Talk:New Caledonia

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Discussion for: New Caledonia • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

New Caledonia is the Country page for New Caledonia. It states the territory's status under the French Constitution and the Nouméa Accord in the lead, then covers where cannabis is grown and seized; use surveys and the 2004 opinion of the Economic and Social Council on cannabis among Kanak youth; field and indoor growing; the herbarium sheet of 1977; France's treaty adherence; the division of competences between the State and New Caledonia, the local narcotics list, the French penal provisions and the hemp plan of 2026; and enforcement. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name New Caledonia 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

Status. Title XIII of the Constitution (arts. 76–77) was read in the consolidated text published by the Constitutional Council; decision 2020-869 QPC was read on the Council's site. The organic law no. 99-209 was read in the text of the Journal officiel of 21 March 1999 (pp. 4197–4225), in a copy hosted on a New Caledonian website; articles 20–22 and 86–87 are cited as originally enacted. The law has since been amended and some competences transferred; the consolidated text on Légifrance could not be reached.
Referendums. The date of the first consultation (4 November 2018) is from the Haut-commissariat's open-data description of its results; the "no" shares of 2018 and 2020 (56.7 and 53.3 per cent) are summed from its polling-station results for those years (the Senate table gives 56.6 and 53.2, truncated); the share of 2021 (96.5 per cent) and the dates of 2020 and 2021 are from the Senate's report no. 409 (2025–2026) and its information report no. 831 (2021–2022). The Bougival and Élysée-Oudinot agreements are cited for their dates only, from the Senate report of 2026; their texts were not read.
Local law. Annexe 51-26 (the narcotics list, in the copy updated on 8 October 2025) and délibération no. 562 of 5 June 2026 were read on Juridoc, the New Caledonian government's legal site; arrêté no. 2025-661/GNC on the page of the Journal officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie published by the health directorate (the file is named for arrêté 2025-659, printed on the same page). The amending arrêté no. 2025-1691/GNC of 8 October 2025 was not read.
French codes. Articles 222-35, 222-37, 711-1 and 711-3 of the Penal Code and L3421-1 and L3842-1 of the Public Health Code were read in a consolidation of the official French open legal data (codes.droit.org, Penal Code text updated 26 August 2026), because Légifrance refused the connection. The figures for 2004 are from the opinion of the Economic and Social Council, which lists the articles as then applied.
Opinion of 2004. Avis no. 07/2004 of the Economic and Social Council of New Caledonia (9 June 2004), referred by the President of the North Province, was read in full on the council's site. Its statements on Kanak youth, the nakamals and customary authority are the council's, made "selon les témoignages"; the article attributes them to it.
Barguil (2011). The doctoral thesis of Yann Barguil (Université de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, DOI 10.6098/2011NCAL0034) was read in the open-access PDF on HAL; the cannabis chapter runs from p. 54 to p. 117. The localities of the 40 seizure samples are from its tables on pp. 115–116. The survey published by INSERM in March 2008 that it cites was not traced.
Surveys. The Baromètre santé adulte 2015 of the Agence sanitaire et sociale (preliminary results, 1,144 respondents for the cannabis questions) and the OFDT's note on ESCAPAD 2023 in the overseas territories (July 2025; 360 respondents in New Caledonia) were read in full. The Baromètre santé jeunes 2025 is cited as reported by Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes (31 March 2026); the agency's own report was not found. Évelyne Barthou's study of 2020 to 2024 is cited from her interview in the same paper; the study report was not found.
Treaties. France's dates and declarations are from the UN Treaty Collection status pages; the tables name no separate entry for New Caledonia.
Herbarium sheet. MacKee's sheet (P06780077) is known from its GBIF occurrence data; the sheet image and the museum's catalogue page could not be opened. The coordinates GBIF gives for it are a georeference added in processing, not on the label.
International Narcotics Control Board. Only the report for 2000 (p. 68, para. 515) was read for New Caledonia.
News (Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes) is cited only for gendarmerie, police and customs operations, court steps, votes of the Congress and what officials said. The interview with the regional director of customs (14 March 2023) is behind a paywall after its first answer, which gives the 2022 seizure figures.
The documentary Nouméa connection (NC la 1ère, Les Chemins de l'Histoire) is cited from the broadcaster's own presentation page; the film was not seen and its broadcast date is not on the page.

Where the sources differ

Date of the first referendum. The Senate report of 2026 prints "4 octobre 2018" in its table; the Haut-commissariat's dataset gives 4 November 2018, which the article uses.
Turnout. The Senate's report of 2022 gives turnouts of 73.7 and 80 per cent for 2018 and 2020; its report of 2026 gives 81 and 86 per cent. The article gives no turnout figures.
Adult prevalence. The hemp plan of 2026 reports 13 per cent current use among people aged 18 to 64 (8.5 per cent occasional, 4.5 per cent daily) without naming the survey; the barometer of 2015 gives 13 per cent among people aged 18 to 60. The article uses the 2015 figure, which names its survey.
Penalty for use. One year and 450,000 CFP francs in the council's opinion of 2004; one year and 3,750 euros in the Public Health Code as read in 2026.

Not used, and why

The Wikipedia article on cannabis in New Caledonia: a tertiary source. Its statement that Kanak chiefs work to eradicate plantations could not be traced to a source that was read.
Gendarmerie press pages on eradication operations: the site refused the connection; their content was seen only in search snippets.
Beck and others (2008), "Usages de drogues à l'adolescence en Nouvelle-Calédonie": known from a catalogue entry that names neither the journal nor the volume.
A youth study of 1984 by the ORSTOM (now IRD) on Kanak youth and customary order: no passage on cannabis was found in its text layer, which is of poor quality.

Open questions

Arrival and names. No dated source on when or how cannabis reached New Caledonia was found, nor any Kanak-language, Bislama or Wallisian name for it. Colonial-era records of hemp (chanvre) in New Caledonia were not reached (Gallica refused the connection).
The amende forfaitaire délictuelle. Whether the fixed fine for cannabis use introduced in France in 2019 applies in New Caledonia (and from when) is not settled by the texts read.
Medical cannabis. No local law on cannabis for therapeutic use was found; the hemp plan of 2026 calls for local law to distinguish it.
The hemp varieties. The plan names FU750, FU830, MU760 and SA700 without their breeder or country of registration.
Germplasm and chemistry. No genetic study of cannabis from New Caledonia was found. Barguil's thesis gives cannabinoid results for one trafficking case, not for the 40 seizure samples. The status that the French national checklist (TAXREF) gives Cannabis sativa in New Caledonia could not be read.