901) are cited from the Wikisource transcriptions. Semenov's account of his journey of 1856–1857 is cited from the Wikisource text of the 1946 edition of his memoirs; the Wikisource page gives 1908 as its publication date. Vavilov (1926) is cited from the Internet Archive scan's OCR text, chapter 5 (pp. 107–121). The Flora of the USSR is cited from the English translation of 1970, where the Cannabis treatment falls on pp. 302–304.
Herbarium sheets. The labels of Kulyasov 183, Astapova 140 and Smirnov 137 are transcribed from the sheet images; the collectors, dates and catalogue numbers agree with the GBIF records. The printed label of Karelin & Kirilov 1043 is given as GBIF transcribes it.
Genebanks. The Vavilov Institute's holdings are cited from the reports of 1994–1998 in the Journal of the International Hemp Association (web edition) and in Grigoryev (2018). The tables of the reports are taken from their HTML markup; the 1995 report names accession 469 "Kazakhskaya". The plants behind the three Kazakh genomes of Ren and colleagues are identified from the NCBI BioSample records SAMN19471772–SAMN19471774 (KAK1–KAK3, cultivar "VIR 469-1" to "VIR 469-3", country Kazakhstan).
Checklists. The native and alien checklists of the vascular plants of Kazakhstan (2026) are cited from their GBIF datasets. The alien checklist's region codes 25 and 27 follow Pavlov's division of 1956; the names Ile Alatau and Kyrgyz Alatau are those Sitpayeva and colleagues give the same codes.

Where the sources differ

The area of wild cannabis. The figures, by source and year: 126,000 hectares (Tengrinews, 2013, "reported earlier"); 128,000 hectares officially reported (UNODC 2008); more than 130,000 hectares (Badaev and Boltaev 2013, no year or method given); 138,000 hectares (topographic survey of 1989, used by the interior ministry in 2023); 140,000 hectares in the Shu Valley (Dublin Group 2012; the interior minister in 2014; Kazakhstan's statement to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2020); more than 145,000 hectares (Zakon.kz, 2013); more than 148,000 hectares in Jambyl Region (regional police, 2022); 330,000 hectares covered by the UNODC survey of 1998–1999, "most of this" wild (Bulletin on Narcotics, 2006); more than 300,000 hectares wild and cultivated (World Drug Report 2009); up to 400,000 hectares in the Shu Valley alone (World Drug Report 2006); and 62,000 hectares after the mapping of 2023. The 1989 survey's district figures were Merke 85,700, Shu 24,400, Ryskulov 12,500, Baizak 12,200, Korday 2,000 and Moiynkum 1,000 hectares; the 2023 map moved about 65,000 hectares out of the Merke district and added 9,500 in the Ryskulov district. Whether the surveys cover the same ground is not stated in them. The page gives the range with its sources.
UNODC 2008 gives the officially reported figures for 2006 as "0.23 hectares of wild growth and 0.36 hectares of illicit cannabis cultivation", beside 128,000 hectares officially reported. The decimals do not fit the rest of the paragraph; the page uses neither.
Potential output. The World Drug Report 2006 gives a potential output of 6,000 tons and a harvest of about 500 tons for the Shu Valley; the Dublin Group (2012) gives a potential production of 5,000 to 6,000 tons of hashish from 140,000 hectares; Zakon.kz (2013) gives 24,000 tonnes of plant mass, enough for 4,600 tonnes of marijuana or 4.1 tonnes of hashish. The page gives each with its source.
Qarasora 2022. On 10 September 2022 the operation was reported to have destroyed 107.9 tonnes on 212 hectares; a report of 24 September gives 124.99 tonnes "on 28 hectares". The page gives the first.
Administrative penalties for use. Zakon.kz (2026) gives the penalty for a repeated offence under Article 440-1 of the Code on Administrative Offences as 50 monthly calculation indices or 15 days' arrest; the text of the Code gives 80 indices or 20 days. The page gives the first-offence penalty, on which both agree.
The hemp decrees. Kazinform gave dates of entry into force for decrees No. 780 and 797 that differ from the decrees' own provisions (in force after first official publication). The page gives the dates of adoption. Kazinform counted 218 varieties in the list of September 2025; the list as restated in April 2026 has about 206 numbered rows. Kazinform's report of the rules (September 2025) gives a single distance of two kilometres; the rules as amended in April 2026 give 300 metres for industrial crops and two kilometres for seed crops.
Industrial hemp before 2025. Yekibayeva (2026) writes that industrial growing of hemp was permitted from 2016 in Jambyl Region. The statute texts show the paragraphs on industrial hemp varieties added to Law No. 279 in 2025; before then, Article 22 allowed licensed cultivation of narcotic-containing plants for industrial purposes within a state quota. The page follows the statutes.
Bibliographic details. The issue cover of Otan tarikhy for the Karakuys paper gives volume 29, issue 3; Crossref gives volume 30, issue 3. The citation follows the printed issue and the DOI. The Journal of the International Hemp Association lists Clarke's five-year report in volume 5, number 2 (December 1998), while its own citation line says 5(1); the citation gives 5(2). The "How to cite" line of McPartland and Small (2020) gives PhytoKeys 177; Crossref and the journal give 144. Badaev and Boltaev print the authority of Cannabis ruderalis as "L.".
Names for the wild plant. The sources use Cannabis ruderalis Janisch. (the Flora of the USSR and the Kazakh papers of 2008–2022); C. sativa subsp. sativa, with C. ruderalis as a synonym (the native checklist of 2026); C. sativa var. spontanea Vavilov (the Vavilov Institute's records); C. sativa subsp. indica var. asperrima (McPartland and Small 2020); and C. sativa subsp. indica (the alien checklist of 2026). The page reports each under the source's own name.
Native or introduced. The native checklist counts the plant as native in every floristic region; the alien checklist lists subsp. indica as introduced in two regions; McPartland and Small take wild-type plants outside the mountain arc to be naturalised escapes. The page states all three.
The valley's name. Kazakh and Kazakh-Russian sources write Шу or Шуская долина (Shu); Russian sources also write Чу, Чуйская or Шуйская (Chu, Chui); UNODC writes Chu or Chui; the Kyrgyz part of the valley is the Chüy. The page uses Shu Valley throughout and gives the other forms in the lead.
The origin of the Shu stands. Popular accounts say that a Russian governor, Gerasim Kolpakovsky, had Indian hemp sown against encroaching sand; they date it to the second half of the 19th century (Kazinform 2023, quoting a local historian), the end of the 18th (Caravan 2007) or the 17th (Tengrinews 2014, after Lenta.ru). None gives a source. An interior ministry official told The National in 2009 that Indian strains were first registered in southern Kazakhstan in 1926 and harvested for fibre until 1950. A regional liaison officer told the paper that the local plant was declared a narcotic in 1969. The page uses none of them.

Other reports

The Kolpakovsky story and the dates of 1926, 1950 and 1969 (see above).
A Soviet-wide figure of about 430,000 hectares of hemp in 1956–1960 (Kazinform 2023): no source is given. The article does not say whether "the country" means the Soviet Union or the Kazakh SSR.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2011) on the Chu Valley's "dichka", resin made by a rider on horseback in the stands and bribes during the harvest: a journalistic account with no sources, which does not separate the Kazakh side of the valley from the Kyrgyz.
"Shaitan grass" as a local name for the Shu hemp: known only from a news report.
An Informburo feature (2018) on kendyr (Apocynum) and Soviet attempts to cultivate it: a popular history whose figures carry no sources.
Schuyler (1876) on bang and nasha smoking: the passages concern Tashkent and Samarkand.
Botoeva (2016) on hemp growing in the Kyrgyz SSR from 1933 to 1965 and hashish production in a Kyrgyz village: about Kyrgyzstan and relayed from other authors.
The National (2009) on an annual yield of "140,000 tonnes": the figure does not fit any other source.
Fridericks (1869) on hemp-seed cake carried as camel fodder by a survey party from Verny in 1867: it does not say where the cake came from.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia articles on hemp and hashish: definitions for the Soviet Union as a whole, without Kazakh content.
A news report on nasvai: it describes a smokeless tobacco, not a cannabis product.

Open questions

Floras. Whether the treatment of Cannabaceae in the Flora of Kazakhstan (vol. 3, 1960), Serebriakova's chapter in the Cultural Flora of the USSR (vol. 5, 1940), Small and Cronquist (1976) or Clarke and Merlin (2013) describe Kazakh material is open.
Chemistry. No published measurement of the cannabinoid content of Shu Valley plants is cited. Sarsenbaev and Boribay (2014) give figures without a method.
The genebank plants. Whether VIR 469 and the other Kazakh accessions at the Vavilov Institute were gathered from wild stands or from cultivated crops is not stated in the reports, nor where.
Semenov's sheet. McPartland and Small place the Kailiyskiy Alatau sheet of 1857 in Kazakhstan; the range lies on the border with Kyrgyzstan. Which side it was collected on is not stated.
Soviet cultivation. The sources give no figures for hemp sown in the Kazakh SSR, and the texts of the Soviet decrees of 1928 and 1934 and of the decree of 1974 on drug abuse are not cited. Kazakh plant-protection scientists cite unpublished reports (a final report of 1991 on the desert zone of Dzhambul region; reports of 1999 and 2001–2005 under a state programme on drug-containing plants).
Kazakh words. No dictionary is cited for қарасора, кендір or кенеп. Kulyasov's киндер шагыр of 1895 has not been matched to a dictionary form.
Archaeology. The sources give no dated cannabis pollen record from a Kazakh lake, nor any cannabis find from the Saka kurgans of Kazakhstan. The Urdzhar paper gives no date for the kurgan.
Whether The Red Data Book of Kazakhstan lists cannabis is not established.