Talk:Moroccan hashish trade

Talk

Discussion for: Moroccan hashish trade • View • Links • Related changes

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

Page scope

Moroccan hashish trade treats the export of hashish from the Rif: how resin making for export began in the 1960s, the routes to Europe through Spain and eastwards through North Africa as the reports and scholarship describe them, the figures for area, production, market share and seizures with their years and sources, and the licensed trade created by Law 13-21 of 2021. The plant, its cultivation and the replacement of the kif plant by imported hybrids belong to Cannabis in Morocco; the resin itself and its other producing countries to Hashish. Routes are described at the level of country, province, region or port that the cited reports use.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

• UN and EU reports. The UNODC's World Drug Report (2007; 2019 booklet 5; 2025 Special Points of Interest), its report on trafficking in Libya and North Africa (January 2026), the joint UNODC and APDN cannabis surveys of Morocco for 2004 and 2005, and the annual reports of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. From the EMCDDA: Cannabis Production and Markets in Europe (Insights 12, 2012), the EU Drug Markets Report with Europol (2016 in-depth analysis; 2019), Changes in Europe's cannabis resin market (Perspectives on Drugs, 2016) and the cannabis chapter of the European Drug Report 2024. The EMCDDA documents are cited from the copies held by the Health Research Board's National Drugs Library (drugsandalcohol.ie), except the 2024 chapter, whose address is the one printed in the document.
• Scholarship. Chouvy and Afsahi (2014), Afsahi (2015), Afsahi and Chouvy (2015, OFDT), Chouvy (2008, 2018, 2022, 2025), Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo (2008, in the EMCDDA's A cannabis reader), Snelders (2021), Sánchez-Pérez and colleagues (2023), and Labrousse and Romero's report for the OFDT (2001). Boukhars (2019) is a think-tank analysis of two states in dispute over their border; his account of the eastward trade is attributed to him.
• Law 13-21 is cited from the French official translation edition of the Bulletin officiel (no. 7010, 5 August 2021, pp. 1172–1180), and the decree of 18 March 2022 naming the three provinces from Bulletin officiel no. 7080, p. 527. The 1 per cent THC level is the joint order no. 1297-22 of 12 May 2022 (Bulletin officiel no. 7122, p. 1443), cited through Chouvy (2025), who gives its page as 1444.
• Figures for the licensed crop after 2024 come from the agency's director in an interview with the Moroccan news agency MAP, reported by H24Info (22 April 2026). The agency's own website publishes no area or licence totals.
• Chouvy's 2016 background paper for the EMCDDA, The supply of hashish to Europe, is the source the EMCDDA's 2016 report and its Perspectives on Drugs paper draw on for Morocco; the article cites those two.

Where the sources disagree

• When export production began. The mid-1960s (Clarke and Chouvy 2008, as summarised by the EMCDDA in 2012; Chouvy 2008 itself), the middle or late 1960s (Chouvy 2018), the late 1960s (Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo; the EMCDDA's 2016 Perspectives on Drugs, after Clarke), after 1960 (Labrousse and Romero), and the 1970s (Afsahi, Moreno, as summarised by the EMCDDA). The article gives the range and attributes each.
• Who brought sieving. European hippies who had learnt it in Lebanon or Afghanistan (Afsahi 2015); foreigners and Ketama traffickers, with techniques from Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Netherlands (Labrousse and Romero); Europeans from Afghanistan or an Algerian copying the Lebanese method (Clarke, through Chouvy 2008); a Lebanese origin as most likely (Chouvy and Afsahi 2014). Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo date the introduction of hash oil techniques, after Lebanese and Pakistani methods, to the 1960s; the article does not use that line, which concerns oil.
• Production in 2003. 3,080 tonnes (the 2003 survey fact sheet; Chouvy and Afsahi 2014; the 2004 survey), 3,070 tonnes (UNODC 2007 summary chapters; Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo; Chouvy 2008, 2018) and 3,060 tonnes (UNODC 2007, chapter 4). The article and infobox give 3,080.
• Area in 2005. 72,500 hectares (the 2005 survey, net of the eradication reported in Larache) and 76,400 hectares (UNODC 2007 and 2008, the gross figure).
• The wars. The EMCDDA (2016) dates the war in Lebanon 1975–1991; Chouvy (2022) 1975–1990. Each date is given where its source is cited.
• Resin seized in the European Union in 2022. The European Drug Report 2024 gives 468 tonnes, down from 816 tonnes in 2021. The INCB's report for 2024 (para. 918) says the 2022 total fell by 43 per cent "to 816 tons"; 816 tonnes is the 2021 figure. The article follows the EMCDDA.
• Morocco's share of European resin. Labrousse and Romero: 80 to 90 per cent of European seizures (around 2000). Chouvy (2008): 80 per cent in 2004. UNODC (2007): about 70 per cent of consumption. Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo, citing the EMCDDA: over 70 per cent. All are given with their dates.
• Area in the 1980s and 1990s. Labrousse and Romero (5,000–10,000 hectares at the start of the 1980s, 30,000–35,000 at the end); Dutch and European Union estimates via Clarke (25,000 in the mid-1980s, 60,000 in 1993, 75,000 in 1995); Hassan II's 50,000 in 1992. Labrousse and Romero also list 65,000–74,000 hectares for 1993 and 78,410 for 1995 from other estimators; those are not used.
• The direct route through Libya. The UNODC (2019) found it had lost importance by 2017; the EMCDDA and Europol (2019) described Libya as a major storage and transit hub. Both are given.

Infobox

• Origin, by way of and destination are the places the cited reports name as the source of the resin, its main point of entry and its largest markets: the Rif and Ketama; Spain; France (with Spain, the largest consumer market for Moroccan resin in Chouvy and Afsahi 2014) and the Netherlands (the main distribution centre for northern Europe in the EMCDDA reports). The eastward route through Algeria and Libya is described in the article and left out of the infobox, whose map joins each stage to the next.
• No points are given. The Rif, Ketama (named in the sources as a region), Spain, France and the Netherlands are a mountain region and countries, which have no single point; none is drawn.
• Period. No source gives a single first year, so period_start is empty and the infobox carries no timeline record; active reads "1960s to the present".
• Legal status is Illegal: the trade the page describes is illegal in Morocco and in the countries it supplies. The licensed exports under Law 13-21 are a separate trade in products for medical, pharmaceutical and industrial use.

Images reserved in the article

• Infobox: cannabis fields in the Rif, 1985 (Michel Benoist, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
• The route: Tangier seen from the harbour, 2015 (Mike McBey, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0). It does not show cannabis; the caption names the town as one of the gathering points Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo describe.

Open points

• A single first year for the trade would let the infobox emit a timeline record. Snelders's 1971 seizure in the Netherlands is the earliest dated event in the sources here, but it is a seizure, not the start of the trade.
• The EMCDDA and Europol's EU Drug Market: Cannabis (2023) and the European Drug Report 2025 would bring the route and seizure figures past 2022.