Talk:Kolai-Palas
Discussion page of Kolai-Palas
More actions
Talk
Discussion for: Kolai-Palas • View • Links • Related changes
Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Page scope
Kolai-Palas treats Kolai-Palas District, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as a cannabis growing area: the cannabis crop that police destroyed at Bin Banda in 2019 and at Kolai in 2025, and the plant's use in Kohistan. The district as an administrative unit is a separate subject, Kolai-Palas District.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Why Kolai-Palas is a growing area
- The Associated Press of Pakistan reports cannabis cultivated illegally at Bin Banda, in Palas, and destroyed by the Palas police (11 September 2019), and the cannabis crop cultivated on 80 kanals at Kolai destroyed by the Kolai police with an agriculture department team (14 October 2025).
- Stamler, Fahlman and Vigeant (1985) name Kohistan among the places in Pakistan where cannabis was mainly cultivated.
- The status is Active: the reports describe cannabis cultivated in the district since 2000. A destruction drive does not mean that growing has ended, and no source read says that it has.
Extent and border
- The map border is approximate. It is drawn on Kolai-Palas District as mapped in OpenStreetMap (relation 16519317), which holds both places named in the reports.
- The map line keeps the land of the district below 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) that ESA WorldCover 2021 does not map as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water; pockets inside the line are filled, pieces less than about 5 km apart are joined and the edge is smoothed. About 980 km² of the 1,180 km² of the district remain, and the infobox area is rounded from that line.
- The point in the infobox is a point inside the district near its centre, not a field. Bin Banda could not be placed on a map.
Sources
- Associated Press of Pakistan, carried by UrduPoint. Read in Urdu; the English titles in the references are translations. Bhang in these reports means the cannabis crop.
- Amin and colleagues (2024). Their table of the wild medicinal plants of Kohistan lists Cannabis sativa (bhang) with its use but gives no village for it, so the page uses it for the use only, not as evidence of growing in a particular place. It is the source for the division of Kohistan into three districts and for its valleys and languages.
- Stamler, Fahlman and Vigeant (1985). Read in the UNODC web edition of the Bulletin on Narcotics and in the scan of the printed issue (p. 44). The three authors were officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the passage on Pakistan rests on intelligence reports; it names districts and valleys, not villages.