EchoGéo

48 | 2019 Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world

Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/17489 DOI: 10.4000/echogeo.17489 ISSN: 1963-1197

Publisher Pôle de recherche pour l'organisation et la diffusion de l'information géographique (CNRS UMR 8586)

Electronic reference EchoGéo, 48 | 2019, “Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world” [Online], Online since 13 July 2019, connection on 31 July 2021. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/17489; DOI: https:// doi.org/10.4000/echogeo.17489

This text was automatically generated on 31 July 2021.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial

Marijuana et haschich, regards sur le cannabis Jean-Louis Chaléard

Marijuana and hashish: perspectives on cannabis Editorial Jean-Louis Chaléard

Sur le Champ

Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world

Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world, and as a subject in academic research Introduction Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Cannabis cultivation in the world: heritages, trends and challenges Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony Chris S. Duvall

Turning Cannabis Into Cash: Agrarian Change and Lesotho’s Evolving Experience Julian Bloomer

Living Dangerously: Confronting Insecurity, Navigating Risk, and Negotiating Livelihoods in the Hidden Economy of Congo’s Cannabis Trade Ann Laudati

Known Unknowns and Unknown Knowns: What we know about the cannabis and the Hashish trade in Afghanistan James Bradford and David Mansfield

American Weed: A History of Cannabis Cultivation in the United States Nick Johnson

Illegal cannabis cultivation in Europe: new developments David Weinberger, Michel Gandilhon, Jalpa Shah and Nacer Lalam

Territorial control and the scope and resilience of cannabis and other illegal drug crop cultivation Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

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Sur l'Ecrit

Du terrain à la fiction : l’écriture d’une Mexamérique méconnue Entretien avec Jean-Baptiste Maudet autour de son roman Matador Yankee (2019), réalisé à Paris le 3 avril 2019 Jean-Baptiste Maudet and Serge Weber

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Editorial

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Marijuana et haschich, regards sur le cannabis

Jean-Louis Chaléard

1 La présente livraison d’Échogéo est spéciale en ce sens qu’elle est très largement consacrée à un thème unique, la production de cannabis, et que les articles sont rédigés en anglais. Notre revue est a priori francophone mais nous ne publions pas que des textes en français. Surtout, les recherches et l’essentiel de la production scientifique sur le cannabis se font largement en anglais. C’est pourquoi nous avons décidé de construire un dossier de la rubrique Sur le Champ intégralement dans cette langue. Seule la rubrique Sur l’Écrit reste en français dans ce numéro.

2 Dans son introduction, Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, qui a dirigé le dossier sur la production de cannabis dans le monde, souligne la relative faiblesse des publications scientifiques, notamment des géographes, sur ce sujet. Cette situation est à certains égards paradoxale, puisque le cannabis est la culture illicite la plus courante dans le monde. C’est cette lacune que le dossier contribue à combler.

3 Les huit articles du dossier, s’ils ne prétendent pas fournir une vue exhaustive de la situation, offrent néanmoins un large panorama de la production, à la fois dans des pays du Nord (États-Unis, Europe) et des pays du Sud, africains ou asiatiques, des pays où domine la consommation sous forme « d’herbe » (feuilles, fleurs, tiges séchées), plus connue sous son appellation d’origine mexicaine de marijuana, très répandue aux États-Unis, et la production de résine (haschich), plus consommée dans des pays comme la France, l’Espagne, en provenance notamment du Maroc. Ces textes permettent d’appréhender la diversité des situations, des conditions de production et des trajectoires productives rendant les généralisations délicates. Ainsi, contrairement à ce qu’on présente souvent, la production n’est pas seulement le fait de paysans pauvres du Sud (comme l’importance des petits producteurs autoconsommateurs nord- américains et européens ou le développement récent de grandes sociétés productrices le prouvent) ; elle ne prospère pas seulement dans les pays en guerre... Mais des points communs se dégagent aussi, beaucoup de zones productrices étant marquées par une relative ancienneté de la production et de la consommation (plusieurs siècles), par des

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évolutions récentes majeures liées notamment à l’expansion de la culture et à la croissance de la demande, etc.

4 Les textes traitent de vastes ensembles, à l’origine d’utiles mises au point à l’échelle globale ou continentale, ou bien étudient minutieusement des cas particuliers qui permettent d’approfondir les questions. Le premier article de P.-A. Chouvy s’intéresse aux héritages, aux tendances actuelles et aux défis de la production de cannabis dans le monde. L’auteur relève que les données sont souvent limitées et peu fiables, ce qui pose problème pour analyser les enjeux actuels de la production, dans un contexte d’évolution rapide de l’activité et de la législation. Les trois articles suivant abordent le sujet en Afrique. C. Duvall distingue quatre phases dans l’histoire du cannabis sur ce continent. L’ancienneté de la culture permet de comprendre l’étendue des savoirs et l’éventail des variétés cultivées actuellement, alors que l’autorisation puis l’interdiction de la culture par les autorités coloniales ont permis dans les faits son développement, la rendant au XXè siècle très attrayante pour les petits producteurs. Il souligne enfin que la légalisation actuelle de la culture dans plusieurs pays ne change pas les relations qui ont permis au Nord de tirer profit de la production réalisée par les agriculteurs africains. Les deux articles suivants complètent et précisent le précédent. J. Bloomer analyse le contexte de la production de cannabis au Lesotho, insistant sur son ancienneté et son rôle dans le cadre d’une stratégie de subsistance des petits producteurs. Il s’interroge sur les conséquences de l’annonce récente par le gouvernement d’une production sous licence à objectif médical. A. Laudati montre que la production de cannabis au Congo, contrairement à ce qui est souvent affirmé, n’est pas une cause de l’insécurité qui règne dans le pays mais plutôt une réponse à cette insécurité. L’interdiction du commerce du cannabis, son illégalité, façonnent les termes du commerce plus que l’inverse. J. Bradford et D. Mansfield, avec l’Afghanistan, nous font changer de continent. Le pays est célèbre pour sa production d’opium. Les auteurs relèvent qu’à côté existe une production ancienne de cannabis, composante significative de l’économie et de la culture afghanes. La hausse de la demande de haschich à partir des années 1960 a aidé à forger des réseaux mondiaux, le commerce du cannabis s’étant transformé en réponse à des facteurs aussi bien locaux, que nationaux et mondiaux. S’intéressant au cas d’un pays du Nord, N. Johnson essaie de voir comment les États-Unis sont devenus l’un des premiers pays producteurs de cannabis du monde à la fin du XXè et au XXIè siècles. Il montre les processus qui ont amené la généralisation de la culture dans le pays, à partir de l’examen du cas de trois régions (Centre-Ouest, Sud et Ouest) aux trajectoires spécifiques, et comment ces évolutions aident à comprendre ce qui pousse actuellement certains États à légaliser la culture après quatre-vingts ans d’interdiction. La production de l’Europe n’a pas la même importance que celle des États-Unis, mais elle est en croissance depuis les années 1960-1970. M. Gandilhon, N. Lalam et D. Weinberger analysent cette évolution et les changements de structure qui vont avec : les acteurs sont nombreux et variés, les organisations maffieuses dominant le marché ; mais les petits producteurs, dont la culture est basée sur la convivialité, représentent une dimension persistante de la production. Le dernier article de P.-A. Chouvy clôt le numéro, en même temps qu’il apporte des éléments sur les dynamiques spatiales passées et actuelles. S’appuyant sur des cas concrets (Maroc, Afghanistan, nord-est de l’Inde, Birmanie, États-Unis) l’auteur distingue trois scenarii principaux qui rendent compte d’une production de drogue à grande échelle : celui d’une guerre inefficace contre les drogues, celui d’une tolérance pour divers motifs, celui d’un État militairement contesté. La guerre contre la drogue

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paraît vouée à l’échec, remettant en cause implicitement l’illégalité de cette pratique. L’article renvoie à des interrogations actuelles posées dans tout le numéro, qui concernent la drogue mais vont aussi au-delà : relations entre l’illégal et l’illicite chez des populations cultivant de longue date le cannabis et à qui on l’interdit ; question de plus en plus prégnante de la légalisation de la consommation à des fins médicales ou non, et dont les conséquences risquent d’être très importantes sur les pays producteurs du tiers monde...

5 Dans ce numéro en anglais sur le cannabis, la rubrique Sur l’écrit fait exception, restant dans son format et ses thématiques habituels. Serge Weber interviewe J.-B. Maudet, romancier et géographe (ou géographe et romancier ?), à propos de la parution de son dernier livre Matador Yankee qui met en scène un personnage né à la frontière entre deux mondes, pas tout à fait torero ni complètement cowboy. L’interview est l’occasion, au-delà de l’histoire du personnage, de s’interroger sur la frontière entre le Mexique et les États-Unis, immense et multidimensionnelle, sur les relations entre corrida et rodéo, l’auteur étant spécialiste des jeux taurins. Les notations géographiques sont nombreuses : logique spatiale des arènes, rôle de la communauté portugaise immigrée dans le monde de l’élevage taurin aux États-Unis, etc. Toutefois J.-B Maudet souligne que son ouvrage se démarque totalement d’un roman historique ou géographique, même si la bonne connaissance de la région lui a permis de se libérer de tout volet documentaire au moment de l’écriture. C’est pourquoi, au-delà des notations géographique, l’interview nous introduit dans une réflexion sur l’apport des écrivains nord-américains (comme Carver et Hemingway) et surtout du cinéma. Pour un autre visage de l’Ouest américain et des relations États-Unis Mexique que celui aperçu à travers le cannabis…

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Marijuana and hashish: perspectives on cannabis Editorial

Jean-Louis Chaléard

1 This is issue of Echogéo is special. First of all because it tackles a unique theme, the production of cannabis, but also because its articles are all written in English. While this journal is predominantly in French, not all contributions are written in this language. More importantly, research on cannabis and the majority of the scholarly output on this topic is published in English. For this reason, we decided to publish the entire “Sur le champ” section in this language. However, the “Sur l’écrit” section remains in French.

2 In his introduction, Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, the editor of the section on global cannabis production, stresses this topic’s relatively poor scholarly coverage, in particular in geography. This situation appears paradoxical, as cannabis is the most widespread illicit crop in the world: this issue is an attempt to fill this gap.

3 While this issue’s eight articles do not aspire to provide an exhaustive overview, they do offer a wide panorama of cannabis production, ranging from the North (USA, Europe) to the South, spanning both Africa and Asia, and covering regions where cannabis is predominantly consumed as “weed” (dried leaves, flowers and stems), better known under its Mexican denomination marijuana and more commonly used in the USA, as well as countries such as France and Spain where cannabis resin (hashish) is more widely consumed and imported in particular from Morocco. The contributors document very diverse situations, conditions of production and productive trajectories, making any attempt at a generalization difficult. For instance, contrary to many accounts, cannabis is not only produced by poor farmers in Southern countries: other producers include self-supplying small growers in North America and Europe, as well as the development of large producer corporations. Furthermore, the production of this crop does not only thrive in war-torn countries… However, a number of common features can be observed: many producer areas are characterized by a relatively long- established production and consumption (which sometimes goes back centuries), and

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have undergone major changes in recent years due to the expansion of culture and to the growth of demand.

4 The contributions tackle vast regions, providing valuable insights on a global or continental scale, but also examine specific cases in detail in order to study the issue in more depth. The first paper by P.A. Chouvy looks at heritage, current trends and challenges in global cannabis production. The author stresses that the data is often limited and unreliable, which poses problems in analyzing current production issues in a context of rapidly evolving activity and regulations. The following three papers address the topic in Africa. C. Duvall identifies four phases in the history of cannabis on this continent. The long existence of this production explains the depth of local knowledge and the wide range of crops cultivated today. The authorization and later the ban of production by colonial authorities have in fact facilitated its development in the twentieth century, making it very attractive for small farmers. Finally, C. Duvall highlights how the current legalization of production in several countries does not change the relations that have so far allowed the North to profit from the produce of African farmers.

5 The next two articles complement the first by elaborating on some specific points. J. Bloomer analyzes the context of cannabis production in Lesotho, examining its long existence and the part it plays in small farmers’ survival strategies. J. Bloomer questions the consequences of a recent announcement by the government that this production could be licensed for medical purposes. A. Laudati shows that contrary to what is often claimed, cannabis production in Congo is not the cause of the country’s current poor security situation, but rather a response to it. It is the ban of the cannabis trade and its illegality that shapes the terms of this market, rather than the opposite. J. Bradford and D. Mansfield take us to another continent, looking at the case of Afghanistan, a country well known for its opium production. The authors note that alongside opium, the country has for centuries been host to an established production of cannabis, which forms a significant part of the Afghani economy and culture. After the 1960s, the rise in the demand for hashish contributed to the development of global networks, as the cannabis trade transformed itself in response to local, national and global factors.

6 Looking at the case of a Northern country, N. Johnson seeks to understand how the USA have become a leading producer of cannabis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Johnson shows the processes that led to the generalization of its cultivation in the country by analyzing the cases of three regions (Midwest, South and West), whose specific trajectories shed light on the reason why certain States are now legalizing this culture after an eighty-year long prohibition. Although Europe’s production is not as significant as North America’s, it has been growing since the 1960s and 70s. M. Gandilhon, N. Lalam and D. Weinberger analyze this evolution, along with the structural changes it brought about: the sector involves many diverse stakeholders, but remains dominated by players linked to Mafia organizations. However, small growers, whose practices are based on conviviality, account for a significant share of the production.

7 The last article by P.-A. Chouvy closes this issue with elements on past and current spatial dynamics. Working from concrete cases (Morocco, Afghanistan, North-East India, Burma, USA), the author identifies three main scenarios in large-scale drug crop cultivation today: that of a full-fledged but inefficient war on drugs; that of toleration,

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for various motives, of illegal drug plant cultivation by the state; and that of the militarily-challenged state that cannot exert full control over its territory. The war on drugs appears doomed to fail, which implicitly raises questions on the illegality of this practice. The article refers to a number of issues that emerge recurrently throughout other contributions, in the context of drugs and beyond: the relation between the illegal and the illicit for populations that have been cultivating cannabis for generations and were banned from doing so; the increasingly pressing question of the legalization of cannabis consumption, whether for medical purposes or not, which may have a major impact on third world producer countries…

8 Within this English-language issue on cannabis, the “Sur l’écrit” section retains its usual format and themes. Serge Weber interviews novelist-geographer (or geographer- novelist?) J.-B. Maudet on his recently published novel, Matador Yankee, staging a character who was born at the border between two worlds: he is not quite a torero nor quite a cowboy. Beyond the character’s story, the interview is an opportunity to discuss the gigantic and multidimensional US-Mexico border, as well as the relation between corrida and rodeo as the author is a bull fighting expert. The interview features many geographic notions: the spatial dimension of the arenas, the role of the immigrant Portuguese community in bull rearing in the USA, etc. However, J.-B. Maudet stresses that his novel is totally different from a historic or geographic novel, even though his thorough knowledge of the region has enabled him to skip the documentation phase when writing the novel. Beyond geographic considerations, the interview introduces a reflection on the influence of North American writers (such as Carver and Hemingway) and film. The interview thus paints a different picture of the American West and US- Mexico relations, in contrast with the images glimpsed through the prism of the cannabis trade.

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Sur le Champ

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Sur le Champ

Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world

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Illegal cannabis cultivation in the world, and as a subject in academic research Introduction

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

1 Illegal cannabis cultivation as a worldwide phenomenon is the theme of this edition of ÉchoGéo. As expected, putting together a special issue on illegal cannabis cultivation in the world is challenging since very few scholars conduct on-location research on cultivation specifically and also because very few authors have in-depth knowledge of the plant’s history, botany, agronomy, or even industry. This is, of course, because most of the world’s drug cannabis has long been and is still cultivated illegally and because illegality has clearly hindered research on cannabis in most producing countries.

2 Therefore, while the authors who contributed to this edition have conducted very valuable research on a variety of countries and regions (by order of appearance: the world, the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Afghanistan, the United States of America, Europe) and sometimes specifically on cannabis, it proved impossible to find contributors who could write empirically about some of the most notable producing countries in terms of historical importance or quantities produced.

3 As a result, Latin America could not be covered at all, despite, for example, the historical and current importance of Mexico in large-scale commercial cannabis production. Also, no field-based research seems to exist about illegal cannabis cultivation in some other countries with long cannabis-related traditions and with large cannabis cultivation areas and productions, such as India, Nepal, and Jamaica. What is even more surprising, considering their regional and global importance in terms of production, is that neither India nor Lebanon are mentioned among the major producing countries in the 2006 “Review of the world cannabis situation” published by the United Nations in its Bulletin on Narcotics (Legget, 2006, p. 35). Maybe this explains that.

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About academic research on illegal cannabis cultivation

4 Of course, empiric research – i.e. on-location research based on direct or indirect observation or experience – on illegal drug crops is often difficult to carry: indeed, illegal drug crops are often “dangerous harvests” (Steinberg et al., 2004) that deter many academic researchers from doing fieldwork on that topic. This is even more so the case when illegal crops are grown in war-torn or violence-affected countries, as is often the case (such as in Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia, and Mexico). In fact, the vast majority of the researchers who work on illegal cannabis cultivation focus on case studies located in the Global North. Very few of them carry fieldwork in the Global South, despite the fact that this is where most of the marihuana (herbal cannabis) and clearly most of the hashish (cannabis resin) are produced.

5 This was exemplified in the important 2011 collective book World Wide Weed that focused on “global trends of cannabis cultivation” and “the spread and diversity of cannabis cultivation worldwide” but whose authors dedicated only two out of sixteen chapters (mostly written by criminologists) to southern countries (English-speaking Caribbean and Morocco) (Decorte et al., 2011). This book and the majority of the recent research conducted on illegal cannabis cultivation in the world show how field-based research is limited both geographically (Global North largely overrepresented) and methodologically (predominance of police data, online surveys, with limited on- location direct observations of the ethnographic, geographic, or agronomic type) (Legget, 2006, p. 61-93)1. In comparison, when Cannabis and Culture was published in 1975 as the first collective book on cannabis in the world, most of its articles (written mostly by psychiatrists and anthropologists, as well as by a few botanists) were about countries from the Global South and most of them were based on fieldwork (Rubin, 1975).

6 Surprisingly, not one geographer contributed to either book. In fact, very few geographers have researched illegal drug crops and even fewer have specialised on drug crops in the long-term. Yet illegal drug crop cultivation is a highly geographical issue since it is, as any other agricultural activity, a spatial phenomenon with obvious territorial dimensions. To be fair, very little field-based work has been done in any academic discipline on illegal cannabis cultivation. And fieldwork-based research on other illegal drug crops is also rare, as stressed about opium poppy cultivation by David Mansfield (2016, p. 45). Moreover, coca and opium by-products have attracted a lot more attention than cannabis by-products, even though cannabis is clearly the world’s most widely cultivated and consumed illegal drug (Legget, 2006). But the knowledge deficit on cannabis is far from being limited to geography: indeed, as Ted Legget wrote in his 2006 review of the world cannabis situation, “Cannabis is the world’s most widely cultivated and consumed illicit drug, but there remain major gaps in our understanding of global cannabis markets” (Legget, 2006, p. 1).

7 In fact, most books on cannabis, such as those by Booth (2003), a historically-oriented author, Mills (2003), a historian, and Duvall (2014), a geographer, have mostly focused on the broad history of cannabis and as such are not derived from primary field-based research in cannabis growing areas. The recent near-encyclopaedic work produced by botanists Clarke and Merlin (2013) on the natural origins, early evolution, and ethnobotany of the cannabis plant, falls between history, botany, and an ethnographic

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study, and consists primarily of a comprehensive critical review of the cannabis-related literature, although with some high-value primary data collection at source over long periods of time. Clarke’s precedent book on hashish (1998) is undoubtedly one of the most thorough – yet non–academic – texts on both cannabis and hashish as it offers a rare history of the plant and of one of its main end products (hashish) at various scales (global, regional, and national) but also of cultivation and production techniques in all of the former and present-day producing countries (Afghanistan, Greece, India, Lebanon, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, etc.) (Clarke, 1998).

8 If academic research in cannabis producing countries in the Global South has most often been limited in time, scope, and depth, there has been some respite over the last decade with the field-based research of Kepe (2003) on South Africa, Afsahi, Chouvy, and Macfarlane in Morocco (Chouvy 2008; Chouvy and Afsahi 2014; Chouvy 2016; Chouvy and Macfarlane 2018), Bloomer (2009) in Lesotho, Botoeva (2014) in Kyrgyzstan, and Laudati (2016) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Still, as a whole, primary research on illegal cannabis cultivation in the Global South remains extremely scarce and very little is known about who produces what in Afghanistan, Albania, India, Lebanon, or Mexico. This is despite the important role that these countries play as suppliers to regional markets worldwide.

9 The contributing authors to this special issue on illegal cannabis cultivation are amongst the very few who either focus specifically on cannabis production in a given geographic area or include cannabis-related issues in their broader studies of various countries. In other words, and as previously explained by Duvall, cannabis specialists are rare and as a consequence the plant and its agriculture is not always what the authors specifically focus on.

A few case studies, from Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe

10 This issue opens with a text on the heritages, trends, and challenges of illegal cannabis production in the world in which I first stress how the limited data available about cannabis cultivation is most often inaccurate, unreliable, and highly controversial, and how this has become even more acute of an issue now that global trends towards decriminalisation and legalisation are provoking negative unintended consequences in poor producing countries. The article is an effort to clarify some key notions of the cannabis plant and industry in the context of the geohistory of modern cannabis production from the 1960s on. Overall, the article presents the state of the current knowledge and the present and future stakes of the fast-changing cannabis industry and legislation.

11 The second article, authored by geographer Chris Duvall, focuses on the African continent and its four historical phases of cannabis cultivation, from the plant’s initial dispersal across the continent and how pre-colonial agriculture turned African cannabis into a valuable crop, to the development of formal markets for cannabis under colonial regimes, to how prohibition during the twentieth-century affected the economy and political ecology of cannabis production and has weakened the global market positions of African countries, and finally to how the undergoing legalisation processes that are multiplying across the continent largely amount to “instances of

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accumulation through dispossession by Global Northern companies, enabled through the exercise of neocolonial power”.

12 Africa, a continent that is usually left out of drug production studies, is the focus of two other articles. Based on years on fieldwork, geographer Julian Bloomer addresses both historical and contemporary developments surrounding cannabis cultivation in Lesotho, southern Africa, with a particular emphasis on rural livelihoods and the impact of illegal cultivation and trade on local and national governance. He shares some of Duvall’s concerns when he critiques some of the developmentalist rhetoric surrounding the granting of licenses for medical cannabis put forward by investors now that Lesotho has become (in 2017) the first African country to license cannabis production for medical and scientific purposes, although to the advantage of wealthy bio-prospectors rather than to the rural poor.

13 The other African case study is that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where geographer Ann Laudati has conducted extensive fieldwork with those engaged in the cannabis production and trade in the context of war. In her paper she challenges the narrative of violence, delinquency, and greed that overwhelmingly foregrounds most discussions of Congo’s cannabis economy. By doing so she shows how the cannabis trade has become a response to Congo’s insecurity and violence, rather than a symptom of it, and how inaccurate it is to reduce the cannabis industry to a vehicle for violence, underdevelopment and regional instability.

14 After three articles on Africa, this issue of ÉchoGéo features a text on Afghanistan, the only Asian country for which authors capable or willing to write about cannabis cultivation could be found. Of course, cannabis having originated and evolved in Asia before it spread to the rest of the world, the near-complete absence of cannabis specialists in/of Asia is a blatant proof of the “truly glaring gap on cannabis production, distribution, and consumption” that exists in the academic literature on cannabis (Taylor et al., 2013, p. 425-426).

15 Historian James Bradford and development and rural livelihood specialist David Mansfield joined forces to produce an article on cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan, a country that “is believed to have one of the oldest continuous cannabis cultures in the world”. Afghanistan is also famous the world over for his high-quality hashish and because of its cannabis landraces (and names) and the role they played in the hybridisation of cannabis strains in the United States and the Netherlands in the 1970s. An article on cannabis in Afghanistan was all the most important also because, since the 1980s, the narrative of drugs in Afghanistan has been overwhelmingly defined by opium, of which the country is the world’s first illegal producer. However, as explained by the authors in both historic and economic terms, cannabis production has remained an enduring component of Afghanistan’s political economy and culture and has most recently evolved in response to local, regional, and global factors.

16 After covering limited parts of the Global South, this ÉchoGéo issues dedicates two articles to the two main producing areas of the Global North, starting with a text by historian Nick Johnson on the United States of America. Johnson offers a refreshing history of the illegal cultivation of cannabis by mapping out the driving social, economic, geographic, and environmental forces of illegal (and in some cases, legal) cannabis cultivation in three parts of the United States: Midwest, South, and West. This is all the more meaningful since the United States has long played a leading role in the development of the modern cannabis industry (seed breeding, indoor cultivation

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techniques, etc.) worldwide and has been one of the premier cannabis-growing regions of the world since the 1960s.

17 The situation is different in Europe, as reminded by sociologist David Weinberger, drug studies specialist Michel Gandilhon, epidemiologist Jalpa Shah, and economist Nacer Lalam. While Europe has also played a leading role in the development of the modern cannabis industry (seed breeding, coffee shops, grow shops, cannabis cups, etc.), it has never reached the production level attained in the United States, or in California alone. Yet, as explained by the authors, illegal cannabis production has been increasing rapidly during the past decade, whether indoors or outdoors, from the United Kingdom in the West to Albania in the East and to Spain in the South (where the seed breeding business now rivals that of the Netherlands). Highly potent marihuana is now produced in very increasing quantities in Europe, notably by criminal groups, and now competes with a Moroccan hashish that has long been the first cannabis end- product consumed in various European countries.

18 In the last article I resort to an overarching comparative approach to show how various degrees of politico-territorial control or law-enforcement deficit by the state can explain, to some extent, the existence of large expanses of illegal drug crop cultivation. Based on the empiric case studies of Morocco, Afghanistan, northeast India, Burma/ Myanmar, and the United States of America, and on both cannabis and opium poppy illegal cultivation, I describe how large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation can take place according to three main scenarios: that of a full-fledged but inefficient war on drugs; that of toleration, for various motives, of illegal drug plant cultivation by the state (which can amount to negotiated but effective control); and that of the militarily- challenged state that cannot exert full control over its territory. I conclude that, since total politico-territorial control is clearly impossible, neither drug production and trafficking, nor drug consumption are achievable goals. Between total repression, state toleration, corruption, and even the abandonment of a costly and ineffective war on drugs, the states and the societies involved in the drug industry end up drawing an ever-revised map of illegality that implies that prohibition and the war on drugs are lost causes.

Towards a new cannabis era, and hopefully further research.

19 While this ÉchoGéo issue offers new material on cannabis cultivation in various countries and regions of the world, it also reveals how many blanks exist in our knowledge map and how much more research is needed to fill these gaps. As explained earlier, the problems of illegality and insecurity have led to a knowledge deficit that is apparent in the existing body of literature on cannabis, this ÉchoGéo issue included. The majority of this literature is the work of historians, sociologists, criminologists, and largely focuses on consumption, not cultivation, in the Global North more than in the Global South. In terms of research methodology there is an over-reliance on official data such as police records and interviews, and online surveys with few, if any, on- location direct observations of an ethnographic or geographic nature.

20 This is why further research is needed, notably by geographers, anthropologists, agronomists, etc., to address an urgent knowledge and policy gap about cannabis

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cultivation in the main producing countries. This is all the more important since official data on levels of cannabis cultivation is particularly unreliable. But sometimes official data and general knowledge also suffer from a simple observation deficit (from academics, journalists, etc.) as was the case in Morocco when there was a failure to acknowledge that any reductions in cultivation that had taken place in the country had been more than offset by increased yields and potency made possible by improved cannabis varieties and more efficient agricultural techniques (Chouvy and Afsahi 2014).

21 More specifically, there is a paucity of empirical research at the world level on cannabis farmers and their communities in most producing countries. There are few insights for example with regard to: the role that cannabis plays in the livelihoods of rural populations and the importance of the crop to their local economies; evidence of new cultivation and production practices and technologies and how these impact both on local political-economies and the long term sustainability of production and their environmental bases; and how local farmers in producing countries interact and work with the growing cannabis economy in the United States and Europe. Most importantly, the lack of research on cannabis means that there is very limited understanding about how the existing national cannabis markets will adapt and evolve both in the Global North and in the Global South depending notably on ongoing and forthcoming legislative changes (decriminalisation or legalisation).

22 Much of the policy debate on changes in the legislation in the Global North focuses on the impact that the decriminalisation or legalisation of cannabis might have on its own societies and economies. But there is little to no discussion on how changes in cannabis legislation in the Global North might impact on the socio-economic and political conditions in producing countries of the Global South where cannabis growing communities will suffer from economic contraction. It was one of the goals of this ÉchoGéo issue on cannabis in the world to draw attention to such questions and issues.

23 Indeed, the future of the world’s varied cannabis industries is very uncertain as the ongoing farming and legislative changes are going to affect the way the global, regional and national markets have been structured during decades. New North-South, but also North-North and South-South dynamics are about to emerge as some countries and some states have legalised recreational and/or medical cannabis. Also, the recent adoption of modern high-yielding varieties and farming techniques (modernisation of cannabis cultivation and modernisation of cannabis by-products’ production) will necessarily impact the global map of cannabis cultivation, with economic (further impoverishment of some of the resource-poor cannabis farmers), socio-political (unrest, contestation, repression, etc.), and environmental (water depletion, soil exhaustion, loss of landraces, etc.) consequences that must not be ignored.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bloomer J., 2009. Using a political ecology framework to examine extra-legal livelihood strategies: A Lesotho-based case study of cultivation of and trade in cannabis. Journal of Political Ecology, vol. 16, n° 1, p. 49-69.

Booth M., 2003. Cannabis. A History. London, Doubleday.

Botoeva G., 2014. Hashish as cash in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 25, n° 6, p. 1227-1234.

Chouvy P.-A., 2008. Production de cannabis et de haschich au Maroc : contexte et enjeux. L’espace politique, n° 4, p. 5-19.

Chouvy P.-A., 2016. The Supply of Hashish to Europe. Background paper commissioned by the EMCDDA for the 2016 EU Drug Markets Report, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon: EMCDDA, April 2016.

Chouvy P.-A., Afsahi K., 2014. Hashish Revival in Morocco. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 25, n° 3, p. 416-423.

Chouvy P.-A., Macfarlane J., 2018. Agricultural Innovations in Morocco’s Cannabis Industry. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 58, p. 85-91.

Clarke R.C., 1998. Hashish! Los Angeles, Red Eye Press.

Clarke R.C., Merlin, M. D., 2013. Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press.

Decorte T., Potter G.R., Bouchard M., 2011. World Wide Weed: Global Trends in Cannabis Cultivation and its Control. Farnham, Ashgate Publishing.

Decorte T., Potter G.R., Bouchard M., 2011. The Globalization of Cannabis Cultivation. In Decorte T., Potter G.R., Bouchard M., 2011. World Wide Weed: Global Trends in Cannabis Cultivation and its Control. Farnham, Ashgate Publishing, p. 1-22.

Kepe T., 2003. Cannabis sativa and rural livelihoods in South Africa: politics of cultivation, trade and value in Pondoland. Development Southern Africa, vol. 20, n° 5, p. 605-615.

Laudati A., 2016. Securing (in)security: relinking violence and the trade in cannabis sativa in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Review of African Political Economy, vol. 43, n° 148, p. 190-205.

Legget T., 2006. Review of the world cannabis situation. Bulletin on Narcotics, vol. LVIII, n° 1 and 2.

Mills J.H., 2003. Cannabis Britannica. Empire, Trade, and Prohibition 1800-1928. New York, Oxford University Press.

Rubin V.R. (ed), 1975. Cannabis and Culture. The Hague & Paris, Mouton Publishers.

Taylor J.S., Jasparro C., Mattson K., 2013. Geographers and Drugs: A Survey of the Literature. Geographical Review, vol. 103, n° 3, p. 415-430.

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NOTES

1. Recent trends in academic research on illegal cannabis production, trade, and consumption are mostly set by historians and criminologists: see the Cannabis Global Histories conference that took place at the Strathclyde University in Glasgow (https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/ schoolofhumanities/history/cannabisglobalhistories/) and the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium based in the Netherlands (https://worldwideweed.nl/).

AUTHOR

PIERRE-ARNAUD CHOUVY Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, [email protected], is a geographer at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France, UMR 8586 Prodig. He edits www.geopium.org and www.chouvy-geography.com. He recently published: - Chouvy P.-A., 2018, De la recherche de terrain sur la production agricole illégale de drogue, L’Espace Politique [En ligne], vol. 35, n° 2. http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/5372 - Chouvy P.-A., Macfarlane J., 2018. Agricultural Innovations in Morocco’s Cannabis Industry. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 58, p. 85-91. - Chouvy P.-A., 2018. Illegal drug plant cultivation and armed conflicts. Case studies from Asia and Northern Africa. In Zurayk R., Woertz E., Bahn R.A.(ed.), Crisis and Conflict in the Agrarian World: An Evolving Dialectic. Oxon, CABI Publishing, p. 64-72.

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Cannabis cultivation in the world: heritages, trends and challenges

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Acknowledgements: For helpful comments on an earlier draft I am indebted to Laurent Appel, Chris Duvall, Jennifer Macfarlane, and anonymous reviewers.

1 Despite cannabis being the most common illegal drug crop in the world and its worldwide presence, very little is known about its production, trade, and consumption at the global scale. This is partly due to the fact that knowledge about cannabis cultivation is lacking in many countries and regions, even in some the oldest and largest producing areas. For example, notwithstanding the historical importance and volumes of their cannabis productions, there is very limited knowledge of the cannabis cultivation’s contexts, drivers, and recent trends in countries such as Afghanistan, Albania, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Jamaica, Lebanon, Ghana, Mexico, etc.

2 This is partly explained by geographer Chris Duvall when he writes that “Cannabis has been mostly prohibited worldwide since the 1930s, which has stunted formal, scholarly research on the plant, including scientific taxonomy”. Which is why, he writes, “although there are a few formally trained Cannabis experts, in current global society most experts are informally trained, whether marihuana aficionados, hemp activists or anti-drug crusaders” (Duvall, 2014, p. 13). Indeed, as explained by the botanist and cannabis specialist Ernest Small, because of cannabis’ “criminal association”, almost all research and economic development – both narcotic and non-narcotic aspects – were suppressed for most of the 20th century” (Small, 2015, p. 190). As a result, a “truly glaring gap on cannabis production, distribution, and consumption” exists in the geographic literature on drug commodities and “cannabis, including hemp and its psychoactive counterpart, has a long but largely overlooked historical geography” (Taylor et al., 2013, p. 425-426; Warf, 2014, p. 414).

3 In this text I examine the knowns and unknowns of cannabis cultivation in the world in an effort to bridge some of the gaps on cannabis production. I first explain how complex and controversial Cannabis taxonomy is, and how much confusion still

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surrounds the use, by botanists and aficionados, of the sativa and indica taxa. I then resort to a historical approach to describe how much cannabis cultivation and production techniques have evolved since the 1960s and what the various traditional and modern cannabis by-products are. Only then do I focus on what we know and don’t know (and how) about global cannabis cultivation. I conclude that while much still needs to be learned about the past and even the present of cannabis production and uses in the world, the real urgency lies in understanding what the future holds now that legalisation is well under way and is spreading fast throughout the world.

What Cannabis species, varieties, and strains?

4 Pretty much everything about the cannabis plant leads to controversial debates, including its taxonomic classification. Considering the large knowledge deficit on cannabis cultivation in the world, how the name cannabis is used instinctively to refer to very different varieties/strains with extremely variable potencies1 and yields, how deeply the cannabis industry has changed in the past years (increased importance of high-yielding varieties/strains, development of modern production techniques) (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Clarke and Merlin, 2016; Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018), and how it is being affected by legislative debates and changes (decriminalisation and legalisation), it is important to acknowledge that simply speaking of “cannabis” to refer indistinctively to a low-potency landrace or a high-potency and high-yield modern hybrid, or referring to the traditional distinction between Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica is often vague, unscientific, and confusing. Also, very few authors, outside of cannabis aficionados and experts, fully understand the complexity of cannabis diversity and distinguish clearly between landraces, heirlooms, hybrids (not genetically modified organisms as can be sometimes inaccurately reported), varieties, strains, all-female seeds, sinsemilla, etc.

5 The confusion actually starts with the fact that the very botany of the Cannabis genus is still controversial. Indeed, despite being one the world’s oldest crops (hemp was already harvested in China 8500 years ago), whether the genus Cannabis is monotypic (one species, as argued by Small) or polytypic (up to three species, as argued by Emboden, Hillig, and Clarke and Merlin) has been uncertain since Linnaeus described a single species (Cannabis sativa, in 1753) and Lamarck proposed two species (Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica in 1785) (Schultes et al., 1975; Emboden, 1981; Hillig, 2005, Clarke and Merlin, 2013; Small, 2015, p. 218). This is in part due to the plant’s ancient origin, to its extremely long evolutionary and domestication history (including artificial selection) that is responsible for the probable disappearance of wild populations, and to its widespread geographic dispersal (cultivated and ruderal varieties). Since prohibition has long prevented most scientific enquiries, both the taxonomic separation of the putative taxa C. sativa and C. indica and the plant’s phylogeny have remained highly controversial until now, so much that a more modern taxonomic treatment of Cannabis originally devised by Karl Hillig was recently further developed by Robert Clarke and Mark Merlin who argue that the “present-day genetic distinction is essentially “dope versus rope” or narrow-leaf drug (NLD) and broad-leaf drug (BLD) biotypes (both indica) versus a narrow-leaf hemp (NLH) biotype (a sativa) (Schultes et al., 1975; Small and Cronquist, 1976; Hillig, 2005; Clarke and Merlin, 2013; Small, 2015).

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6 Therefore, the place of Cannabis in the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants (ICN) is not clear since botanists still strongly disagree about how many species and subspecies of Cannabis exist. Also, to the difference of hemp cultivars (such as the twenty-four most common fibre hemp cultivars that existed in 1995: Meijer, 1995), the thousands of marihuana2 strains (2,494 “unique” strains as of June 2018 and 2,942 as of June 2019 according to Leafly3) cannot be included in the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP) as they were and are still being created by mostly clandestine breeders and lack the stability and reliability required in order to be officially considered as cultivars (Small 2015; Sawler et al. 2015). In any case, drug cannabis strains are biologically but not nomenclaturally equivalent to non-drug cannabis (hemp) cultivars and as such they only bear vernacular names (such as Skunk #1, the first modern cannabis hybrid) (Small, 2015, p. 271).

7 This is why it is difficult at this stage, despite what most botanists and cannabis aficionados do, to indisputably apply the sativa/indica taxa (it is not mandatory according to the ICNCP) to the genus Cannabis without adding to the existing confusion. As explained by Ernest Small in his recent extensive monograph on the genus Cannabis, “taxonomists have utilised the epithets sativa and indica to distinguish two taxa, the term sativa traditionally designating non-narcotic plants in contrast to the term indica which has been used to designate narcotic plants”. Yet, in the largely illegal cannabis trade, “sativa” and “indica” labels (not taxa and as such not italicised) are used “for different classes of narcotic plants, and (contradictory to taxonomic tradition)” with the term sativa designating plants with very high THC4 content and low or no CBD 5 content, and the term indica designating plants with moderate to high THC content and moderate to high CBD content (Small, 2015, p. 262).

8 However, the vernacular use of the sativa/indica labels by the marihuana industry and community seems to be as controversial as the taxonomic separation between the putative taxa C. sativa and C. indica, as shown by a 2015 study that looked at 81 marihuana and 41 hemp samples and found that the sativa/indica labels of marihuana strain names “often do not reflect a meaningful genetic identity” and that “hemp is genetically more similar to C. indica type marijuana than to C. sativa strains”. As the authors explain, “the inaccuracy of reported ancestry in marijuana likely stems from the predominantly clandestine nature of Cannabis growing and breeding over the past century” (Sawler et al., 2015).

9 In any case, molecular genetics is providing increasing evidence that Cannabis is a polytypic genus, thereby leading credence to the in-field observations6 made by most of the partisans of the polytypic theory: as stressed by William Emboden, a hiatus exists between biologists, botanists, or taxonomists who have conducted direct observations in the field (such as in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Siberia, etc.) and others who have favoured the monotypic theory without making “any attempt to ascertain the range of Cannabis by field studies in these areas or to locate its aboriginal indigenous range” (Emboden, 1981, p. 15)7. Yet, at this point, due to “limited genetic and experimental data, the questions of taxonomy remain unresolved” and some estimate that the “continued monotypic treatment of plants in this genus as C. sativa L. is warranted” (Lynch et al., 2016, p. 350, 358). In fact, even Robert Clarke, who is a partisan of the polytypic theory (Clarke and Merlin, 2016) and is one the world’s foremost experts on Cannabis, chose in a recent co-authored article to consider “drug and hemp varieties to be a single species, Cannabis sativa L. with three subspecies – indica, sativa and ruderalis”,

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out of “simplicity and because of confusion in the taxonomy of the genus Cannabis” (until genomic analysis finally elucidates the matter once and for all) (Gray et al., 2016, p. 289-290).

10 Therefore, hereafter the choice was made to restrain from using the sativa and indica taxa as well as the sativa and indica labels and focus instead on the varieties/strains that increasingly characterise the global cannabis industry. As a consequence, notwithstanding the fact that it bears no taxonomical validity, I will refer to cannabis varieties/strains as “Cannabis strain + vernacular/commercial name” (for example: Cannabis strain Amnesia Haze), and the single quotation marks that are reserved solely for cultivars (the French hemp cultivar Cannabis ‘Fibrimon 21’ for example) (Small, 2015, p. 214; Piomelli and Russo, 2016; Pollio, 2016).

How cannabis cultivation and production techniques have been modernised

11 The fact that field-based academic research in cannabis producing countries has most often been limited in time, scope, and depth, explains why a large number academics and journalists alike write rather inaccurately not only about the Cannabis plant but also about the many traditional and increasingly modern and diverse cannabis end products: about what herbal cannabis (marihuana, ganja, weed, etc.) is; about what sieved (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Morocco, etc.) and hand-rubbed (India, Nepal) cannabis resin (hashish, chars/charas) is; and about what butane hash oil, rosin, bubble hash, cannabis oil, fresh frozen hash, Ice-O-Lator hash, etc., are (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018).

12 Most of the cannabis that is produced and consumed in the world is herbal cannabis, which is also called marihuana (from Mexican Spanish with possible African origins 8), ganja (from Sanskrit/Hindi with expansion to the Caribbean), weed and pot (from U.S. English), herbe (from French). Herbal cannabis is made of the dried flowers and smallest leaves and stems of the female cannabis plant as the male plants contain much less THC. Since female cannabis plants are most sought after to produce the drug cannabis and since regular cannabis seeds produce approximately 50 % male and 50 % female plants, in the early 1970s skilled North American and European growers crossed a Mexican landrace with landraces from Colombia, Jamaica, Thailand, and India, and started producing sinsemilla (seedless in Spanish) crops by “removing all male plants from their fields, leaving only the unfertilised (therefore seedless) female plants awaiting pollination” (Clarke and Merlin, 2016, p. 308, 309). Yet seedless cannabis had already long been produced in other parts of the world, such as in northeast Thailand (Isan) whose famed “Thai sticks” (dense inflorescences of seedless marihuana bent and tied to the stem of the plant) had become famous in the late 1960s after the Vietnam War introduced U.S. soldiers to Thai cannabis (Maguire and Ritter, 2015).

13 In Thailand then, but also in India and in other traditional producing countries in the Global South, the removing of male plants to produce seedless cannabis long predated9 Mexican and U.S. sinsemilla. It is however most likely the success in the U.S. of the highly potent and expensive Thai cannabis that gave an economic incentive to produce sinsemilla locally in North America. But other incentives to grow cannabis within the United States occurred in the mid-1970s: the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, stricter

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regulations in both Thailand and the United States, the U.S.-sponsored forced eradication of Mexican cannabis fields in the mid-1970s (spayed until 1979 with paraquat, a non-selective herbicide, which raised serious safety concerns among U.S. cannabis consumers), all disrupted exports of foreign cannabis to the United States and, as result, favoured local cannabis production in North America and especially in California. Sinsemilla was reportedly first produced commercially in the early 1970s (if not earlier) in Mexico (hence the name), in Colombia and in Jamaica10, before it appeared in California’s Humboldt County in the mid-1970s (Richardson and Woods, 1976; Rendon, 2012; Brady, 2013; Maguire and Ritter, 2015; Clarke and Merlin, 2016)11. From its inception, then, the modern cannabis economy was very much marked by globalisation as marihuana and hashish were initially imported through transcontinental trade (from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Lebanon, Morocco, Colombia, Mexico, etc., to the United States, Western Europe, Australia, etc.) and as new and more potent varieties/strains were bred from landraces sourced globally (mostly from the same above-mentioned countries).

14 Sinsemilla cultivation marked the beginning of a long and complex modernisation process in the cannabis industry that included the creation of the first modern cannabis hybrid, the Skunk #1, the famous hybrid of “sativa” and “indica” landraces ([Afghan indica x Colombian sativa] x Mexican sativa) that started being bred in 1969 and was first sold in the late 1970s or early 1980s as it took ten growing seasons to produce the “relatively true-breeding seed cultivar”12 (Clarke, 1998; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Clarke and Merlin, 2016, p. 314). It is regarded by many as one of the few “benchmarks of modern marijuana breeding” (Pollan, 2001). Seedless cannabis became even more common in the 1990s when the use of cuttings was introduced and enabled growers to produce only female plants through clones. In the end, “cloning radically changed Cannabis agriculture… by making sinsemilla growing possible and profitable for hobbyists”, virtually everywhere in the world (Clarke and Merlin, 2016, p. 309, 313).

15 The availability of seedless marihuana increased again after 1999, when selective breeding succeeded (in The Netherlands) producing “all-female” cannabis seeds that generate 95 %+ female plants and that made the production of seedless cannabis easier when the crops were cultivated out of the reach from airborne male pollen (especially indoors) (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). Cannabis breeders, especially in the United States, The Netherlands, and Spain, have also created auto-flowering strains that flower independently of light cycles and temperature changes and allow for worry-free bountiful harvest (Clarke and Merlin, 2016, p. 317). Last but not least, cannabis potency has largely increased in the past decades as a result of selective breeding, indoor cultivation, and production of seedless cannabis: in the early 1990s, the average THC content in confiscated cannabis samples in the United States was roughly 3.7 percent for seeded herbal cannabis and 7.5 percent for sinsemilla compared to, respectively, 9.6 percent and 16 percent in 201313.

16 Such changes in cultivation and production techniques took place gradually after the late 1970s, when “virtually all the marijuana consumed in America [i.e. the U.S.] was imported”, as a result, among other factors, of “the Federal war on drugs, which gave the domestic industry a leg up by protecting it from foreign imports and providing a spur to innovation” (Pollan 1995). Indeed “law enforcement makes large-scale production difficult […] so growers had to figure out a way to make a living with a smaller but better-quality crop” (Mark Kleinman quoted in Pollan 1995; Johnson 2017,

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p. 106-108). In the last few decades, cannabis cultivation has become a truly global phenomenon, with indoor cultivation of modern potent hybrids now possible both indoors and outdoors anywhere in the world, even outside of favourable edaphic and climatic conditions as long as a reliable electric grid is available. Transcontinental trafficking of marihuana has therefore largely been replaced by intraregional trade and import substitution schemes (Decorte et al., 2011; Chouvy, 2016a).

17 The other most common drug cannabis by-product is hashish (from the Arabic for grass) or cannabis resin: a more or less pliable paste-like substance (depending on both preparation and ambient temperature) obtained by compressing the resin glands, or trichomes, of the female cannabis plant (Clarke, 1998, p. 372-373, 370; Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). It can be produced through two different processes, depending on techniques employed in various production areas. In Morocco, the resin glands of the cannabis inflorescences are collected by a threshing and sieving process after the plant has been harvested and dried. The resin is then simply pressed. Sieving is also the technique favoured in the Bekaa valley, in Lebanon, where the renowned Red Lebanon hashish was produced in large quantities up until the early 1990s, and where Moroccan hashish-making techniques (threshing and/or sieving) were most likely, but indirectly, imported from (Clarke, 1998, p. 224).

18 It is possible that the technique was initially imported from Afghanistan (Clarke, 1998, p. 1972) where sieved hashish, called chars (made from pressed sieved resin or garda: gard means dust in Dari but also in Pashto), is still produced. Yet in Afghanistan, to the difference of Morocco and Lebanon, the sieved resin is heated and kneaded repeatedly before being pressed and hand-rolled, a process that is now sometimes mechanised (UNODC, 2010). The other technique, used only in some parts of Asia, is the hand- rubbing one: much less technical14 than sieving, it consists of rubbing the cannabis inflorescences back and forth between the palms and fingers until the resin builds up on the skin and is collected in a ball. Such a process occurs only in India (except in Kashmir where sieved hashish is produced) and Nepal, where hashish is called charas (despite the fact that the word most likely originated from Persian and first referred to sieved hashish15). Bhang, an edible paste-like preparation of cannabis, traditionally used in foods and drinks, especially during some Hindu and/or Sikh religious occasions (Holi, Janmashtami, Mahashivatri), is also produced in India, and only there (bhang can also refer directly to the cannabis plant, as was already the case with the occurrence of the Vedic Sanskrit bhanga in the Atharvaveda or fourth Veda, written between 1500 and 1000 BCE) (Bouquet, 1950).

19 Next to these traditional cannabis by-products, there is now a vast array of more modern and potent end products that are becoming increasingly popular, especially in the Global North (although their production is already well entrenched in countries such as Morocco). This is the case of butane hash oil (BHO), a solvent-extracted, cannabis resin concentrate made with liquid butane forced through an open or closed loop system. Another modern end product is rosin, a solvent-less extract made by combining heat and pressure through the use of a heating hydraulic press known as a rosin press. Also, more modern extraction processes have been devised to produce high-quality and highly pure hashish by retrieving cannabis trichomes in highly efficient mechanical processes (using for example the Pollinator and the Ice-O-Lator invented in the mid-1990s by Mila Jansen in The Netherlands: Jansen 2018).

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20 In Morocco for example, where traditional production of sieved hashish remains largely prevalent, modern production techniques are quickly developing, giving rise to very high yields of high-quality sieved hashish and various modern “cannabis extracts” of higher purity, quality and potency (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). At approximately 70 kilograms per hectare, the potential yield of such a high-quality hashish (produced from Cannabis strain Clementine Kush in this case) is significant, compared to the gross estimate of about 15 kilograms per hectare of lower-quality hashish produced on average from kif (the Moroccan landrace) and by way of threshing and sieving (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). Hashish as pure as 95 percent (95 % of glandular trichome heads and only 5 percent of contaminants such as plant debris, dust, etc.) with a THC content as high as 68 percent (with the remaining 32 percent being composed of trace amounts of other cannabinoids, as well as terpenes, waxes and plant debris) can now be produced in Morocco. Such a high-quality production is only made possible with seeds imported from European seed breeders and, for the time being, with the technical guidance and financial help of Westerners who then export their products to Western Europe (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). As a result, a 2017 study concluded that “the potency of both resin and herbal cannabis seized in France has increased for the last 25 years”, with the THC content of cannabis resin rising slowly from 1992 to 2011, “which is in line with other studies in Europe and Morocco”, and then dramatically increasing until 2016 with “a 92 % growth in mean THC content from 2011 to mid-2016” (Dujourdy and Besacier, 2017, p. 79, 72, 73).

21 The fact that the adoption of such agricultural innovations is happening in Morocco (and apparently not in Afghanistan, India, or Lebanon for example) mostly at the hand of Western (and especially European: Dutch, Spanish, Italians, French, etc.) investors and producers can be explained by various factors: the fact that hashish production had already been initiated by Europeans in the 1960s; that the growth of industry had been spurred by the growing European demand in the 1980s and 1990s; that the hashish industry has then been much less affected than the marihuana industry by import substitution schemes; and by the fact Morocco has long been the world’s leading hashish producing country with privileged economic, political, linguistic and cultural links to Western Europe (French and Spanish Protectorates, geographical proximity, etc.). It is significant that cannabis seed companies established in Spain in the early 2000s have played an important role in Morocco, as many Spanish cannabis social clubs buy Moroccan hashish produced from modern hybrid seeds imported from Spain (most recently: Cannabis strain Amnesia Haze, Critical Mass16, etc.). Here, again, globalisation has played favourably and repeatedly in the development of the illegal cannabis industry: starting in the 1960s with the Hippie Trail that ran through Morocco, Lebanon, Afghanistan, India, and Thailand (mostly hashish, except for Thailand), and extended to most of the world’s surf spots (Australia, Bali, Biarritz, Hawaii, etc.) (mostly marihuana) (Maguire and Ritter, 2015), the spread of cannabis varieties/strains, knowledge, techniques, and end products has reached a truly global dimension since the 2000s with the increasing involvement of Western cannabis breeders and growers in Albania, Colombia, India, Jamaica, Morocco, South Africa, to name but a few places where modern cannabis production is now fast developing (based on knowledge now also widely available through the Web) (sources: author’s fieldwork, and interviews and discussions with breeders / growers and police in various countries).

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What do we know about illegal cannabis cultivation in the world and how?

22 Estimates of what is mostly an illegal agricultural production (except where the fibre- producing plant and, sometimes, the drug-producing plant, is legal – or decriminalised) are of course difficult and controversial. Satellite detection of outdoor cannabis crops proves more difficult, technically, than that of opium poppies, and such imagery is rarely resorted to, notably because of its cost17. On the other hand, indoor cannabis crops have fast developed during the past decades, whether in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe, and the scale of such crops proves very difficult to assess (estimates and eradication reports actually mention numbers or weight of indoor plants and not cultivated areas). Also, ground surveys are often deemed too expensive (or time-consuming, dangerous, etc.) to carry out as cannabis crops can be grown virtually anywhere and are often much more dispersed than coca or opium poppy crops in a given country (cannabis being an extremely popular drug that has benefited notably from important subcultures (Rubin, 1975, p. 1; Decorte et al., 2011, p. 4-6).

23 As a result, “most countries provide estimates based on some extrapolations from their cannabis eradication activities” (Legget and Pietschmann, 2008, p. 191). Despite the fact that cannabis researchers affiliated to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have argued that “a few countries have scientifically valid estimates based on remote sensing technology or based on ground surveys”, even the most elaborate estimates that were conducted by the UNODC in Afghanistan and Morocco have proven problematic and unreliable (due to theoretical, methodological, technical, logistical, and sometimes even political, issues) (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Chouvy, 2016a). As stated by the UNODC in 2017, “the extent and trends in cannabis cultivation and production are difficult to assess” not only because of “the absence of systematic measurements” (i.e. direct indicators: remote sensing and ground surveys) but also because “most indirect indicators [such as seizures] come from law enforcement authorities and, to a certain extent, reflect their priorities and resources” (UNODC, 2017, p. 37). But such indirect indicators are also of little value because eradication efforts vary between countries and between years in a given country.

24 Morocco’s northern Rif region (14,000 km2 according to the UNODC in 2003), where cannabis cultivation is circumscribed and where the world’s most comprehensive surveys have been conducted, reportedly eradicated 8,000 hectares of cannabis in 2011, 5,000 hectares in 2013, 1,147 hectares in 2015, and 395 hectares in 2016 (UNODC, 2013-2018). The Moroccan authorities allegedly reduced their eradication operations in reaction to the Arab Spring and to anti-eradication demonstrations and unrest but if the harvestable areas are logically affected by eradication efforts, the cultivated areas (before eradication) appear surprisingly stable and as such unrepresentative of the state’s repressive efforts, especially between 2013 and 2016: 55,500 hectares in 2011, 47,196 hectares in 2013, 47,000 hectares in 2015 and in 2016 (UNODC, 2013-2018).

25 In India, where cannabis grows wild throughout the country and where cultivation is widespread (from north to south) but unaccounted for (as no cannabis surveys have ever been conducted in the country), the authorities reportedly eradicated only 3,441 hectares in 2016 and 3,446 hectares in 2017 on a territory seven times larger than Morocco and 165 times larger than the Rif region (where cannabis cultivation is circumscribed) (UNODC, 2018; NCB, 2017). While no official estimates of cannabis

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cultivation exist in India, where cannabis by-products such as ganja, charas, and bhang have been widely consumed for centuries both recreationally and religiously nationwide, a guesstimate by a former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) superintendent mentioned about 2,100 hectares of cannabis in the famed Himalayan Parvati Valley of Himachal Pradesh in 2013 and a hashish output of 100 to 150 tons in the entire state in 201818.

26 Despite the global scale of illegal cannabis cultivation, the paucity of robust data on its production and trade, even in the countries that are best studied (such as Morocco), is such that that it hinders effective policy and programmatic responses (Leggett, 2006, p. 1; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014). Estimates of the scale of cannabis cultivation provided by national states, the UNODC or the United States International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports (INCSR) are both unreliable and imprecise. The ground surveys that have been conducted by both national and international agencies for estimating the scale of cultivation have been found wanting, proven expensive, time consuming, and the results have been challenged by a range of officials and academics (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Chouvy, 2016a; Legget and Pietschmann, 2008; Mansfield, 2016; etc.). To date the use of remote sensing in cannabis surveys has also proven challenging with weak spectral signature, crop confusion, variable seasonality, and the crop’s diffusion within a single country rendering the estimates too costly and ultimately lacking credibility (Legget and Pietschmann, 2008, p. 191; Walthall and Daughtry, 2003). Data on the scale and nature of hashish production (the second most consumed cannabis by- product and illegal drug in the EU) is also grossly inadequate and while nearly all of the hashish consumed in Europe is produced in Morocco, Afghanistan, and Lebanon (with Morocco being the source of the overwhelming majority of it) very little to nothing is known about the quantities produced in each country, or indeed the qualitative nature of the end products (Chouvy, 2016a).

27 There is also a paucity of empirical research on the farmers that cultivate cannabis and their communities in source countries. There are few insights for example with regard to: the role that cannabis plays in the livelihoods of rural populations and the importance of the crop to the local economy; evidence of new cultivation and production practices and technologies and how these impact both on the local political- economy and the long term sustainability of production and the environmental base; and how local producers in source countries interact and work with the growing cannabis economy in Europe (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Chouvy, 2016a; Mansfield, 2016; Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018).

How this special issues fills some of the blanks on the map

28 As explained earlier, the world geography of cannabis is lacking in many respects and it is impossible on the basis of current knowledge to determine the global extent of cannabis cultivation and, consequently, the global amounts of cannabis by-products. What is known is that cannabis cultivation was reported (to the UNODC by Member States) in 135 countries in the period 2010-2015, with Morocco being the country most reported as the source of cannabis resin, followed by Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon, India, and Pakistan. Sources of herbal cannabis are more difficult to assess as trafficking is mostly intraregional and the UNODC only reports sources by

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region: the most mentioned sources are Mexico and Canada in North America; Colombia, Paraguay and Jamaica in South America and the Caribbean; Nigeria, Mozambique and Ghana in Africa; Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Laos in Asia; and the Netherlands and Albania (at least until the late 2010s) in Europe. Yet the UNODC clearly states that this does not mean that Mexico, for example, is the largest producer of cannabis in North America since the “significant amounts” produced in the United States are mostly destined to domestic consumption and not for export (UNODC, 2017, p. 47).

29 In the end, source reports are a clear example of how unreliable and worthless drug- related data often are: the fact that the geographic origins of the cannabis resins seized in Europe seem to be determined not by scientific analyses of the resins but by the testimony of offenders during their custody is problematic since this methodology is clearly unreliable (Chouvy, 2016a). Also, as indicated by the UNODC, “source countries might not always mention the country where it [cannabis resin] was produced and might also indicate the latest known transit country”: this is obviously something that further affects the quality of data already proved unreliable (UNODC, 2011, p. 190). Unsurprisingly, while it is impossible to reasonably estimate which countries are the world’s leading illegal cannabis producers, it is easier to list which countries are legal producers of recreational and/or medical cannabis. Things have evolved very quickly during the last few years and legalisation of recreational and/or medical cannabis has occurred in about 10 countries in 2018 alone.

30 As of the 1st of January 2019 the consumption and sale of recreational cannabis was legal in two countries only: in Uruguay since 2013 and in Canada since 2018. South Africa is due to legalise the private production and use of cannabis (public use, selling and supplying will remain illegal) by 2020 after a 2018 ruling by the Constitutional Court. Cannabis is also allegedly legal in North Korea but very little is known about the country (Chouvy, 2016b). In 2018 recreational cannabis was still illegal under federal law in the United States but was legal (since 2012 in Colorado and Washington) in the ten following states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington)19.

31 Medical cannabis has been partially or fully legalised (with or without prescription) in 36 countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Lesotho, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Norway, Peru, San Marino, The Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Turkey, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Zimbabwe. In December 2018 Thailand has decided to join what is now a fast-growing global movement and even France, an extremely conservative country when it comes to cannabis, has opened the door to examining the medical benefits of cannabis. In the United States, starting in 1996 with California, 33 states plus Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia have legalized medical cannabis. CBD, one of the most sought-after medical cannabinoids, has been legalized in the United States in December 2018 due to changes in the Farm Bill. In the European Union, the latest developments include the vote on 14 February 2019 by the European Parliament, following reports about the World Health Organization (WHO) recommending a rescheduling of cannabis and several of its key components under international drug treaties20, on a resolution that “calls on the Commission and member states to address regulatory barriers which

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burden scientific research and invites them to properly fund research and promote greater knowledge of medical cannabis among medical professionals”21.

32 As for hemp, the non-psychoactive cannabis valued as a source of fibre, oils, and seeds, it is legally cultivated in 25 countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine) but has been illegal in the United States between the 1950s (it was an important legal crop before that) and 2018. The 2014 Farm Bill had first allowed hemp cultivation for research purposes only, and for not commercial production, but the 2018 Farm Bill eventually marked a major shift in U.S. agriculture and drug policy by lifting the ban on hemp and amending the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 for the first time to legalize CBD (though not medically) and the other cannabinoids that can be sourced from hemp (less than 0.3 % of THC by dry weight).

33 While the United Kingdom was the world’s leading producer of medical cannabis in 2016, the fact that Canada legalised recreational cannabis production and uses in 2018 (after legalising medical cannabis in 2001) is about to turn the north American state into one of the world’s leading cannabis producers, notably because it now benefits from limited competition in global medical cannabis exports (although countries in Latin America will benefit from a more favourable climate with lower production costs and much lower carbon footprint22), from the difficulties faced by other nations to find safe and legal supplies of medical cannabis, and from having gained first mover advantage into emerging medical cannabis markets such as Australia, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Germany, Italy, etc. In fact, Canada’s seven biggest licensed producers can potentially produce up to 2,200 tonnes of (processed) cannabis a year, eventually leading the country to dominate the global cannabis market (with a total production estimated to 3,000 tonnes a year by 2020) if nothing is done to end the federal prohibition in the United States23.

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Illustration 1 – Legal cannabis in the world as 1rst January 2019

From shadowy past to uncertain future

34 During the 2010s the quasi-total prohibition of cannabis has been seriously questioned and even abolished in various countries and states, with recreational, medical, and other uses (notably with hemp being increasingly used as building material), being legalised, and sometimes only decriminalised, on every continent. The speed and scale at which what is truly a global phenomenon occurred has revealed how little is known about the plant, its (geo)history, its uses and its safety or associated risks. From the plant’s taxonomy to its medical potential, much still needs to be studied and understood. Of course, the geography of cannabis will also benefit from its legalisation as the plant, its production, trade, and uses, have been very little studied because of prohibition and the risks and dangers that such a research topic has long represented (Chouvy, 2018).

35 While much needs to be learned about the past and even the present of cannabis production and uses in the world, the real urgency lies in understanding what the future holds now that legalisation is well under way and is spreading fast. Indeed, the future of the world’s varied cannabis industries is very uncertain as the ongoing farming and legislative changes are going to affect the way the global, regional and national markets have been structured during decades. New North-South but also North-North and South-South dynamics are about to emerge as some countries and some states have legalised recreational and/or medical cannabis. Also, the recent adoption of modern high-yielding varieties and farming techniques (modernisation of cannabis cultivation and of production of cannabis by-products) will necessarily impact the global map of cannabis cultivation, with economic (further impoverishment of

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some the resource-poor cannabis farmers, collection of indigenous germplasm and threat posed to landraces by modern hybrids), socio-political (unrest, contestation, repression, etc.), and environmental (water depletion, soil exhaustion, loss of landraces, heavy carbon footprint of modern indoor cannabis cultivation, etc.) consequences. Disruptions and reorganisations in the global and regional cannabis markets have already taken place on numerous occasions of course (since the 1960s) but faster and deeper changes are now to be expected.

36 In fact, the legalisation that took place in some U.S. states has already created unintended consequences in Mexico, with a shift from cannabis production to heroin and methamphetamine production provoked by the halving of Mexican cannabis prices at the farm gate. Also, with the removal of the competitive advantage of illegality, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that Mexican cannabis growers now strive to produce higher-quality cannabis to match U.S. demand and even that, for the first time ever, U.S. cannabis was being trafficked into Mexico24.

37 After having already suffered from the brunt of the war on drugs other major cannabis producers in the Global South are likely to bear the consequences of legalisation changes taking place in their Western markets: for example, Moroccan cannabis farmers from the Rif will most likely greatly suffer from the legalisation that will eventually and inevitably take place in Western Europe. The main competitive advantage of Moroccan cannabis farmers is clearly the fact that production is illegal in both Europe and Morocco and that this illegal industry is tolerated by the Moroccan state. While the terroir was also clearly an advantage but was offset by lower-quality hashish production (actually allowed by the same competitive advantage of illegality and the laws of supply and demand), when legalisation will happen in Europe, the Rif and its farmers will see their survival economy seriously contract if not collapse. Considering how poor and politically fragile countries like Mexico and Morocco are, the disruptive impacts and consequences of legalisation should not be ignored.

38 But the changes to come are not only economic. They are also botanical and ethical. Indeed, Western seed breeders have long collected germplasm from African, Asian, and South American landraces (without making “efforts to preserve international property rights potentially embedded in landraces” and without sharing benefits) to breed thousands of commercial hybrids that now happen to be sold to and grown in the Global South where landraces are increasingly at risks of being replaced by modern commercial hybrids, as is already happening in Morocco and to a lesser extent in India. (Duvall, 2016, p. 20; Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). As explained by Clarke and Merlin (2015, p. 301), “many NLD/BLD hybrid seeds were produced in Western countries and some did interbreed with original ancestral populations” after “well-meaning travellers visited many regions where NLD landraces were still growing, gave modern hybrid seeds to local farmers, who hoping for economic benefit, crossed them with their traditional landraces”. As a result, “original pure NLD landraces have become rare in all traditional marijuana producing countries” and, during the past decade or so, a worldwide bioprospecting race has been launched by seed breeding companies to collect rare and sometimes fast-disappearing landraces, including Morocco’s elusive kif (personal contacts with bioprospectors).

39 While it is obvious that legalisation at various scales will allow the global cannabis production and economy to grow tremendously and the research on cannabis to finally develop and improve (in social sciences of course but also in botany, in medicine, and

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in pharmaceuticals), especially in the Global North, it is difficult at this stage to foresee what the future holds for the countless cannabis farmers of the Global South who will see their individual, regional, and national economies bear the brunt of global competition once the competitive advantage of illegality has been supressed. The same is actually true of former outlaw growers from the Global North who attempt to transition to legal production where legalisation has taken place: such is the case in the famed Humboldt Country of Northern California (where legalisation took place in January 2018) where the vast majority of growers have immediately suffered from the state’s stiff regulatory demands (laws and taxation of an industry that has obviously never before being regulated), from a quickly oversaturated market, from the competition of a persistent illegal market (competitive for not paying the high cost of legality), and from corporate so-called Big Marihuana25. As explained by Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter in their book about the trafficking of Thai marihuana to the United States (early 1970s to late 1980s), “ironically, today the biggest opponents of marijuana legalisation are not law enforcement agents but some of the black market growers and smugglers, because their pricing structure would collapse” (Maguire and Ritter, 2015, p. 172, 181) While over a century of prohibition and decades of a costly and counterproductive war on drugs have done clearly more harm than good to illegal cannabis resource-poor farmers worldwide, it now remains to be seen how legalisation and open competition will affect them, whether in the Global North or in the Global South.

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NOTES

1. In pharmacology potency is a measure of drug (not necessarily an active substance or ingredient) activity expressed in terms of the amount required to produce an effect of given intensity. Therefore, in equivalent quantities, highly potent marihuana or hashish will have stronger effects (the so-called high) than lower potency marihuana or hashish. 2. In this text “marihuana” and “hashish” are used as generic terms for herbal cannabis and cannabis resin, regardless of how and where they are produced. More details are provided below in the text about how such cannabis by-products vary and how they are referred to in different regions. 3. https://www.leafly.com/explore/sort-alpha (consulted on 4 June 2018 and 28 June 2019). 4. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the cannabinoid (chemical compound) responsible for most of the psychoactive effects of cannabis but also for analgesic, antiemetic, antispasticity, anxiolytic, and other medical effects. 5. Cannabidiol is the cannabinoid responsible for anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anxiolytic, and anti-epileptic effects among others. CBD is also contained in small quantities in some Asian hops varieties (Humulus kriya). 6. Therefore, the deficit of primary field-based research in cannabis growing areas is problematic not only in social sciences. 7. See Duvall, 2019 for a highly useful summary of recent taxonomic developments. 8. See Duvall, 2019 about the etymology of marihuana (from Bantu mariamba): the author explains how the plant drug (seeds) came to the New World (Brazil) across the Atlantic Ocean primarily from Central Africa – through the slave trade – and how “its primary New World names reflect this geography”. See also Duvall, 2019 about the phonetical incorrectness of marijuana. 9. Garner, F., 2005. Dialogue with the DEA. Counterpunch; 24 December. https:// www.counterpunch.org/2005/12/24/dialogue-with-the-dea/ (consulted on 11 January 2019). Maguire and Ritter mention how a north-eastern Thai cannabis farmer tended to his crop by

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carefully examining his plants for male pollen pods and immediately removing male specimen from his field (Maguire and Ritter, 2015, p. 65). 10. Personal communication by Robert Clarke on 19 June 2019. 11. See also: Blair E., 2011. History of Cannabis Use and Anti-Marijuana Laws in Thailand. 11 July. http://thailawforum.com/history-of-marijuana-cannabis-thailand.html (consulted on 11 January 2019). Maguire P., 2018. Thailand’s Legendary Marijuana. 30 April. https://thediplomat.com/ 2018/04/thailands-legendary-marijuana/ (consulted on 11 January 2019). See Clarke and Merlin (2016, p. 300-302) about the history of sinsemilla in the U.S. and note that the book by Richardson and Woods (1976) was the first ever to explain how to produce sinsemilla. 12. Clarke and Merlin use the term cultivar in an unofficial acceptation, unlike Small who I follow here. 13. National Institute on Drug Abuse, A Rise in Marijuana’s THC Levels. https:// archives.drugabuse.gov/rise-in-marijuanas-thc-levels (consulted on 20 December 2018). 14. Hand rubbing is less technical than sieving but the use of skilled workers is necessary to produce the very best quality charas (through a very slow and gentle rub that collects only cannabis trichomes and not other vegetal matter): it takes one day to a careful hashish rubber to produce about 5 grams of the very best quality charas (Chouvy, 2016c). 15. Charas is most likely a metonym as sieved hashish produced in the Greater Khorasan from the thirteenth century on was cured and carried in leather pouches called charas by qalandars, wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes who indulge in sacramental hashish intoxication. Hashish from Khorasan was likely first exported to the Indian subcontinent during the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526) and became popular, notably after Babur, an advocate of charas and majoun (an edible cannabis-based preparation), founded the Mughal Empire in 1526. See https:// therealseedcompany.wordpress.com/2018/11/26/charas-or-hashish-the-straight-dope-on- cannabis-resin/ (consulted on 12 January 2019) and Bouquet, 1950. It is worth noting that the production of sieved hashish is reportedly increasingly common in India and Nepal (personal testimonials and source above). 16. Critical Mass is a famous and very popular strain created from the hybridisation between a pure Afghani line and one of the most popular hybrids around the world, the aforementioned Skunk #1 ([Afghan indica x Colombian sativa] x Mexican sativa). Critical Mass has long been being one of the most cultivated cannabis strains in/from Spain (after being “feminised” by Dinafem) and, as a consequence, is now one of the most widely cultivated hybrids in Morocco. Critical Mass belongs to the modern cannabis history and owes its fame notably to the founders of the Mr. Nice Seedbank (founded in 1998) who first produced it: the two legendary Australian cannabis breeders Scott Blakey (a.k.a. Shantibaba) and Nevil Schoenmakers (1956-2019: founder the world’s first cannabis seedbank in the early 1980s in the Netherlands), and the famous British hashish (from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon) trafficker Howard Marks (a.k.a. Mr Nice: 1945-2016). See: Critical Mass by Mr. Nice, a legendary cannabis strain. Alchimia. https:// www.alchimiaweb.com/blogen/marijuana-growing-guide/history-of-marijuana-strains; Vergados, J. 2016. Breeder Diaries: Scott Blakey. Skunk Magazine. June/July, p. 64-70 (https:// cbdcrew.org/scott-blakey-aka-shantibaba-speaks-to-skunk-magazine); and Marks 1998 (consulted on 14 May 2019). 17. Although the spectral signature of cannabis can look separable, the signal classification often conflicts with other land covers (Walthall and Daughtry, 2003). In its 2005 cannabis survey in Morocco, the UNODC explained that the accuracy of their remote sensing approach was “acceptable” and that more precise results proved difficult to obtain since the spectral signature of rain-fed cannabis (kif) did not differ much from that of bare soil (UNODC, 2007, p. 36). In Morocco, the fast spread of irrigated hybrids should now make remote sensing easier and more precise.

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18. Jolly A., 2013. Illegal cannabis and opium cultivation ride high in Parvati Valley in HP. India Today. 6 April. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/nation/story/20130408-illegal-cannabis- and-opium-cultivation-in-parvati-valley-in-himachal-pradesh-762936-1999-11-30. Plus personal communication by the NCB official on 29 November 2018. 19. See Dufton, 2017 for the most up to date and comprehensive history of marijuana legalisation in the United States of America. 20. Angell T., 2019. World Health Organization Recommends Reclassifying Marijuana Under International Treaties. Forbes. 1 February. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/02/01/ world-health-organization-recommends-rescheduling-marijuana-under-international-treaties/ #73ad551b6bcc (consulted on 2 February 2019). 21. Take medical use of cannabis seriously, say MEPs. European Parliament Newsletter. 7 February 2019. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/agenda/briefing/2019-02-11/10/take-medical- use-of-cannabis-seriously-say-meps (consulted on 15 February 2019). 22. Nawrat A., 2018. Latin America’s medical cannabis market to reach $8.5bn by 2028. Pharmaceutical Technology. 10 October. https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/latin- america-cannabis-report-market-growth/ (consulted on 11 January 2019). See also Mills E., 2012. 23. Williams S., 2018. Canada's Top 7 Marijuana Growers Lost Nearly $300 Million This Quarter. The Motley Fool, 20 November, https://bit.ly/2zv7aVG. Williams S., 2018. Predicting the 10 Largest Marijuana Producers in Canada by 2020. The Motley Fool, 23 September, https://bit.ly/2E6ccM0. Hoban R., 2018. Inside Canada’s New Cannabis & Hemp Regulations. Cannabis Now, 17 March, https://bit.ly/2BG1WYK. Tencer D., 2018. U.S. Cannabis Producers Fear Canada Will 'Dominate The Industry'. Huffington Post, 29 September, https://bit.ly/2TYsf38. (consulted on 18 November 2018. 24. Ingraham C., 2016. Legal marijuana is finally doing what the drug war couldn’t” The Washington Post, 3 March. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal- marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/?noredirect=on&utm_term=. 1d9aa3e04ac8 (consulted on 11 January 2019). Other unintended consequences are taking place in the United States, with, for example, a contraction of the legal cannabis market in California as “the costs of setting up, licensing, testing and packaging requirements have proved a heavy burden, and revenues haven’t flowed in as expected”. As a result, “the unrolling of legal adult- use cannabis has reinvigorated the underground market rather than curtailed it” and “the sale of bootleg marijuana is going strong, especially around Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties, known as the Emerald Triangle, where as much as 80 percent of the illegal pot sold in other states is produced”: Fimrite P., 2018. ‘Death by a thousand cuts:’ California’s first year of legalized pot is no smooth trip. San Francisco Chronicle, 28 December. https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/ Death-by-a-thousand-cuts-California-s-13494193.php#photo-16694087 (consulted on 11 February 2019). 25. Wilson S., 2018. Outlaw weed comes into the light. Washington Post, 16 March. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/03/16/feature/californias-outlaw- marijuana-culture-faces-a-harsh-reckoning-legal-weed/? noredirect=on&utm_term=.e619a297522f. Stoa, R. 2018. Big Marijuana vs. craft weed: Will cannabis conglomerates ruin small family farms? Salon, 25 November. See also Stoa, 2018. https://www.salon.com/2018/11/25/big-marijuana-vs-craft-weed-will-cannabis-conglomerates- ruin-small-family-farms/ (consulted on 11 February 2019). See also Stoa, 2018. While the threat of large cannabis conglomerates is to be taken seriously, one should not forget that the illegal cannabis industry has long been based on small-scale growers and that the legal cannabis industry is emerging at a time when past experiences with craft beer (for example) have shown that customers recently favoured small-scale artisanal brews over industrial beer, most notably in the United States. Yet the ongoing battle between Big Beer and independently-owned craft beer is an indication that the future of the cannabis industry, and especially of small-scale

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growers, will be complicated. See: Taylor K., 2016. The bathe between Big Beer and craft brewers is getting ugly. Business Insider, 11 February. https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/big-beer-vs- craft-beer-battle-gets-ugly-2016-2. Infante D. 2019. How the World’s Biggest Brewer Killed the Craft Beer Buzz. Medium. 21 March. https://medium.com/s/story/how-the-worlds-biggest- brewer-killed-the-craft-beer-buzz-e205a28ff632 (consulted on 13 May 2019).

ABSTRACTS

Despite cannabis being the most common illegal drug crop in the world and its worldwide presence, very little is known about its production, trade, and consumption at the global scale. This is due mostly to over a century of global prohibition and the dangers associated to researching illegal drug crop production. Worse, the limited data available about cannabis cultivation is most often inaccurate, unreliable, and highly controversial. While this has always been problematic, in terms of sheer knowledge and informed policy-making, it has now become even more acute of an issue as global trends towards decriminalisation and legalisation are already provoking negative unintended consequences in poor producing countries. This article is an effort to present the state of the current knowledge and the present and future stakes of the fast-changing cannabis industry and legislation.

INDEX

Keywords: cannabis, world, production, illegality, legalisation, knowledge

AUTHOR

PIERRE-ARNAUD CHOUVY Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, [email protected], is a geographer at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France, UMR 8586 Prodig. He edits www.geopium.org and www.chouvy-geography.com. He recently published: - Chouvy P.-A., 2018, De la recherche de terrain sur la production agricole illégale de drogue, L’Espace Politique [En ligne], vol. 35, n° 2. http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/5372 - Chouvy P.-A., Macfarlane J., 2018. Agricultural Innovations in Morocco’s Cannabis Industry. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 58, p. 85-91. - Chouvy P.-A., 2018. Illegal drug plant cultivation and armed conflicts. Case studies from Asia and Northern Africa. In Zurayk R., Woertz E., Bahn R.A.(ed.), Crisis and Conflict in the Agrarian World: An Evolving Dialectic. Oxon, CABI Publishing, p. 64-72.

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A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony

Chris S. Duvall

Introduction

1 Since the 1990s, the international drug-control regime has begun to crumble as societies have decided that drug prohibitions produce more problems than benefits (Bewley-Taylor et al., 2014; Bewley-Taylor and Jelsma, 2012). Cannabis has been a prominent focus of drug-policy reform. Many jurisdictions, especially in Europe, North America, and South America, have liberalized controls on cannabis by decriminalizing and/or legalizing some instances of production, sales, possession, and use. African countries are also participating in this global wave of cannabis liberalization.

2 Cannabis is an important crop in Africa. African farmers produce enough to meet demand on the continent and to export small quantities to Europe (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2018). Cannabis is not significantly imported into the continent, but international trading is common within Africa due to variations in supply, demand, law enforcement, and other farming opportunities. The crop provides income in rural communities, and to those who distribute and sell it in cities (Bloomer, 2008; Kepe, 2003; Léonard, 1998; Afsahi, 2014; Laudati, 2016). Cannabis is widely a cash crop for poor farmers where legal agriculture has become economically or ecologically untenable (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2016; Laniel, 2006; Perez and Laniel, 2004). In some countries, cannabis is a major national commodity with well-organized, if illegal, institutions of production, distribution, and marketing (Suckling, 2016; Laudati, 2014; Chouvy, 2008).

3 Questions about cannabis liberalization in Africa are inevitably agricultural even if farming is overlooked in national drug policies (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 2015). African countries have diverse interests, but agriculture is central to most national economies and economic development is a widespread priority. Scholars have argued that a

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strategy to advance economic development could be to allow farmers legal access to domestic and/or international markets for cannabis (Buxton, 2006, 2015; Zurayk, 2013; Laudati, 2014). Economic arguments for cannabis liberalization have been strong in other parts of the world, and strengthened by the revenues generated since 2014 in legalized markets in several U.S. states and Canada.

4 Current cannabis economies – in Africa and elsewhere – are fraught with social inequity, political-economic violence, and environmental degradation (Buxton, 2015; Zurayk, 2013; Johnson, 2017; Pontes Fraga and Iulianelli, 2011; Laudati, 2014, 2016; Chouvy, 2008; Carrier and Klantschnig, 2016; Bloomer, 2009; Kepe, 2003). Such problems are targets of explanation in the field of political ecology, in which human- environment interactions are viewed as simultaneously natural and social events (Robbins, 2011). In political ecology, historical analysis helps expose process-structure linkages within current interactions (Offen, 2004). In this article, I summarize the history of cannabis agriculture in Africa, in order to identify the foundations and trajectory of cannabis-centered economies. I outline four phases in this agricultural history: the mostly prehistoric period in which the plant initially colonized the continent; the brief period when cannabis was legal under colonial governments; the remainder of the twentieth century, when drug-control laws made it an illegal crop; and the currently unfolding moment when several countries have enacted cannabis liberalization.

5 I analyze African cannabis history based upon elements of political economic theory. I argue that current processes of cannabis liberalization are, with one exception, instances of accumulation through dispossession (Harvey, 2004) by Global Northern companies, enabled through the exercise of neocolonial power (Nkrumah, 1965; Langan, 2018). Seven African governments have authorized limited instances of cannabis farming. Six of these governments have loosened their cannabis controls to promote agricultural development. However, cannabis-centered ‘development’ is but a new facet of economic dependency, of wealth generation in the Global North through the extraction of wealth from Africa (Smith, 1997; Taylor, 2016). Historically, taxation of cannabis (i.e. primitive accumulation: Harvey, 2004, p. 11-12) as well as the imposition of cannabis prohibitions under colonial and postcolonial regimes foreclosed opportunities to profit legally. Currently, African governments and Global Northern companies are together accumulating wealth by dispossessing the citizens of these countries of access to the increasingly legal, global cannabis economy. Cannabis policy reforms in the Global North have allowed legal wealth generation by private companies and publicly traded corporations. These businesses have paid African governments for policies that allow them to cultivate cannabis for export, through the payment of licensing fees that are too expensive for most citizens of the countries to pay.

6 Given the entrenchment of North-South inequity in the global economy (Nkrumah, 1965; Rodney, 2018 [1972]; Smith, 1997), it is unsurprising that the increasingly legal cannabis economy has unfolded unevenly. Neocolonialism has impeded wealth generation in multiple economic sectors in African countries (Haag, 2011; Hagmann and Reyntjiens, 2016; Langan, 2018; Taylor, 2019), and the recent phenomenon of land acquisition through long-term leases (i.e. land grabbing) is commonly interpreted as accumulation through dispossession, enabled through neocolonial power (Fairbairn, 2013; Ince, 2014; Liberti, 2013; Robertson and Pinstrup-Anderson, 2010).

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7 Nonetheless, it is necessary to situate cannabis in this context, for three reasons. First, the legal, global cannabis economy is new, having arisen principally since 2017. It has been cheered as a new avenue for development, but empirical evidence on cannabis history illuminates that cannabis-centered ‘development’ has instead only extended a pathway of economic dependence into a new sector. The case of cannabis suggests the enduring influence of colonialism, while underscoring the neocolonial power of Global Northern businesses (Langan, 2018). Second, cannabis-policy reforms in the Global North have global political-economic meaning, and are not simply precedents for how states might manage drugs within their borders. There is a risk of producing an apolitical ecology (Robbins, 2011) regarding the international significance of Northern cannabis reforms, even as political ecologies of drugs are recognized on national levels (Aggarwal, 2013; Aggarwal et al., 2012; Johnson, 2017; Rhodes, 2009). Reforms that have produced legal economies in the Global North have directly involved cannabis consumers in processes that disadvantage people in the Global South. Cannabis must be situated in the colonial past and neocolonial present to preclude apolitical ecologies that neglect the global power dimensions that have shaped African agricultures.

8 I sketch African cannabis history in the following four sections. The first two of these summarize aspects of my recent book (Duvall, 2019), while the last two review other literature. I stress that I am offering a continent-scale analysis of overarching circumstances, even though circumstances in individual locations may not reflect broader patterns. I briefly discuss exceptions to broad patterns – most notably, current conditions in South Africa – but I am concerned with understanding processes that have similarly affected many locations. In my concluding section, I expand my political- economic interpretation of the historical evidence.

Precolonial Farming

9 Cannabis farming began in Africa after the crop arrived from its evolutionary homeland in southern Asia. Various sources of evidence suggest a chronology and geography for the plant’s dispersal (Illustration 1). This historical biogeography produced diversity, in terms of plant genetics and human cultures of cannabis use.

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Illustration 1 - Historical dispersal of cannabis in Africa

Modified from Duvall (2019).

10 Cannabis came to Africa at least 1,000 years ago, to Madagascar and to the Mediterranean coast. Archaeological evidence is scant, and the continent-wide documentary record principally dates to the nineteenth century. Language geography suggests broad regions in which shared understandings of the plant developed (Illustration 2), although there is insufficient information to characterize historical cannabis cultures for these putative regions. Available evidence can illustrate only a range of historical people-plant interactions (Duvall, 2019, chapters 3-5; Duvall, 2015).

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Illustration 2 - Language geography of words for ‘cannabis’ in Africa. Each symbol represents one language

Modified from Duvall (2019).

11 African societies used cannabis in multiple ways, although it was principally valued as a smoked drug. North African farmers planted cannabis for hemp into the early 1900s, but it was always a marginal crop. In sub-Saharan Africa, cannabis fiber was significantly harvested only in Madagascar, where people made hemp fabric. Hemp was not highly valued elsewhere, though cannabis everywhere had multiple uses. In the 1790s in Mozambique, for example, people made cordage from stems and external medicines from leaves, but grew the plant mainly for its smokable inflorescences (Barroso da Silva, 1864 [1799]).

12 Cannabis was a drug crop. In North Africa, writers began describing psychoactive uses in the twelfth century CE (Lozano Cámara, 1996). North African knowledge of psychoactive uses traces to the Levant, where edible cannabis drugs were consumed by 1000 BCE (Russo, 2007). Historical cannabis cultures in Egypt and along the Red Sea remained similar to those of the Levant; cultures were more distinctive in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). Across North Africa, people consumed inflorescences and hashish (cannabis resin) in both smokable and edible forms. Hashish was historically an import, chiefly from Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece; the earliest regional evidence of hashish production is from 1921, in eastern Algeria (Livet, 1921). Into the 1970s, North African farmers mostly produced herbal material from local cultivars. People mostly planted small plots but sometimes fields of cannabis, notably in northern Morocco where local demand sustained large-scale production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

13 South of the Sahara, historical accounts suggest rich bodies of knowledge about horticulture, ecology, pharmacology, and drug manufacturing (Duvall, 2019, chapters 5

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and 9). Historical farmers grew the crop in a wide range of conditions, and harvested inflorescences. Cannabis gardens were documented in eighteenth-century South Africa and Mozambique, and nineteenth-century Egypt, Angola, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tunisia, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It was a field crop in Angola in the 1890s, and Botswana in the 1880s, where it was the only irrigated crop. Yet the plant also grew in isolated patches away from farmland across Central Africa (1850s-1900s), and people harvested feral plants in São Tome (1860s) and South Africa (1890s). The most basic processing technique was to dry the flowers before smoking, but more complex techniques are documented. In South Africa, for instance, people lightly fermented moist herbal material that was dried before use (Bourhill, 1913, p. 14).

14 Plant genetic diversity developed alongside cannabis cultural diversity. Throughout the continent, people saved seeds from inflorescences harvested for smoking. Thus, agricultural selection favored plants with characteristics that smokers preferred. Travelling smokers helped produce regional populations by scattering seeds between local areas. In southeastern Africa, agricultural selection produced a distinctive cannabis lineage with elevated levels of the appetite-suppressing cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) (Hillig and Mahlberg, 2004). Seed savers produced this strain by favoring plants whose biochemistry mitigated hunger; cannabis has been valued as an appetite suppressant in Southern Africa since at least the 1580s (Duvall, 2016). Plant genetics are also broadly understood in the Maghreb. The trans- Mediterranean history of cannabis produced landraces that include genes from psychoactive populations (introduced from the Levant) and non-psychoactive populations (introduced from Europe) (Clarke and Merlin, 2013, p. 330).

15 Finally, cannabis is a relatively recent arrival in some areas, most prominently West Africa (Duvall, 2019, chapters 4 and 7). The plant drug was not regionally prominent until the 1950s. In locations where the plant is shallowly rooted historically, cannabis cultural diversity and plant genetic diversity appear to be low.

Legal Colonial Cannabis

16 Africa came under colonial rule mostly during the 1870s to 1890s. Cannabis was initially legal under colonial governments but widely outlawed by 1925, when it became subject to international control under the Geneva Opium Convention (Duvall, 2016; 2019, chapter 9). Even while cannabis was legal, though, colonialists diminished the production capacities of African societies through direct and indirect suppression of the crop.

17 Colonial governance impelled authorities to seek revenue from controlled territories. For centuries, cannabis has been traded in Africa (Duvall, 2019, chapters 4 and 9). Several colonial governments capitalized upon cannabis by taxing preexisting markets (Illustration 3). These were instances of primitive accumulation, though ultimately unsuccessful; they were opportunistic attempts to capture wealth from colonized territory, and not efforts to develop agricultural productivity. The legal, capitalized markets were short-lived, except for Morocco’s and Tunisia’s cannabis monopolies, which persisted into the 1950s. These monopolies generated significant governmental revenues, whereas trades in Angola, São Tome, Gabon, Mozambique, and South Africa were insufficiently lucrative for the colonial states to forestall enactment of prohibitionist laws.

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Illustration 3 - Taxed, legal cannabis trades under colonial governments

The colonial borders represent conditions in approximately 1900.

18 With the exception of Morocco (Bozonnet, 2017), the regimes that oversaw legal markets made no efforts to develop cannabis agriculture. Colonial governance was pernicious toward indigenous production capabilities. Several actions directly or indirectly suppressed cannabis prior to prohibition. First, some governments sought to eradicate the crop based on ulterior concerns. French Congo and Ottoman Egypt, for examples, took anti-cannabis measures before prohibiting the plant drug, thinking that drug use diminished labor availability and quality (Commissariat général du Gouvernement, 1907; Kozma, 2011). Second, colonialists viewed cannabis drug use as immoral, which stigmatized farming. This process is well documented in South Africa, where Europeans denounced cannabis gardening by 1818 although it was not outlawed until 1904 (Duvall, 2019, p. 188). Third, colonial governments sought to shift agricultural production toward export crops, including the drugs tobacco, coffee, and tea. In a few instances – in Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar, Zanzibar, and South Africa – European businessmen tried to export cannabis, but they targeted Western pharmaceutical markets and did not build upon indigenous capabilities (Duvall, 2019, p. 207-209). The expansion of cash economies also altered agricultural output. Farmers increasingly needed money to pay taxes, and cannabis, a widely and easily grown crop, was not lucrative.

19 Altogether, anti-cannabis sentiments pushed cannabis underground before it was legally prohibited (Duvall, 2019, chapters 5 and 9). In French Congo, European travelers documented a transition from open to hidden horticulture between 1880 and 1925. In Sierra Leone, cannabis was widely used and grown in 1850, but by 1900 social elites were unaware of its presence. In South Africa, cannabis growing was increasingly

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concealed after 1850 and nearly invisible by 1900 (Sampson, 1993, p. 6). The plant was shunted toward social-environmental margins. People gardened it in out-of-the-way spots that were not valued for legal crops. Those who chose to use cannabis were increasingly at the fringes of society, such as unemployed workers in South Africa, peasant farmers in Egypt, prostitutes and mendicants in Morocco, and hard laborers in Angola. The early colonial period pre-adapted African cannabis economies to the conditions that formal prohibition produced during the 1900s.

Illegal Farming

20 Most African colonial governments banned cannabis before it was listed in the 1925 Opium Convention (Illustration 4). Additional laws were enacted after this agreement, but drug-law enforcement did not immediately change (Klantschnig, 2014; Akyeampong, 2005; Du Toit, 1980). Arrests continued where authorities were already watching for cannabis; elsewhere, concern grew gradually. Cannabis became salient in many African locations only after World War Two, when returning servicemen and merchant sailors brought it to port cities. Physicians became increasingly concerned about cannabis use and mental illness in African societies (Klantschnig, 2014; Mills, 2003). Anti-cannabis drug-law enforcement intensified globally in the 1960s. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 established a prohibitionist framework for controlling cannabis, and conservative authorities sought to eradicate the drug that they associated with countercultural movements (Bewley-Taylor et al., 2014). In several African countries, Rastafarianism has been a countercultural target of anti-cannabis campaigns. Independent African countries maintained colonial-era anti-cannabis laws in order to comply with international agreements, and because many elites disapproved of the drug (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2018). In the 1980s, cannabis production increased continent-wide, in correlation with economic crises; production has since grown consistently, although not uniformly between countries (Perez and Laniel, 2004; Carrier and Klantschnig, 2016; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Destrebecq, 2007). Africa has been an active front in the global War on Drugs since the 1990s (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2012; Ellis, 2009), but national governments have shown varying levels of tolerance toward cannabis (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2018).

Illustration 4 - Cannabis-control enacted before the 1925 Opium Convention in Geneva

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Modified from Duvall (2019).

21 Many scholars have described black-market cannabis farming in several countries (Kepe, 2003; Bloomer, 2008; Afsahi and Mouna, 2014; Chouvy, 2008; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014; Suckling, 2016; Laudati, 2014, 2016; Laniel, 2006; Perez and Laniel, 2004; Léonard, 1998; Bernstein, 1999; Allen, 1999; Labrousse and Laniel, 1999; Carrier and Klantschnig, 2016). In general, illegal agriculture has several widespread characteristics. First, it is potentially lucrative. Prohibition places a price premium on cannabis, giving it a form of money-earning potential that legal crops cannot offer. The premium rewards farmers who accept the risks of illegal behavior. If police raid a garden before harvest, an entire season’s labor might yield nothing. Farmers are also vulnerable to warmakers, gangs, and others who use violence to capture the value of crops that they did not sow. Cannabis farming has tended to attract poor or socially marginal farmers who are already vulnerable and thus willing to accept risks for the chance to profit. Farmers commonly seek to reduce their risks by hiding the crop in hard-to-access sites and outback areas, although sometimes the crop is grown openly (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014). The plant can yield satisfactorily in marginal sites, which allows farmers to plant staple crops in better soils while seeking additional income from cannabis sown in otherwise unused land.

22 Cannabis farming has been profitable, productive, and risky for a century. In Sierra Leone in the 1920s and 1930s, and Nigeria in the 1950s through 1980s, farmers supplied domestic and export markets even though cannabis farming was hardly visible to police (Akyeampong, 2005; Ellis, 2009; Klantschnig, 2014). When the colonial Zimbabwean government promoted cotton in the 1960s and 1970s, many farmers resisted because cannabis was more lucrative (Maravanyika and Maat, 2017). In Côte d’Ivoire, cannabis production boomed after the international cocoa market collapsed in the 1980s (Léonard, 1998). Legal risk has constantly shaped agricultural practices.

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Subsistence farmers in colonial South Sudan had to hide the crop in the 1950s, although they grew it just for household consumption (de Schlippe, 1956). Commercial farmers in colonial DRC reduced their risks by paying non-agricultural foragers (“Pygmies”) to tend remote plantations (Turnbull, 1960, p. 37). Illegality has made cannabis a morally checkered crop (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2018). In Kenya in the 1980s, farmers desperate for income sowed cannabis even though earnings from the crop were considered “evil money” (Shipton, 1989). Cannabis has funded warfare in some locations at least since the 1980s. A rebel group in Senegal, for instance, persisted through the 1980s and 1990s because it controlled a cannabis production zone (Faye, 2006).

23 Even if many poor farmers have earned money from cannabis, the crop has not solved problems of poverty (jh/kn/rz, 2013). Agricultural economies disfavor those who lack capital. Few studies have assessed capital flows in cannabis agriculture. In Ghana in the 1990s, farmers bought seeds and supplies on credit from traffickers, who captured most profits by transporting the crop to market (Labrousse and Laniel, 1999, p. 23). Investments in irrigation, fertilizer, and seedstock helped increase productivity in Morocco since 2000 (Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014). The funds came at least partly from outsiders, including aid intended for legal crops and presumably traffickers; poorer farmers surely failed to invest as much as wealthier ones. The sales and distribution segments of the cannabis economy are more lucrative than farming, and thus often controlled by powerful people. Examples range from the wives of military commanders in eastern DRC (Laudati, 2014), to members of the presidential guard within the Liberia National Police (Daily Observer, 2015). Many cannabis farmers live where drug-law enforcement extends farther into the countryside than other government services. In Zimbabwe in 2014, for instance, farmers in a district without modern healthcare facilities sought unsuccessfully to legalize the cannabis that they grew for traditional medicinal uses (Southern Eye, 2014). Africans are aware of problems that prohibition has produced, but African governments have only recently begun to consider loosening their controls on cannabis.

Twenty-first Century Liberalization

24 The current phase of agricultural history is the rapidly unfolding move toward cannabis liberalization. News media have reported steps toward cannabis-policy reform in 22 countries (Illustration 5). Agriculture has been a widespread consideration. Proponents have promoted the crop’s untapped value, emphasized opportunities blocked by prohibition, and noted that Global Northern countries are already profiting from liberalization. A politician in eSwatini asserted that the country was losing potential revenue, unlike “First world countries [that] have decriminalised the growing and use of dagga” (Chatora, 2015). A Nigerian presidential candidate stated: “people are making billions out of that particular plant […]. We should be focusing on it. [Nigeria should be] exporting weed […] instead of chasing after people who are growing weed” (Toromade, 2018).

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Illustration 5 - Actions taken toward cannabis liberalization. This map is based on published news reports of events since 2010

Source: Duvall, unpublished data.

25 Cannabis liberalization has happened in eight instances1. Two of these instances–both in South Africa–did not involve agricultural considerations. The South African parliament authorized medical marijuana2 in 2017 in order to benefit ill people, while in 2018 the country’s high court decided that adults have the right to garden and use dagga privately (Jansen, 2017; Zondo, 2018). Agricultural development was the explicit motivation for the other six of instances of liberalization. However, these reforms do not obviously benefit African farmers:

26 Democratic Republic of the Congo: In 2019, a Canadian pharmaceutical company (EXMceuticals) announced that it had, in January 2017, “obtained a license for growing psychotropic and non-psychotropic cannabis on more than 10,000 acres in the DRC. Written into the contract is the potential for practically unlimited expansion of farm land”. By August 2018 it had cleared 50 acres, planted 40,000 plants, and harvested 10,000 of them; it has published photos of its operations, and published biographies of two executives of its DRC subsidiary. The DRC government has made no announcements regarding this operation, or how similar licenses might be obtained. EXMceuticals also has announced farming agreements with Malawi and Uganda. The company’s shares sell on the Canadian Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (EXMceuticals, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Canadian Securities Exchange, 2019).

27 Lesotho: In 2017, the government began licensing cannabis production under existing laws, but did not publish regulations until May 2018. A license to farm is about US$ 13,000 licenses to manufacture, test, or export products cost more. Lesotho’s per capita income in 2017 was $ 2,925. The principal company is British-owned Medi Kingdom, but at least three other pharmaceutical companies have begun export

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production. These are foreign-owned (Australia, Canada, South Africa, U.K., U.S.) (Tharoor, 2018; Prohibition Partners, 2019; Motsoeli, 2018; Phakela, 2018; Lamers, 2018; World Bank Group, 2019).

28 Malawi: In 2016, parliament approved agricultural trials of non-psychoactive cannabis grown for fiber and oilseeds; the trials were partly funded by a British entrepreneur, whose company plans to start commercial production. In October 2018, a Canadian- South African investor lobbied for a hemp license; soon after, parliament began drafting a bill legalizing non-psychoactive cannabis farming. In February 2019, EXMceuticals announced a deal to grow 2,000 acres of the crop, for psychoactive and non-psychoactive medicinal products; in May, it announced the acquisition of a Malawian agricultural processing firm (Mzungu, 2016; Nyale, 2018; EXMceuticals, 2019b; Malawi Hemp Association, 2019; Kramer, 2018; Khamula, 2018).

29 eSwatini: In April 2018, a parliamentary committee recommended licensing drug-plant production. A U.S. pharmaceutical company announced a license agreement in January 2019; in March, the business structure of production was published, though licensing was not finalized. Regulations published in March require about US$ 71,000 per license, and licensees must build high-security grow facilities. The country’s median income was $8,640 in 2017 (bc/jk/he, 2006; World Bank Group, 2019; Profile Solutions, 2019; Chatora, 2015; BM/jn/APA, 2018; GlobeNewswire, 2019).

30 Uganda: In 2012, Industrial Hemp Uganda (IHU), owned by Ugandans, began advertising hemp fiber products. In 2017 it began growing psychoactive cannabis. In April 2018, EXMceuticals announced a partnership with IHU, which then purchased marijuana seeds from The Netherlands valued at $ 42,000. In July 2018, an Israeli company (Together Pharmaceuticals, traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange) announced that it had been licensed to grow medical marijuana. In January 2019, Together began planting in an IHU-owned facility, and announced its first harvest in June. In October 2018, Together purchased a company that produces and distributes cannabis products in Germany; in April 2019, IHU announced agreements to export to Germany and Canada. IHU, Together, and EXMceuticals seem to have been licensed under existing laws, but no regulations have been published despite at least 12 other applications for licenses (Mugerwa, 2019a, 2019b; URN, 2019; New Vision, 2018; Cannabis Magazine, 2019; EXMceuticals, 2019b; Erez, 2018; Industrial Hemp Uganda, 2018; Bloomberg, 2019).

31 Zimbabwe: In June 2017, an economy minister accepted an application to grow medical marijuana from a Canadian company. In April 2018, the government published regulations that allowed cannabis growing licenses under existing laws. The application fee was US$ 50,000. The government shortly halted the program, but re-opened it in October upon reducing the fee to US$ 10,000. In March 2019, a pharmaceutical company that is based in Zimbabwe but headed by an American announced that it received a license for US$ 46,000. The per capita GDP in Zimbabwe (2017) was $ 2,428 (Mawonde, 2018; Chiriga, 2018; Lamers, 2019a; News Day, 2011; Langa, 2018; Ncube, 2017; World Bank Group, 2019; Mashona Central Bureau, 2018).

32 These cannabis-policy changes have enabled business partnerships made opportunistically with Global Northern companies. In all cases except Uganda, the African governments have reacted solely to lobbying from Northern companies. In Uganda, the government reacted to Ugandan-owned IHU, but only after IHU attracted partnerships with Northern companies. It is impossible to assess if the governments

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have made good deals. DRC has been silent on its agreement, Uganda and Malawi have not published licensing regulations, and regulations were announced in Lesotho and eSwatini only after deals were privately concluded. It is also impossible to evaluate how many Africans have gained income from these ventures. Africans have had noteworthy roles in Uganda (ownership of IHU) and DRC (EXMceuticals has identified two executives of its subsidiary), and in Lesotho (paid license holders for foreigners, although few have succeeded in making such deals: Motsoeli, 2018). The more obvious roles Africans have had are as laborers. The license fees published for Lesotho, eSwatini, and Zimbabwe are unaffordable for most people in those countries. Uganda, DRC, and Malawi have not announced how their citizens–or anyone–might apply for farming licenses.

33 Further, no reforms have allowed cannabis possession or consumption, and authorities have explicitly discouraged preexisting agriculture. This was a key point when Lesotho’s prime minister opened the first licensed farm in December 2018: “For a long time, individuals […] have been illegally producing marijuana [that is] used for the wrong purposes without any significant benefits for the country and its citizens”. His health minister emphasized that licensees would grow “cannabis [that] is not the one that [we] have in the country” (Government of Lesotho, 2018). Some citizens of Lesotho disagree; illegal farming of local varieties provides income to many people (Bloomer, 2008; Tyndale, 2009). “I know it’s illegal to plant marijuana,” said a single mother in 2018. “[But] My children are in school because of marijuana. When I sell some, I’m then able to pay school fees” (Mkhize, 2018). The cannabis that has become legal in Africa is not the cannabis that has benefitted African farmers.

Canna-colonization

34 Beginning in the 1950s, African intellectuals developed the concept of neo-colonialism to understand how political-economic power is wielded internationally after formal colonialism has ended. Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah argued that neocolonialism exists when the economic system and political policies of ostensibly independent states are directed from outside. “Neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. [For instance,] Control over government policy […] may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State […]. The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world” (Nkrumah, 1965, p. ix). Current instances of cannabis liberalization in Africa epitomize neo-colonialism. The mechanism of payment for favorable cannabis-policies has enabled Global Northern companies to accumulate wealth by dispossessing citizens of African countries of access to the increasingly legal, global cannabis economy.

35 Neo-colonialism appears in six of the eight instances of cannabis liberalization that have happened in Africa. In these six instances, Global Northern companies sought licenses to produce cannabis under existing laws. Only in Uganda has an African business been clearly involved, although IHU’s role may be principally to facilitate foreign direct investment. EXMceuticals owns 70 % of its partnership with IHU3, the same rate that the company reports for subsidiaries in other countries (EXMceuticals, 2019c). No countries have rewritten their drug-control laws. There have been only policy changes, secured by payments – that is, licensing fees – made privately toward

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the costs of governance. The chronologies of policy changes underscore the power of these payments. Lesotho and eSwatini revised cannabis policies only after paid licenses had been granted; EXMceuticals (2019c) currently reports licenses or license applications for countries that have published no changes in in drug-control policies, let alone licensing regulations (DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda).

36 Reported licensing fees have been tiny relative to the value of the Global Northern cannabis industry, yet far exceed what most citizens of the relevant countries could pay for the opportunity to grow cannabis legally. No drug-policy reforms have allowed casual growing, possession, or use for citizens (except in South Africa). Africans have recognized the global disparity in liberalization reforms. In Zimbabwe in 2014, a local official advocated for people in a rural district: “If countries in North and South America can legalise mbanje, why ban it in [the rural district] where it is part and parcel of their culture?” (Southern Eye, 2014). In 2018, a Rastafarian in Lesotho sued to seek religious rights to dagga, as Lesotho’s political elite cheered the first legal exports of cannabis to Canada (Tefo, 2018). The DRC has silently loosened its drug-control policies to favor a Canadian company, while abetting the violence that Congolese farmers experience if they grow the drug crop (Laudati, 2014, 2016). At present, cannabis liberalization has demonstrably benefited few Africans, but has bolstered the prospects of many Global Northern companies and shareholders active in the stock exchanges in Toronto, Tel Aviv, and Frankfurt (Prohibition Partners, 2019). Foreign capital is being used to exploit the continent’s resources – land, water, labor, and cannabis – rather than to offer meaningful opportunities for Africans to accumulate wealth.

37 The plant’s agricultural history led to this situation. The long, pre-colonial rise of cannabis farming produced plant diversity that is valuable nowadays. Centuries of agricultural selection produced today’s valued local strains and landraces (Duvall, 2016). Africa’s cannabis varieties are coveted amongst marijuana seed producers. An American in 2012 stated, “Africa is […] the mothership for strains that […] are going to be a huge factor in the future of medical cannabis” (Bluntman, 2012). Indeed, when Uganda’s IHU imported marijuana seed from Amsterdam in 20184 (Mugerwa, 2019b), at least two of the strains–Durban Poison and Power Plant–traced to African seedstock (Wikileaf, 2019). Authorized cannabis farming in Africa does not apparently use African seeds, but, at least in Uganda, production has relied upon unrecognized African intellectual property, in the genetic material of landraces used in commercial seed breeding. The bioprospecting that has brought African seeds to the Global North to the benefit of marijuana seed sellers has not returned benefits to African farmers (Duvall, 2016).

38 African territory is now coveted, too. Land grabbing by wealthy countries and companies wishing to grow food and biofuel crops has been described in many academic and news-media sources (cf. Libreti, 2013). Land grabbing is happening in the new, global cannabis economy too, exemplified by EXMceuticals contract claims to more than 130,000 acres of farmland in at least four countries (EXMceuticals, 2019b, 2019c).

39 In spring 2019, business deals involving African cannabis are being reported in quick succession, often in connection with the Canadian Stock Exchange. Activity has spiked since Canada’s legalization event in October 2018, but business has been expanding elsewhere. Israel’s Together Pharmaceuticals, for example, has assembled a vertically integrated enterprise linking its Ugandan production to its medical cannabis

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distribution business in Germany (Erez, 2018). Similarly, EXMceuticals (2019c) owns processing and distribution subsidiaries in Canada and Portugal. The powerhouses of cannabis ‘development’ in Africa are private companies, not former colonial rulers; neocolonial power comes from wealth, not former political relationships.

40 Pre-colonial agriculture made African cannabis into a valuable crop. Subsequent historical processes have prevented Africans from capturing the crop’s value. Colonial governance diminished the continent’s production capabilities, in all economic sectors. Although African cannabis farmers have exhibited a century of resilient productivity, colonial governments did not establish resilient or durable institutions to support agricultural development in general. Consequently, African countries are poorly equipped to undertake the type of technocentric production that now characterizes cannabis commercial farming. Thus, knowledge must be imported, rather than identified locally. For instance, Medi Kingdom employs “International experts/ consultants to provide skills transfer to local […] personnel” in Lesotho (Medi Kingdom, 2019). This approach reflects the modernization theory of development, the idea that poor countries should follow the social-technical-environmental precedents set by wealthy countries rather than alternative pathways (Coetzee et al., 2001; Matunhu, 2011). Modernization theory reinforces ideas about African agricultural backwardness, and facilitates resource grabs in the guise of technical assistance, capacity building, or efficient resource use (Bergius et al., 2018; McMichael, 2013; Zambakari, 2017). Global Northern cannabis companies active in Africa generally present themselves as pursuing socially responsible corporate business. In Lesotho, for instance, the non-profit Medi Kingdom Foundation assists orphans and vulnerable children (Medi Kingdom, 2019; see also Strain Hunters Foundation 2017). Nonetheless, corporate social responsibility activities do not rehabilitate civil and agricultural institutions impoverished by neglect under colonial and post-colonial governments.

41 Prohibition has weakened the global market positions of Global Southern countries and companies. The international drug control regime has been sustained by voluntary compliance by signatory countries, a volunteerism strengthened by threats of economic and political penalties against violators (Bewley-Taylor, 2012; Tupper and Labate, 2012). African countries have been in weak positions to shape or defy international agreements. Global Northern countries have exercised more autonomy. Since the 1970s, Northern jurisdictions have defected from the dominant regime by liberalizing controls on cannabis and other substances, for various reasons. By defying international agreements, these countries enabled their businesspeople to enter into quasilegal cannabis commerce earlier than people in other parts of the world. The global marijuana seed industry, for instance, is centered in Amsterdam, where controls on cannabis were relaxed beginning in 1976. Marijuana seed producers own the largest collections of African cannabis varieties, which they use to breed high-price, hybrid seeds (Duvall, 2016). Global Northern businesses have arisen from decades of illegally developed expertise in fields from horticulture to medicine; comparable African knowledge has not been similarly valorized. Based on their expertise, Global Northerners have set standards for authorized commercial cannabis farming (Lamers, 2019b), on which Africans must be trained (cf. Medi Kingdom, 2019) Africans are relatively latecomers to liberalized cannabis economies, a disadvantage that adds to those generated earlier in the plant’s history.

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42 The sum of cannabis history is that private companies have accumulated sufficient wealth and power to buy beneficial policies from African governments. Despite the precedents set in DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, eSwatini, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, other reform pathways are possible. Examples come from Kenya and Morocco, where no reforms have happened, and South Africa, which has enacted reforms. Compared with its neighbors, South Africa is exceptional in many aspects of its political-economic history. Its cannabis liberalization reforms – legalization of medical marijuana in 2017 and of adult-use dagga in 2018 (Jansen, 2017; Zondo, 2018) – are exceptional because they trace to South African citizens who sought legal changes. These reforms did not happen because businesses lobbied for access to land, labor, water, cannabis, or other resources. The 2017 medical marijuana reform narrowly enabled cannabis commerce, but the 2018 court decision did not establish rights to sell dagga. Few South Africans can legally earn money from cannabis, though all adults are now allowed to cultivate the crop for themselves5.

43 Additionally, potential reforms discussed by politicians in Kenya and Morocco are directed toward the interests of citizens. Of course, these reform ideas may simply be self-serving political proclamations. Nonetheless, in both countries, reform ideas have acknowledged political ecologies that have disadvantaged citizens. In Morocco in 2016, a politician portrayed kif farming as an outcome of political-economic marginalization tracing back to the colonial period: “these modest farmers […] are victims of the difficult conditions in their region […]. It is time for the [Rif Mountains] region and its people to benefit from their rights to development” (Jaouhari, 2016; see also Schemm and Bellaoualli, 2014; Lamlili, 2018). A bill forming in Kenya’s parliament seems likely to interest many Kenyans: it would decriminalize possession and consumption, expunge records of past arrests, and allow farming by registered growers (Omul, 2018). The bill arose from post-colonial thought, as expressed by a Kenyan scholar testifying before parliament: “it is medicine [and] it was […] until the colonialists came and illegalized it. We are reinstating the freedom. If we see value in it that they don’t see, it doesn’t mean we have to go their way” (Muchangi, 2017).

44 Many African countries are contemplating liberalization. If drug-policy reforms are built upon awareness of the history of cannabis in Africa, they will place the interests of African farmers before those of Global Northern companies.

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NOTES

1. Additionally, EXMceuticals, a Canadian company, has announced negotiations to grow in Burundi, Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia (EXMceuticals 2019a). The Ethiopia case seems most substantial; the company has published the name of the CEO of a claimed Ethiopian subsidiary (EXMceuticals, 2019c). However, the Ethiopian Minister of Health denied that any cannabis licenses have been issued (Getachew, 2019), and no other reports have confirmed EXMceutical’s announcements. Similarly, in 2015, an Australian company announced that it had received a license to grow cannabis in Namibia (Erin Resources, 2015), but no other sources confirm this relationship. Finally, in 2010 a Rwandan newspaper reported that the Minister of Health supported medical marijuana legalization. The minister subsequently denied this, and expressed support for the criminalization of drug use (Musoni, 2010; Ntambara, 2010). 2. In popular discourse, “medical marijuana” refers to psychoactive and non-psychoactive, therapeutic applications of cannabis. I use this term in contexts where such applications are the stated purpose for cannabis liberalization or production.

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3. The terms of IHU’s partnership with Israel’s Together Pharmaceuticals are not known. 4. IHU probably bought from Dutch Passion Seed Company, which offers the strains listed in Ugandan customs records reported by Mugerwa (2019b), including the trademarked strain “CBD Auto Charlotte’s Angel” (see Dutch Passion’s online catalog: https://www.dutch-passion.com/en/ cannabis-seeds/). 5. Parliament has until September 2020 to enact legislation that complies with the 2018 decision, and it will likely also consider whether adult-use commerce might be opened.

ABSTRACTS

This article outlines four historical phases of cannabis cultivation in Africa. First, during the plant’s initial dispersal across the continent, people developed diverse cultures of cannabis farming and use. Second, several formal markets for cannabis developed under colonial regimes, although colonialists more widely suppressed the crop. Third, twentieth-century drug laws changed the economics of production, causing cannabis farming to become particularly attractive to resource-poor farmers. Finally, several countries have recently legalized cannabis cultivation in specific contexts. Altogether, the crop’s agricultural history has produced relationships that enable Global Northerners to extract more value from African resources than African farmers can extract.

INDEX

Keywords: economic development, capitalism, neocolonialism, foreign direct investment

AUTHOR

CHRIS S. DUVALL Chris S. Duvall, [email protected], is a Professor and Chair, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (USA). He recently published: - Duvall C.S., 2019. The African Roots of Marijuana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. - Duvall C.S., Butt B., Neely A.H., 2018. The trouble with savanna and other environmental categories, especially in Africa. In Lave R., Biermann C., Lane S. (eds.), Handbook of Critical Physical Geography. New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, p. 107-127 - Duvall C.S., 2017. Cannabis and Tobacco in Precolonial and Colonial Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History [Online]. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190277734.013.44

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Turning Cannabis Into Cash: Agrarian Change and Lesotho’s Evolving Experience

Julian Bloomer

1 Geographically, much of the scholarship on illicit drug cultivation and the political economic analysis of the global drugs trade has focused on the opium poppy and the production of heroin in Asia (Chouvy, 2010; Meehan, 2011; Chaves-Agudelo et al., 2015; Mansfield, 2016; Su, 2018) or on coca leaf cultivation and subsequent cocaine production in Latin America (Aviles, 2017; McSweeney et al., 2018; Muñoz-Mora et al., 2018). Estimates of the value of the global trade in drugs are notoriously difficult to calculate but some have suggested it may be equivalent to 8 % of world trade (Hall, 2012). High value commodity chains and a focus on understanding the impact of Western driven policies, such as the war on drugs, has ensured the geographic focus lay largely beyond African shores, with the exception of the cannabis trade in Morocco (UNODC, 2004). In the past couple of decades, however, increased attention has focused on the cultivation and trade of illicit and ‘quasi-legal’ drugs across the African continent (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2012; African Union, 2013; Carrier and Klantschnig, 2018). The two principal plant-based drugs that have been researched are khat (Anderson et al., 2007) and cannabis (Carrier and Klantschnig, 2012) 1. The former is culturally and geographically associated within a relatively confined area in east Africa, whereas the latter has been researched in various settings across the continent (UNODC, 2007), from Morocco (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018), to west Africa (Ellis, 2009; Suckling, 2016), to central Africa (Laudati, 2016), and southern Africa (Leggett, 2002; Kepe, 2003; Bloomer, 2009). Increased attention has also been paid to the geopolitical (Dimova, 2016), political economic (McCurdy and Kaduri, 2016), and development aspects (Bybee, 2012; Klantschnig et al., 2016; Carrier and Klantschnig, 2016) of the illicit drugs trade more generally on the continent.

2 Scholars who have been examining the role of illicit networks in today’s global economy, have also been keen to highlight, however, that formal/informal, licit/illicit, legitimate/criminal often merge (Ferguson, 2006; Nordstrom, 2007). Legal status can

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vary both spatially and temporally. Irregular migrants, for example, can see their legal status fluctuate as they move through different territories (Tinti and Reitano, 2018). Similarly, a plant species like Cannabis sativa can be licit or illicit, depending where and when it has been produced – as Heyman (1999) said “legality and illegality are… simultaneously black and white, and shades of gray” (1999, p. 11).

3 This paper will briefly examine the history of cannabis cultivation and use in southern Africa before outlining its role as an illicit cash crop and significant livelihood strategy for smallholder farmers and vulnerable households in Lesotho (Bloomer, 2009). Against this background, the paper will analyse recent shifts in Lesotho’s regulatory regime that saw the country make history in 2017 as the first African country to issue licenses for medical cannabis production (Khumalo, 2018). Yet the overall benefits to Lesotho’s citizens of liberalising this aspect of the economy to foreign investment remain far from clear at this juncture, especially as a result of international and regional debates on policy reform and Lesotho’s challenging economic position in the region.

The political economy of cannabis in southern Africa

4 The history of cannabis production in southern Africa is marked by at least four phases. The first phase involved the small-scale cultivation of cannabis to meet the needs of customs and rituals that saw tribal elders smoking cannabis but apparently in moderation (Magubane et al., 1975; Du Toit, 1996). The transition to the second phase, which is when cannabis was first cultivated as a cash crop, is harder to identify and varies within the region, but is likely to have been associated with the establishment and expansion of the migrant labour system and the expansion of a cash economy into rural areas of southern Africa. Life in single sex male compounds at remote mining locations and urban townships created a demand for substances such as alcohol and cannabis that could be paid for with the wages received (Du Toit, 1980). Cultivation in this second phase, however, was principally concerned with meeting demand in the region, and especially within South Africa, where alcohol and cannabis were the principal substances available due to the very limited supply and high cost of imported drugs, such as heroin and cocaine (Leggett, 2002). The third phase began in the early 1990s, coinciding with the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, as well as what had been a gradual decay of a formal migrant labour system. This period saw a re- establishment of legitimate trade within and outside of the region and consequently greatly facilitated the development of South Africa and the region as an international hub in drug trafficking. The fourth, and most recent phase, has seen the gradual legalisation of cultivation within the tight confines of medical cannabis production and export, with Lesotho leading the way (Rothberg, 2017).

5 Research that engages specifically with communities growing cannabis in the region remains very sparse and where it does occur has often been quite superficial. Eswatini, also known as the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a significant grower that supplies the South African and international markets, with over 70 % of smallholder farmers in the northern Hhohho region alone growing cannabis for sale (Harrison, 2005). With such proportions of rural communities dependent on the cannabis trade, feasibility studies for alternative uses of cannabis are being creatively examined with proposals including a promotion of legal hemp production to replace declining cotton production (Hall,

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2003) to commercialising old traditions of brick making using a cannabis (hemp), lime and water mixture (IRIN, 2006).

6 South Africa maintains a longer record of observations. Du Toit (1980; 1996) traces the early historical records of cannabis in Africa before embarking on a detailed survey of cannabis use amongst different ethnic groups in South Africa, making reference, inter alia, to the pre-1950s cannabis trade from Swaziland to South Africa. He notes many interesting observations on cannabis within South Africa, making the point that cannabis use is predominantly a male pastime, as well as highlighting the dilemmas between traditional and modern conceptions of cannabis use: “Where the traditional system allows cannabis smoking and beer drinking as viable forms of social activity for mature adults, the modern government completely condemns cannabis. The modern system has also pressured the traditional lifestyle so that it is difficult to live even a marginal traditional life.” (Du Toit, 1980, p. 94)

7 In the late 1970s, in a survey of rural South Africans, 9 % admitted to resorting to extra- legal activities such as selling alcohol without a licence and growing cannabis to meet household expenditures (Du Toit, 1980). More recently, Kepe (2003) highlighted the important role that social differences within rural communities play in determining who can successfully trade in cannabis in Pondoland in the Eastern Cape province. Lesotho has also been defined as a major international producer of cannabis (Gastrow, 2003), responsible for supplying other Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, notably its neighbor South Africa. The extent to which cannabis from Lesotho travels beyond the continent through international drug smuggling networks is almost impossible to determine. Certainly, South Africa’s infrastructure has allowed it to become a regional trafficking hub to Europe and elsewhere, as can be determined from seizures abroad (Oellermann, 2007; Schiller and Foy, 2017). The apparently poorer quality cannabis from Lesotho, however, may be largely restricted to the domestic market in South Africa.

8 Besides some of the more obvious difficulties that arise when individuals, households or communities depend upon extra-legal livelihood activities, three that are peculiar to the context of cannabis in southern Africa need to be discussed further. The most important of these is the claim that an increase in cannabis production will result in a decline in food crop production and consequently leave the region, already succumbing to perennial hunger, further depleted of its food reserves (Cilliers, 2001; Labrousse, 2003; INCB, 2004). In this case the short-term economic benefits of cannabis production may ultimately be detrimental to household security in the long run.

9 Another idea that has been developed in the literature is transnationalisation of criminal networks, namely in this context that South African cannabis smugglers were recruiting communities to grow cannabis. Thus, rather than local communities identifying a viable livelihood strategy, it may have been proposed and encouraged by outsiders, particularly syndicates of drug traders. Such control by syndicates would potentially affect price negotiations and the bargaining power of rural communities, both within South Africa and farther afield.

10 If local official collusion in the trade is present, this might suggest the presence of what Snyder and Duran-Martinez (2009) have referred to as state-sponsored protection rackets. These can occur if geographies of enforcement and criminality align in particular ways. Snyder and Duran-Martinez (2009) also examine the relationship between illegality and violence and highlight how it varies both temporally and

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geographically and indeed highlight that there is no clear line between the licit and illicit. This is important to consider in the context of Lesotho, which has continued to experience weak governance and troubling undercurrents of political conflict and domestic violence (Goeke, 2016; Mwangi, 2016; Adams and Nkuebe, 2018; Pherudi, 2018), although the explicit role of illicit markets in this mix is hard to quantify. In a similar vein, Suckling (2016) discusses the concept of criminalisation of the state in the context of the cannabis trade in Sierra Leone, however, the role of migrant Rastafari cannabis farmers from Jamaica has also seen a transfer of knowledge and skills there.

11 South Africa’s dominant position in the region, as a financial and trade hub, functions for both the licit and illicit trade networks in a similar manner (Carmody, 2011). South Africa can export its own industrially produced food crops, for example, whilst importing cannabis from surrounding countries, especially Lesotho and Swaziland. As is examined later in the paper, policy relating to cannabis production is evolving at a rapid rate in recent years and this places Lesotho in a difficult position as any competitive advantage is likely to be lost once South Africa legalises production.

12 Laniel (2001) noted how drugs are “well-suited to play the role of ‘hard currency’: they are fairly cheap to produce, command a high sale price, are not subject to inflation… and they can either be disposed of, for cash or other goods, on a growing regional consumer market or used in other regional or international transactions” (2001, p. 411). A commodity-chain approach, therefore, can be a valuable instrument to follow both the physical distribution of the commodity but more importantly to ascertain how the value of the commodity changes, generally increasing from the point of production to the point of consumption, although the fluidity of the current situation must be borne in mind. On a political note, it is also crucial to bear in mind the motivations of politicians and security forces in enforcing laws on cannabis prohibition, a crop that clearly brings much income to rural communities who are coping with the collapse of the formal migrant labour system, and who now languish amidst declining food crop yields and have very few employment opportunities.

A history of cannabis in Lesotho

13 In the opening to A Short History of Lesotho, Gill (1993) alludes to the important role that cannabis may have played during the period of Sotho settlement in present day Lesotho. The San and their ancestors had been hunting and gathering in the region for thousands of years; their pictorial depictions of eland and other animals that roamed the region at the time are still visible on rock faces in Lesotho today. The gradual expansion of the Sotho and their mixed economy of crop farming, herding and hunting over the past three or four centuries, however, reduced the land available to the San. While some Sotho clans apparently employed methods, such as intermarriage, to forge allegiances with the San, other clans “such as the koena, have passed down oral traditions which display a rather patronising and ‘colonial’ mentality of how they ‘bought’ San land for a supply of dagga” (Gill, 1993, p. 7). Such an occurrence would point not only to the cultivation of cannabis, but also to the existence of trade networks in cannabis as having been present for the past two or three centuries at least, and may have been a facilitating factor in the shift from a nomadic, hunting-and-gathering San to the more pastoral and agriculturally focused Sotho, when the cultivation of cannabis may have encouraged more permanent settlements to emerge.

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Illustration 1 - Map of Lesotho showing six main ecological zones

Adapted from Kobisi (2005).

One of the difficulties with a historical analysis of the literature from this period is the scarcity of available records. Even when written records become more widespread, especially when Lesotho became a protectorate under the colonial wing of Britain from 1868, there is little mention of the various crops that were planted. In later years, following international criminalisation of cannabis in 1925, colonial records focus on legitimate transactions for the purpose of taxation rather than illegitimate activities. Early proselytisers in Lesotho remain one of the main literary sources of information on Basotho life, written from the perspective of a missionary. Casalis (1889) notes that “in contrast to tobacco, the Basotho confess that the use of dagga, is much more ancient” (1889, p. 141). Aside from its use in cultural settings cannabis was also a food supplement (Guillarmod, 1971).

14 Most historical and ethnographic writings of the early twentieth century on the Basotho make only passing references to cannabis (for example, Ellenberger and MacGregor, 1912; Ashton, 1967) and focus almost exclusively on methods of smoking rather than, for example, the extent of cultivation. Only in much more recent times have the production and consumption of cannabis featured in greater detail in the literature.

The economic importance of cannabis

15 By the mid-1980s, Gill (1993) notes, probably very conservatively, that “hundreds of enterprising farmers, unable to make ends meet and in need of a hearty cash crop which could withstand Lesotho’s variable climate, turned to the growing of dagga

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which has become (unofficially) Lesotho’s most lucrative cash crop” (1993, p. 236). It was not until the mid-1990s that information on cannabis production began to appear in writing in the preparation studies for the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever to take place on the African continent. The purpose of the LHWP was to place several dams in the Lesotho highlands, capturing the relative abundance of water in the area and by means of transfer tunnels and channels, supply the Gauteng urban region in South Africa that includes the two cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg. Lesotho would then receive payment from South Africa for the water and a hydro-electric generator would meet the majority of Lesotho’s electricity demands, as well as provide additional revenue from energy exports to South Africa.

16 Large-scale dams have invited a lot of criticism in recent years in many regions of the world, such as the infamous Narmada dam in India (Baviskar, 2004) and the Three Gorges in China (Heggelund, 2004). One of the principal arguments put forward by opponents of these large dams is that the social costs of displacing communities when their lands are flooded outweigh the benefits of large-scale dams. Other arguments focus on the ecological impact of such dams as well as their safety and suitability (Scudder, 2006). The erection of the dams at Katse and Mohale in Lesotho has also received criticism, particularly in the face of changing climate patterns that have been experienced in recent years in the region (Braun, 2015; Kings, 2016; Hoag, 2019).

17 In order to establish the parameters for the compensation to be given to households that were to be resettled, a detailed survey of livelihoods and incomes in the affected areas was undertaken. By the mid-90s Katse dam, the first phase of the LHWP, was nearing completion but the reports from Phase 1A (Katse) did not allude to cannabis production in the area. In one survey from Phase 1B (Mohale), however, it was noted that: “marijuana production in both the Phase 1A and Phase 1B areas is reported to be an important source of income for many households” (LHWP, 1996a, p. 19). The report went on to note that “because of the illegal nature of this crop, it is extremely difficult to measure the contribution it makes to the standard of living of people but it undoubtedly has had an impact” (LHWP, 1996a, p. 19).

18 It is interesting to note that these references to cannabis were appearing in the LHWP surveys that were examining baseline epidemiology and medical services (LHWP, 1996a; 1996b), rather than in the context of a livelihoods or socio-economic report. A survey for Phase 1B revealed that 34.4 % of households sold cannabis in comparison with 29.6 % selling joala (home-brewed alcohol made from sorghum) and 3.3 % who received an income from selling commercial beer (LHWP, 1996b, p. 95). When the mean monthly incomes from these products were calculated, the two categories of marijuana and alcohol brought in nearly 70 % of households income.

19 Although the practicalities of getting a World Bank funded project to compensate farmers for the loss of revenue from illegal crops were not discussed, a third LHWP report stated that: “Marijuana is currently estimated to be cultivated on 10 % of the arable land and accounts for 60 % of the arable crop net revenue. Cash payment would therefore have to acknowledge this, if the principle of maintaining the incomes of people whose lives are disrupted is to be maintained.” (LHWP, 1996c, p. 57)

20 The authors of the report went on to propose compensation that would combine the loss of income from grains (such as maize, sorghum and wheat) as well as for cannabis

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based on a total one-hectare plot (LHWP, 1996c, p. 57). Under this proposed compensation scheme almost one-third of the monies given to compensate for loss of income and food crops would have been solely for cannabis.

21 An environmental impact assessment report produced the following year for the same area estimated that cannabis was grown by about 70 % of farmers (LHWP, 1997, p. 4-52). This represents a very large discrepancy with the report just mentioned, which found 34.4% of households selling cannabis, especially since only 18.9 % of male respondents claimed to have ever smoked cannabis (LHWP, 1996b, p. 96), so the difference cannot be explained by domestic consumption. The report, however, also estimated yields of approximately 100 kilograms of cannabis per hectare (LHWP, 1997, p. 4-54), although the estimate is low according to Leggett (2006, personal communication, email), who believes a hectare of cannabis in Lesotho should yield around 1 MT of saleable product based on fieldwork in the South African provinces surrounding Lesotho.

22 Oral testimonies from the members of the affected communities at Mohale were gathered prior to the informants’ resettlement (Panos, 1997). These testimonies provide an insight as to the likely impact of resettlement on livelihoods. Over half of the interviewees discussed how they grew and sold khomo ea fats’e (literally ‘the cow of the ground’ – cannabis) and what an important part of their livelihood portfolio it was: “People always come here to buy cannabis from us, and it helps us a lot because with it we are able to pay our children’s school fees and maintain our families. Cannabis is really important to us. Even during Christmas our children are able to have new clothes, such that an outsider may even think we are employed.” (Thabang, male, age 57, farmer. In Panos Institute, 1997)

23 Also evident from the interviews are the concerns that people had with regard to how their livelihood strategies might change following resettlement, with the majority moving to the much more densely populated lowlands. Cannabis was such an important aspect of their livelihood portfolio that whether or not they could continue to cultivate “greatly influenced some of the resettlee’s choice of new homes” (Thabane, 2000, p. 638), such as Moleleki’s view: “I am looking at whether there are a lot of fields. They are many, even though they do not do anything, because people just live on cannabis. I am just looking whether there is a place where I can sow tobacco on top of the plateaus there.” (Moleleki, male, age 41, farmer. In Panos Institute, 1997)

24 It is very difficult to establish accurately the importance of cannabis production as a livelihood strategy and the geography of its cultivation in Lesotho. While it does show up in the nationwide livelihood surveys, estimates of the percentage of households growing cannabis are undoubtedly grossly underestimated due to non-disclosure. Gay and Hall (2000), for example, found that 1.5 % of households were involved in selling cannabis, although such national estimates hide the fact that cannabis growing is concentrated in pockets of mass production around the country. Turner (2001) makes the prescient comment that “the most lucrative cash crop of all, dagga [cannabis], shows up in the livelihood strategies of the whole spectrum of rural households. Legalisation of the herb in South Africa could be catastrophic for Lesotho livelihoods” (2001, p. 95). According to Laniel (1998), the main areas of cannabis production in Lesotho are the high mountain zones in the centre and east of the country, as well as in the western foothills region and in the Senqu River valley. Within one small community in the foothills, field surveys and household income analysis found that up to 39% of

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the total field area in the village was planted with cannabis and 28% of the village’s income came from the sale of cannabis (Bloomer, 2009).

Illustration 2 - Dried leaves and seeds from Cannabis sativa

J. Bloomer, December 2015.

25 The cultivation of cannabis in Lesotho can be attributed to a range of physical, social, economic and political factors, although estimating the individual contribution that these factors have made to the cultivation of cannabis is very challenging. Some of the potential causal factors include: the retrenchment of mineworkers from South Africa and the soaring unemployment rates that resulted from this mean that alternative sources of cash need to be found (Boehm, 2003); tighter border and work permit regulations for Basotho entering South Africa have further reduced the opportunities across the border; limited availability of agricultural land in Lesotho could also mean that people are turning to cannabis to increase their returns from the land; declining levels of soil fertility as a result of monocropping practices and overuse that may make the hardy cannabis plant a more suitable option (Nhemachena and Kirsten, 2017); and rising costs associated with the HIV-AIDS epidemic (De Waal and Whiteside, 2003; Mothibi, 2003; Ansell et al., 2016). It is also clear that the role of social institutions, as well as other institutional structures, play a vital role in facilitating this trade.

26 Cannabis production varies in size and scope, from small isolated patches to large fields that resembles any agricultural cycle with animals to plough the fields and using seeds that are saved from the previous harvest, along with the application of artificial fertiliser. Yields tended to be quite low, perhaps mainly due to a combination of poor seed quality and declining soil fertility. Production is generally rain-fed and typically there are two crops per year. It is also common to intercrop with other food crops, such as maize and beans. Harvesting is frequently a communal activity involving extended

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family or perhaps, for the more wealthy households, paid for on a daily rate (Bloomer, 2009).

Illustration 3 - An elderly woman plucks the leaves and seeds from the stem of the Cannabis sativa plants

J. Bloomer, December 2015.

Without the chieftaincy (and more recently the local government) being complicit in the cannabis trade, or at least not being proactive against it, then it cannot function (Bloomer, 2009). Similarly the community needs to have mechanisms to operate an illegal market and where these have been developed and maintained, cannabis production can occur. The often complicit role of police, as well as border officials and others involved in law enforcement and customs duties, is also crucial to its functioning and reflects how the criminalisation of drugs has generally led to endemic corruption in similar situations elsewhere (Goodhand, 2008; Wolf, 2016). The political turmoil that Lesotho continues to experience in recent years has meant an erosion of human rights, social deprivation and continued economic instability (Thabane, 2016; Southall, 2017).

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Illustration 4 - A field of Cannabis sativa during drought conditions in Lesotho

J. Bloomer, December 2015.

27 Since no reliable estimates are available for the amount of cannabis cultivated within the country, official figures depend primarily on seizures of cannabis, which vary dramatically from year to year with a very large increase in 2004 but then a fall again to previous levels in 2005. The reasons for such disparities in seizures existing between the years are not easy to identify but point towards an increase in police activity or an increase in volume of trafficking. A seizure of cannabis with an estimated street value of M 2,400,000 was reported (South Africa Press Association, 2006) and a M 500,000 seizure that was being smuggled inside a police vehicle (South Africa Press Association, 2007)2. A note of caution is warranted with regard to media reports and the monetary values of cannabis seized since these values are based on high street-level estimates, which are probably considerably more than the amounts that growers and mid-level smugglers would receive for the product. In its 2006 annual report, the INCB note that in one joint operation involving the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) during July 2006, 47 tonnes of cannabis were seized (INCB, 2007, p. 38). More recently the Deputy Minister of Health, Manthabiseng Phohleli, was embroiled in a cannabis smuggling operation where 3.5 tonnes of cannabis was discovered in a truck owned by her husband by border officials (Mokhethi and Ntaote, 2018).

Shifting consensus

28 Cannabis was previously regulated under the Dangerous Medicines Act of 1973 (Government of Lesotho, 1978), which was superseded in 2008 by the Drugs of Abuse Act (Government of Lesotho, 2008) and this move allowed the government to provide

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access to specific drugs for medical and scientific purposes. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB, 2007) noted the efforts made by the Government of Lesotho to control drug cultivation and comply with the international drug control treaties, however, they also urged the introduction of alternative development programmes, with the assistance of international donors. Just over a decade later, the country has become the first in Africa to change existing legislation and de-criminalise the cultivation of cannabis for medical use. The new law came into effect the following year through the Drug of Abuse (Cannabis) Regulations Act of 2018 and licenses would cost approximately €30,000 and are issued by the Lesotho Narcotics Board (Phakela, 2018). Soon after, Zimbabwe also followed suit and Malawi has indicated its intentions to do so (Mkhize, 2018). Most recently, South Africa has arguably made significant steps towards de-criminalising cannabis in South Africa when the High Court legalised personal use and cultivation (Gevaaalik, 2018).

29 Lesotho’s move to attract foreign investment in the area of medical cannabis production was reflective of changing attitudes at an international level – both in terms of adhering to international drug controls, as well as an increased emphasis of harm reduction, and a recognition of the potential global value of medical cannabis (Collard, 2018; Lamers, 2018; Tharoor, 2018). Scholars who have been monitoring the shifting opinions and international bodies, however, caution against presuming that legalisation is a foregone conclusion and highlight how fractured international consensus remains (Bewley-Taylor, 2012; Chatwin, 2017; IDPC, 2018). Whether Lesotho remains a key producer of medical cannabis in the region, must surely depend on whether South Africa decides to embark on a similar route and indeed recent legislation appears to be moving exactly in this direction (Nicolson, 2018; Craig, 2019; Joost, 2019; Mafolo, 2019). If this transpires, the competitive advantages that Lesotho’s neighbour maintains over the land-locked mountain kingdom would surely also mean that South Africa can dominate in this area of trade as well.

30 This paper will conclude by examining the recent shift in legislation in Lesotho and critique some of the developmentalist rhetoric surrounding the granting of licenses for medical cannabis and put forward by recent investors. Firstly, given that medical cannabis production occurs in tightly controlled industrial settings, the industry is a fluid one with capital, knowledge and infrastructure able to be relocated anywhere it is legalised. African production settings may influence decision-making of investors and entrepreneurs as they situate their production on the continent and can therefore market their products in much the same way a viticulturist may consider the concept of terroir. Duvall (2016) highlights the importance of genetic diversity in cannabis production on the continent and emphasises how a truly alternative development strategy would allow smallholder farmers on the continent to be granted unconditional access to international markets and also maintain the benefits of crop diversity among the rural poor rather than wealthy bio-prospectors.

31 To-date, approximately seven companies have been awarded a license to produce medical cannabis in Lesotho, with an initial 10-year term for each license (Oleinic, 2019)3. Medi Kingdom was the first company to be granted a license to produce cannabis in Lesotho, with most its initial production destined for Australia. The Prime Minister, Dr Motsoahae Thomas Thabane, officiated at the opening at the company’s site in the Maseru District and clearly stated that this moment marked a shift away from illicit production of cannabis that had been “used for wrong purposes without any

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significant benefit to the country or its citizens” (LENA, 2018). The company’s website declares that Lesotho is known for growing cannabis easily, “mainly due to its unique topography with mineral rich soils, natural spring waters and high altitudes” (www.medikingdom.com). Furthermore, they anticipate that with the right education and knowledge provided, the industry would undoubtedly “bring huge economic and social benefit [for the] country and Basotho people” (www.medikingdom.com). Yet, through sophisticated growing techniques, such as hydroponics and high quality seed selection, the medical cannabis production facilities are largely removed from their land and environment. A recent investment report, entitled The African Cannabis Report (Prohibition Partners, 2019), declares that “huge opportunities exist up and down the value chain” (2019, p. 56) in the medical cannabis industry in Lesotho in terms of the supply of equipment for industrial growing, as well as nutrients and specialised fertilisers, for example. Similarly, through the necessity of payment for expensive government-issued licenses, smallholder farmers are excluded from the process and production of medical cannabis, although the CEO of Medi Kingdom, James Mathers, has said that in addition to addressing local development needs through the Medi Kingdom Foundation, the company also plans to establish a training academy for local cannabis farmers and thereby ensure they are no longer “exploited by illicit dealers” (Prohibition Partners, 2019, p. 63).

32 White Sheep Corp, one of the more recent investors to sign up cited the country’s progressive attitude towards medical cannabis production and highlighted how the “politically stable constitutional monarchy led by a pro-medical cannabis government with favourable corporate tax rates… and a stable and experienced workforce” (White Sheep Corp, 2019) had encouraged the company to invest there. Although, of course, facilitated by the national government that has long become dependent on attracting foreign investment, the strong colonial overtones surrounding education and development and the potential importance of the medical cannabis industry to the local economy makes one wary of anticipating real benefits for local citizens and points towards the high risk of further wealth capture by national and international political and business elites.

33 One of the most significant challenges facing the development of the industry, however, appears to be the Basotho-owned companies that are supposed to partner with international investors. Only one-third of the initial 33 Lesotho-based companies that were initially granted free licenses had managed to raise the M 540,000 license fee by the end of 2018. International investors have baulked at grossly inflated requests for partnership fees of up to M 20 million (Motsoeli, 2018). Conscious of the rapidly changing situation elsewhere in the region and there is a recognition that Lesotho may well lose out to other potential markets as they continue to move towards legal production of medical cannabis (Motsoeli, 2018). One investment consultant, Nathan Emery, was one of the few voices sounding caution in relation to the recent developments in the region when he noted that Lesotho is “neither special nor privileged in the global cannabis industry. South Africa has exactly the same climate as Lesotho and an even more varied terrain and most of its areas do not have near the cold and frost that Lesotho has” (Mosabala, 2019).

34 The developments taking place in Lesotho are perhaps most helpfully viewed through the critical lens of state-sponsored global rushes on land, resources and processes of agrarian transformation that we have seen elsewhere in the region in areas such as

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agri-industrial production, biofuels or extractive industries, for example (Ferguson, 2006; Cotula et al., 2008; Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009a; Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009b; FAO, 2010; Carmody and Taylor, 2016; Kachika, 2017; Makhetha, 2017; Moyo et al., 2019). Hall (2011) cautions against a simplistic view of these acquisitions and highlights their diversity in southern Africa, pointing to a common trajectory, where the “concentration of control of land, labour and value chains (capital) – are rendering the agrarian structure… more like that of settler state like South Africa” (Hall, 2011, p. 207). This may well serve to narrow the contrast between those countries in the region with a history of settler colonialism and those without.

Conclusion

35 The developmental impacts of the current transformations taking place in Lesotho are very much in their early stages and clearly much remains to be explored. One area of potential research is assessing the political factors that led to the decision to legalise medical cannabis production, as well as an in-depth analysis of the national and international stakeholders and decision-making behind partnerships. Certainly, it is questionable whether the Lesotho government are acting with due regard for its most vulnerable rural households, who have now long depended on cannabis cultivation to support themselves.

36 This article framed the transformations taking place against the historical, political and socio-economic background to cannabis cultivation and agricultural transformation in Lesotho. While the nascent legal medical cannabis industry may well provide employment and benefits to some, overall the changes taking place appear far more related to long-standing processes of capital accumulation and elite capture of land, labour and value chains and in its current form is unlikely to deliver lasting socio- economic change to the majority of the population. In addition, if we consider Lesotho’s geographic, economic and political position, the future of the industry must surely be called into question once other countries in the region begin granting licenses for cannabis cultivation.

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NOTES

1. Several different terms for cannabis appear in English literature as well as regional language variations, all referring to the Cannabaceae family. North American literature favours the name marijuana whilst cannabis is mainly used in Europe and among UN agencies. Within the southern African context, dagga (pronounced dac-ha) is the most common term, although specific languages still have their own translations. In Southern Sotho, for example, the formal term is matekoane. This paper will use cannabis, an abbreviation of the species Cannabis sativa, as the default name, dagga and matekoane will also be used when discussing the southern African and Lesotho contexts and in the presentation of the research findings. Hemp is the common name for Cannabis strains cultivated for non-drug use. 2. Maloti (M) is the currency in Lesotho. The exchange rate on 31st May 2019 was 1 Lesotho Loti to € 0.06 (Website: http://www.xe.com). As the Lesotho Maloti and South African Rand (R) are linked at the same rate, the same rate of exchange is used when calculating values present in Rand. 3. As of March 2019, these companies were: Medi-Kingdom (majority owned by UK founder with local partners); Medigrow Lesotho PTY (10 % acquired by Supreme Cannabis from Canada); Verve Dynamics (approximately 30 % ownership by Canadian-based Aphria); Daddy-Cann (100 % acquired by Canopy Growth from Canada); Pharmaceuticals Development Corp (PDC) (Prohibition Partners, 2019, p. 59). In May 2019 White Sheep Corp began constructing its facilities (White Sheep Corp, 2019), while in June 2019 Halo Labs Ltd acquired the Lesotho-based Bophelo Bioscience and Wellness (Oleinic, 2019).

ABSTRACTS

This article examines the evolving historical, geopolitical and economic context of cannabis cultivation in Lesotho. The article will present a brief history of cannabis cultivation in Lesotho, before assessing the possible impacts of recent changes in policy and legislation, following recent

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the announcement by the Lesotho government of production under license for companies cultivating medical cannabis. The article will conclude by critiquing the development potential of this recent move, against evolving policy debates in southern Africa.

INDEX

Keywords: cannabis, livelihood, development, Lesotho, legalization

AUTHOR

JULIAN BLOOMER Julian Bloomer, [email protected], is an Assistant Lecturer in Human Geography, Department of Geography, Mary Immaculate College (University of Limerick), Limerick City, Ireland. He recently published - Bloomer J., (forthcoming). The Only Honest Thief: Critiquing the Role of Human Smugglers. In Morrissey J. (ed.), Haven: Intervening for Human Security in the Mediterranean Crisis. London, Edward Elgar Publishing. - Bloomer J., 2009. Using a Political Ecology Approach to Extra-legal Rural Livelihoods: a Lesotho- based Case Study of Cultivation of and Trade in Cannabis. Journal of Political Ecology [Online], vol. 16, n° 1, p. 49-69 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2458/v16i1.21691 - Bloomer J., 2004. Divided We Fall: Towards an Understanding of Community Risk Assessment: A Case Study from the Lao PDR. International Journal for Mass Emergencies and Disasters, vol. 24, n° 3, p. 87-108.

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Living Dangerously: Confronting Insecurity, Navigating Risk, and Negotiating Livelihoods in the Hidden Economy of Congo’s Cannabis Trade

Ann Laudati

Introduction

A middle-aged Congolese man stands in front of one of several of his shambas1 located deep in the Moyens Plateaux of the DRC’s South Kivu Province. Vibrant green foliage largely dominated by a single plant species, surrounds and almost overwhelms the slight stature of the man. The man holds a wad of cash, intentionally fanned out to the viewer as evidence of the financial benefits the farmer reaps from the production of the crop he currently stands in front of, a calculated answer to a researcher’s question, “what meaning does the cannabis plant hold for your household?”. Despite the country’s well-reputed resource wealth, existing narratives surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s rich natural resource base have largely attended to its mineral wealth and particularly the link between certain minerals, notably coltan and gold, and the violence in the region. The reality of which and how natural resources matter in the Congo, however, is increasingly understood by scholars as much more varied and complex and requires moving beyond just minerals (Laudati, 2013). During two consecutive summer field visits in 2017 and again in 2018, farmers from different villages across South Kivu were given a disposable camera and instructions to photograph their engagement in the production of cannabis. Aside from an unsurprising stock of personal family photographs, accidental shots, and a steady supply of the marijuana plant itself, each farmer took care to set marijuana as the literal and figurative backdrop of their individual and collective family wealth. In so

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doing, these farmers subsequently set the scene for the focus of this paper, and set in motion a direct challenge to the narrative of violence, delinquency, and greed that currently foregrounds most discussions of the cannabis economy in Africa. Yet the surreptitious nature of the photo’s subject and geography, reveals yet another critical aspect of the cannabis economy. Underlying the photos exhibition of profit lies a more complicated story of risk, danger, and insecurity, not as it has previously been understood, but as it shapes the everyday lives of Congolese people. The Democratic Republic of Congo is allegedly one of, if not the most, significant producers of the plant, Cannabis sativa2 (CIA, 2013; INCB, 2012), across the African continent today. For many farmers, marijuana serves as the most important crop for their individual and household’s well-being. As one informant3 noted illustratively, “cannabis is the cassava of [South Kivu]”. The fact that the DRC is the largest producer of cassava in Africa after Nigeria and that cassava serves as the staple food and income for 70 percent of the Congolese population (Muengula-Manyi et al., 2012) demonstrates the high importance credited to the drug. In some cannabis producing areas visited during fieldwork close to 90 % of households, or as one village chief suggested, “everyone except the priests”, rely on income from the trade either as a grower, a trader, or a transporter. Yet, despite substantive cultivation of the drug in parts of the country, the trade has failed to garner much attention, particularly regarding its significance for local production systems or as a potentially valuable market commodity. Findings draw from over sixteen months of qualitative fieldwork by the author in South and North Kivu since 2011 interviewing a range of actors involved in the production and trade of the plant from growers to sellers to consumers, as well as government officials and state actors, local NGO and international organization staff, including UN workers. Data was gathered from nearly twenty different villages and urban centers across the two eastern provinces and from conversations with civilians as well as army and armed group personnel and reflects a diversity of perspectives across gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Drawing on the narrated experiences of those involved in the production and trade of the drug, this paper contributes to a growing literature on the hidden economies of the trade in marijuana. By focusing on the experiences of those engaged in the trade, this paper first seeks to challenge the uncritical muddling of cannabis as an illegal and therefore illegitimate economy (see Abraham and van Schendel, 2005), and bring its oft-ignored linkages to rural African livelihoods, and in particular, its importance as a key strategy within a diversified household economy (Bloomer, 2009) from ‘out of the shadows’ (Laudati, 2014). While still maintaining livelihoods as a theoretical anchor, the paper turns toward understanding these livelihood struggles within the context of Congo’s contemporary warscape and explores how the current trade shapes and is shaped by the region’s continuing insecurity. In doing so, this paper challenges mainstream narratives that have narrowed the story of the contemporary cannabis trade in the region within the confines of violence and criminality4. Building from recent work that upsets conventional framing that considers violence as complementary to and thus naturalized within the workings of the cannabis economy (Suckling, 2016), this paper seeks to further reframe the cannabis trade as a response to Congo’s landscape of violence rather than a symptom of it. In particular, it presents

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evidence of how the plant’s illegality and the extra-legal networks its illegality engenders is shaping the terms of the trade itself. The paper begins with a discussion of the various uses of the plant for individual and household consumption. Starting with a brief reference to its pre-colonial use and continuing up through the present, this section illuminates the multiple uses and meanings of the plant by local Congolese. The following section explains the rise of cannabis as an illegal substance and how its colonial era demarcation as a dangerous plant remains, albeit updated and dressed in a modern day framing. The remainder of the paper settles into an examination of the various ways in which engagement in the trade engenders new strategies for navigating risk and danger within Congo’s wider landscape of insecurity. In so doing, it seeks to confront how we understand we understand the very terms of risk and insecurity as played out in the day-to-day lives of those who navigate through the hidden economy of Congo’s cannabis trade.

Consuming Cannabis

The story of cannabis consumption and use in the Congo is rooted in a long if indefinite history. While impossible to date the emergence of cannabis in the country with any precise accuracy, by the 17th or 18th century, the consumption of cannabis was widely accepted by the local population (Fabian, 2000), and archival research suggests the existence of, “a thriving industry (Hunt, 2016, p. 69)” at the time of Belgium arrival in the region. For these earlier communities, cannabis consumption was often interwoven within ritualistic purposes, as illustrated by the Baluba or Bashilenge5 of Central Congo, the most recognized of the cannabis smoking cults popular during the mid-nineteenth century. More contemporary accounts of cannabis use throughout the region demonstrate that the tradition of ritual cannabis consumption continues even today. Cuvelier’s work (2011) on present-day Katanganese Rastafarians, for example, presents perhaps the most in-depth account of a modern community of cannabis smokers whose red, green, and gold colored flags are brightly evident throughout the region including along the streets of South Kivu Province’s capital city, Bukavu. Apart from the drug’s connection to the Rastafarian movement and rare anecdotal reports of a possible link to the magic incorporated into Mai Mai warfare practices, present day cannabis consumption appears less often aligned with ritualistic or even recreational settings than with a vast array of pharmacological as well as functional uses linked to everyday life. Present-day cannabis consumption typically serves two main functions - as a readily available and alternative provider of medicine and as a mechanism to cope with day-to- day occupational hardships and risks. Ethno-botanical studies conducted from 1975 onwards in the DRC, for example, note the plant’s use as a relief for childhood illnesses such as asthma, chicken pox and measles, and as veterinary medicine (Bokdam and Droogers, 1975; Disengomoka and Delaveau, 1983; Baerts and Lehmann, 1989 and 1991; Kasonia, 1993; Kalanda and Bolamba, 1994; Byavu et. al., 2000; Balagizi et. al., 2005). Such studies however are far from exhaustive. Evidence from fieldwork suggests that the plant serves an even wider range of uses. Interviewees noted the use of the plant to treat a variety of ailments from cough to ear mites, from snake bites to hernia, from skin disease to the plague, or mixed with salt as a remedy against livestock disease, and particularly for the treatment of traditional diseases such as kivubo6. Some households

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also reported using the ash of the plant for treating and healing wounds, and as a salve to assist with the cutting of the umbilical cord during birth. In most cases of household use, only the leaves or flowers of the plant are used, whereas traditional healers are known to incorporate other parts of the plant such as the stalk in the treatment of kifafa (epilepsy). Recent work by Roulette et al. (2016; see also Roulette and Hewlett, 2018) looking at the high prevalence of cannabis consumption among the Aka forest- forager group suggests it serves as a self-medication against helminths (intestinal worms). Equally important, cannabis’s ability to provide stamina and ‘courage on the job’ was widely cited by study participants as the primary motivation for taking cannabis among Congolese men (see also Laniel, 2006; York, 2012). As a police officer in Sange noted, “Marijuana helps us not to fall asleep when we are patrolling. In addition, it gives us strength to face delinquent persons with whom we meet at night”. A state military soldier in the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) adds, “In addition, when patrolling, we are always beaten by the cold, but when you have your hemp you will smoke it the whole night while patrolling and you will not feel cold”. Writing in the mid-70s, Carl Sagan noted a similar usage among the Mbuti ethnic group that “helps to make the long waits… tolerable [in the] patient stalking and hunting of mammals and fish (1977, p.191 footnote)” – a finding similar to observations made by Hewlett (1977) of the Mbuti, as well as the Efe and Aka forest-forager groups. The same stamina-enduring properties cited by security agents and reported independently by Sagan (1977) and Hewlett (1977), have made the drug particularly popular among laborers such as artisanal miners who often endure horrific conditions and suffer long hours of difficult and dangerous work. As a captain from the Congolese army related, “from my experience [having been stationed] at Kasii, if you want to get someone to dig [for minerals], you have to give digging equipment as well as cannabis – it's a provision, like nourriture (food)”. The drug presents a similar function within Congo’s landscape of continuing violence as well. Among Congolese soldiers, for example, the consumption of cannabis serves as a mechanism to cope with the daily hardships of the job, hunger, and to reduce fear in combat (Eriksson-Baas and Stern, 2010). Additionally, the drug is frequently given to fighters from either side of the battlefield in order to stimulate their desire to fight or make them unaware of danger, or, after a battle, ease the pain of injury or extreme tension caused by confrontation, particularly in the case of hand-to-hand combat. Furthermore, the drug’s relevance within the DRC’s current landscape of insecurity is not limited to those directly engaged in the region’s violence. For example, Babaembe cattle keepers of Fizi territory, where village raids by pillaging forces are common, testify to using the plant in order to protect their cattle through what is known locally as ijunguu – the disappearance – which reportedly makes cows invisible to potential looters. Thus, although early appreciations for the drug centered on its consumption and notably its “most voluptuous sensation” (Timbs, 1890, p. 231), its significance and use within modern Congolese society has since diversified and continues to be adapted in different ways to fit the changing context and realities of Congolese life, including its violent landscape.

The Making of a Dangerous Plant

Despite the drug’s historical ties to the region, today the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis are regarded as criminal acts punishable by law. Following

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regulations accorded by The Hague Convention of 1912, cannabis laws in Congo were enacted in 1917 (INL, 2011) by the colonial tribunal, which put into law “repression of the cultivation, consumption, and sale of Indian cannabis” (Dembour, 2000, p. 86). As Duvall (2017) notes, cannabis-control laws, enacted with the stated aim of improving native health, preserving labor quality, and preventing crime (Williams and Warf, 2017), were in fact motivated in service of Europe’s civilizing mission (controlling native labor and religious proselytizing) – of which African cannabis was considered a hindrance to. Based upon historical records of high imprisonment ratios during this time period, Bernault (2007) argues, the decree of the cultivation of cannabis along with a range of other acts by the French and Belgium Colonial governments as a punishable offense in 1910 was in fact a deliberate tactic to further the “criminalization of native life... through administrative and short-term sentences [which] thus provided tremendous leverage for taking hold of the colonised and for controlling local economies and native labour (p. 63)”. While the use of these indigénats coincided with wider political-economic issues, namely the tax demands already placed on African populations, a concurrent subsistence crises and the slow increase in monetary circulation that made fines unrealistic sentences, they nevertheless were part of an “intense policy of taming... resistance to white domination” (p. 66). The use, cultivation, and trade of cannabis, as argued by Nancy Rose Hunt (2016), was deliberately singled out because it signalled defiance on behalf of the native population. As she describes, cannabis diverted attention away from the preferred colonial task of copal production, which was linked to the colonial monies needed to pay taxes. Stated otherwise by a local chief at the time, many did not want to collect copal because hemp offered them another lucrative resource. In response, the colonial administration ordered military campaigns to uproot cannabis plants, which were seen as a threat to colonial economic interests. “The plant”, she contends, “was like a currency with commercial sway, while its many powers made it a symbol and fact of dissent” (p. 70). By 1940, campaigns against cannabis drug use had pushed human engagement with the drug almost entirely underground (Duvall, 2017). The role of cannabis does not feature prominently in the country’s historical record again until the period of independence7. The laws regarding the sale, consumption and production of the plant, have remained the same since they were codified in 1917. Rather, arguably only the terms of how it has been constituted a dangerous plant has changed. Once seen as dangerous to the colonial project by presenting colonial subjects a path towards economic self- sufficiency, today it is seen as a resource that contributes to the region’s violence in two central ways. Firstly, marijuana is seen as serving largely as a funding mechanism for rebel groups. This approach bases marijuana’s importance to armed groups solely on the logic of extraction or harvesting for exchange. The ability of some armed groups, notably various Mai-Mai groups and more so, the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), to profit from the trade was aptly expressed by a United Nations Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC) officer stationed in Bukavu, “If you smoke marijuana, you support the FDLR”8. A second approach centers on the psychophysiological effects of drugs on fighters and in particular how through the embodied practice of consuming the drug, the enabling of, particularly young, recruits to fight with and on behalf of armed groups, becomes possible. More recently, cannabis has been blamed for “diminish[ing] moral responsibility and increas[ing] violent tendencies” (ITUC, 2013), “thus…fuel[ing] much

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of the sexualized violence committed in the DRC” (Women Under Siege, 2012). In response to these discursive narratives that place marijuana alongside and partially culpable for the region’s violence, insecurity, delinquency, and greed, NGOs, international bodies such as the AU and UN, as well as state agents continue to call for the drug’s absolute abolition. Even regionally sourced media reports seem to be pre- occupied with headlining seizures of the illegal substance9. Official statements, buoyed by sensationalist international NGO campaigns and regional media reporting, are further displayed through occasional anti-drug performances in which sacks of cannabis are publicly burned in Congo’s largest cities, such as Goma and Bukavu – a strikingly familiar picture that harkens back to the piles of ivory burned under Kenyan President Moi’s regime in the 1990s. It is no surprise then that many Congolese today view participants in the trade and their smoking beneficiaries as “delinquent” or “criminal.” Yet conversations with local Congolese across the socio-political spectrum demonstrates that views of the drug’s relationship to violence in the region are much more nuanced. Community and civilian perspectives derive largely from one’s involvement or lack of involvement with the trade. For example, Rastafarian groups, well-known smokers (if not occasional traders and growers themselves) of the drug present a sharp contrast to the views extended along official and international lines. As one Rastafarian chief related, “On the contrary, hemp contributes to security in the city in the way that we Rasta men are the ones who take care of the main road when there is a broken place that can cause damage to [vehicle] passengers. You will never hear a Rasta man fighting in such a such area for they are well-bred/instructed”. Interestingly, this later claim refers to a series of free local trainings for Rastafarians conducted in his area “so that they might not misbehave towards others” – instituted in direct response to counter the “bad reputation and renown” that hemp smokers generally carry. Yet even those involved in the trade who suggest that there may indeed be a link between the physiological effects of the drug and violence in the region, suggest that additional facts likely play a much more significant role. As nicely summed up by one informant, “the heads of people differ”. “Rather”, another informant explained, “the insecurity in the area is related to someone’s interests. When someone wants to become a colonel in the army and he decides to go in the bush to start his own rebellion or militia, it is not the hemp which took him there, it is the interests he seeks in order to achieve his life goals”. More so, according to informants, it is alcohol that is more often associated with violence in the region than marijuana. Despite these assertions, involvement in the trade continues to carry a negative stigma – a mark that is both politically inscribed by actors at the national and international level as well as socially inscripted through local institutions. As many interviewees related, views of the drug and some people’s subsequent engagement in the trade, are shaped not only by observation and experience with drug-users but are additionally influenced by socio-cultural norms and beliefs. A grower relates how, “My wife does not help me in any work concerning [the growing or selling of cannabis]. From the growing season up to the time I sell it, I do all the work alone, as she considers this work as sinful for her Assemblies of God belief forbids her to get involved in illegal things”. Adherence to different branches of Christianity was often cited as a barrier for some accessing the trade. In surely an ironic twist, one

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grower reported taking up smoking, “in order to forget all what happened to me in the church,” following his excommunication – a direct result of the church authorities discovering his involvement in the trade. Given this broader socio-political milieu in which cannabis and its prohibition as a dangerous commodity is embedded, involvement in the trade is often seen as the result of “having no [other] choice” – a situation linked to the region’s wider landscape of food insecurity and lack of alternative livelihoods.

Working within a Landscape of (Food) Insecurity

When asked about why individuals became involved in the trade, the majority of respondents set their answers against a backdrop of poverty, regional underdevelopment, and government neglect. Over the last 15 years, almost continual instability and a state of periodic violence have come to characterize the eastern region of the Congo, weakening the rural economy. Agricultural production, which serves as the primary economic activity for 80 % of rural households, has decreased in the past decade (Vlassenroot et al., 2003) contributing to a cycle of food and nutritional insecurity (Kandala et al., 2011), low food production and subsequent extreme poverty (Rossi et al., 2006) while parts of the region, notably the landlocked Moyens and Hauts Plateaux, have grown increasingly isolated (ICRC, 2010). Limited access to land and markets, as well as post-war government neglect of the region have aggravated these conditions (van Acker, 2005; Ulimwengu et al., 2009; see also Ragasa and Ulimwengu, 2011). Thus while continuing insecurity in the region prevents many farmers from regularly accessing their farms to tender higher maintenance crops such as the water thirsty leaves of amaranth greens, known locally as lenga-lenga, retarded state agricultural programs have done little to alleviate reports of spreading diseases in the region’s most important staple crops, cassava (cassava root rot) and bananas/plantains (banana wilt). As a result, more than 60 % of the current population is labelled as food insecure (Walangululu et al., 2011) and more than 70 % of farmers are categorized as poor (Dowiya et al., 2009). The continuing deprivation facing Congolese farmers and herders amidst these wider challenges, has led to, as Cox (2011, p. 247) argues, “diminishing returns of agrarian life”. At the same time, these trends towards increasing rural poverty and decreasing food production, have coincided with reported increases in the illicit crop production of the drug – a likely outcome and adaptive response to the region’s persistent insecurity and the reported growing numbers of the country’s food insecure. A study conducted in the late 1990s with support from the Kinshasan Association for the Prevention of Substance Abuse (LIPILDRO) noted even then an increase in local cannabis production. The average land area under cannabis cultivation reportedly increased from one to three hectares. In some areas, 60 % of farmers had introduced cannabis into their production system (Labrousse, 2014). Indeed, households often grow cannabis in addition to traditional food crops and empirical data from interviews suggest that crop diseases and insecurity have played the leading role in lowering food security in the region. Multiple sources have presented little variation in retelling local experiences of insecurity such that, “in the past fifteen years, there were no diseases affecting food crops, but nowadays they are too many that reduce plant productivity, particularly the disease known as Mosiac for cassava and bananas”, and “before when

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there were no plants diseases, we made money from those food crops but since the time the diseases came, we do not get money from those crops anymore and even to get food to eat has become a serious problem to us”, “whereas”, a third informant explains, “hemp has no disease”. While few households grow cannabis almost exclusively, many rely on cannabis as a supplementary crop during periods when other major food staples, such as cassava, which take ten to twelve months to mature, are not ready to be harvested or whose harvests have declined. Cannabis thus provides the very ‘cushion’ against food crisis at the household level (see Laniel, 2006). In addition to diminishing returns on agricultural and notably food crop production, many felt their engagement with the trade was further precipitated by the lack of alternative income-earning opportunities. Such statements parallel statistics gathered at the macro level, which show that the DRC is one of the most expensive countries in the world where to establish a business (Lamb, 2011). Significant structural and process barriers in the form of poor governance, multiple informal and formal levies, difficulties in securing loans, and widespread corruption translate into high start-up costs and a formidable bureaucracy that prevents the average DRC resident from establishing and maintaining not only a formal sector business but also from gaining entry into other low-level occupations. When asked why civilian traders and growers entered into the cannabis trade versus other profitable or domestic trades such as the mineral economy, the remote location of minerals featured as a major deterrent but equally important was the lack of start-up capital necessary to dig minerals. As one informant described, starting capital was not the only financial consideration. “It requires someone who knows minerals, much money to go with and another amount to leave to one’s wife so that when you spend three months without sending anything, she should not bother you”. Preference for engaging in cannabis production in particular, over a host of potential informal economies and namely markets of other agricultural commodities, depends upon the ecology of the plant as much as the socio-political context in which the trade operates. Cannabis, a robust plant that is easy to grow, requires little labor outside of harvesting and drying, can yield more than one harvest per year, and can be harvested as early as six months from sowing, thus providing farmers an ecologically efficient as well as an economically effective crop that “even in spite of law enforcement problems […]is a miracle solution for peasants” (Labrousse, 2014).

Congo’s Green Gold

Depending on the level of engagement the range of profits that can be realized at an individual level are quite varied. Few growers, for example, gain much benefit from the trade beyond a household subsistence level earning roughly $200-$1000USD per year – expressed by informants as enough to meet the “elementary needs” of “feeding my children, buying clothes for them, paying for their studies” and the occasional purchase of livestock such as goats and cows, or having some cash “when your kid is sick you can buy medicine”. The greatest profits accrue to traders, particularly cross- border traders, those linked to wealthier or foreign buyers (including international NGO staff and UN affiliates who purchase the drug at a premium price), and higher ranked soldiers in the Congolese army. One military trader, in explaining why a fellow FARDC member was more successful than he, which allowed his friend to purchase two

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motorcycles and provided the capital to start a small shop in the city, noted, “as a captain commander…he has a higher ranking than me”. If one can manage the dangers of crossing into Burundi, selling directly to outside markets can bring in as much as three times more income, then it is no wonder that an active trans-border trade exists. As a recent UNODC report (2011, p. 42) notes, under such lucrative circumstances, “onward trafficking seems a rational choice”. The extent to which individuals are able to profit from the trade is further shaped by the region’s insecurity. As most cultivators of cannabis harvest their crop at the same climatic period, following the end of the wet seasons (between September and May), farmers unintentionally end up flooding the marijuana market with their product at the same time during the months of June, July and August. As a result, prices for marijuana are cheapest during this period and subsequently rise the further from the day of harvest until the next harvest period. At first glance this might appear to be the result of local enviro-climatic conditions. However, the key to understanding why farmers and traders sell their marijuana in the marketplace at the same time requires asking not when marijuana is largely produced (an enviro-climatic condition) but why cannabis is put on the market when it is (a socio-political condition). Because cannabis is not a perishable product, once dried, it can be stored up to six months with little reduction in potency. Farmers often acknowledged the benefit that selling during the dry season would provide but felt constrained by a number of factors preventing them from waiting to sell. Variations of the response, poverty, presented the major factor influencing farmers to sell quickly after harvest but also fear being caught with sacks of marijuana at home was also noted as an additional condition that prompted farmers to quickly sell. Thus concerns over illegal product seizure and arrest presented a key obstacle for gaining better profits as the need to get cash quickly forced farmers to harvest when the cannabis was not yet ripe (and thus would fetch a lower price on the market), to sell when the market already had a ready supply of the drug, and to sell cheaply to the initial buyer. As one trader explained, “I do not always sell my hemp for the same price due to the fact that the price varies depending on the quantity of hemp that is in the market and also on the security in the area. If there is a high level of security in the area, the hemp sale price goes down, for buyers are buying by not being sure of achieving it all during the retail sale”. Even for rural households where accumulation is limited, however, the impact of this illicit trade for individual and household welfare should not be underestimated. The implications of the trade for improving the material development of rural households is particularly evident during transactions that involve the exchange of material goods in lieu of cash payments for supplies of cannabis. In an environment of poor infrastructure, road networks that become impassable for months out of the year, and the general insecurity of travel in the region, these exchanges are one way that isolated communities get access to a range of subsistence goods, as well as manufactured and luxury items. Items exchanged range widely but common items mentioned include; raincoats, coats, phones, clothes, boots, beer, soft drinks, small fish, mboga (vegetables but also a general term for anything used to garnish the staple of cassava flour), radios, salt, soap, flashlights, plates, iron sheeting, and plastic sheeting. As one grower from Mubaka noted, “those who come from the city and come to buy [cannabis] sometimes bring other items [to exchange] besides money. So sometimes I make little money but I never miss [getting] trousers or food”. Some growers even stated a preference for receiving goods over cash payments while several informants

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noted making special requests to traders to bring specific goods on occasion. One informant, for example, related how he exchanged his sacks of cannabis for solar panels – which he uses to generate electricity and subsequently runs one of the few sources of television in the high plateau west of Bukavu. Far from serving solely as a compensation crop or a ‘cushion’ during periods of instability or due to a breakdown in wider structural factors, cannabis holds a much more substantial position even within a regulated rural economy. Notably, cannabis fuels the licit economy through invested surplus and through a barter system that brings a level of development to marginalised rural areas and provides the means to maintain social norms and order (including accessing the funds necessary to get married and build a home). The profits earned from the cannabis trade are invested in the future (school fees; dowry; small business start-up), asset creation (livestock; property; infrastructure), as well as present household needs (clothing; household goods; food). That the benefits of the trade serve a wide and diverse range of actors in the region further testifies to its far-reaching impact.

Women at Work

While armed groups and FARDC members of various ranks – ranging from top end officials to the rank and file of the unranked soldiers – are involved in the trade, an equally if not more diverse range of civilian actors - representing differences in gender, ethnic group, socio-economic class, age, marriage status, origin, occupation, even physical capability – also trade. The inclusion of women is particularly noteworthy. As similarly noted in recent work (see for example Vogel and Musamba, 2017; Perks et al., 2018) examining women’s roles and male identification of female spaces in mining communities, women occupy positions and spaces in the production and trade of marijuana in various ways as transporters, traders, and less so as assistants in the planting and weeding stages of cultivation. Some male informants actually seek the assistance of their wives for transporting marijuana as women are seen as being less likely to be arrested, while one trader explains why he chooses to sell alongside his wife, because, “[security forces] cannot arrest both the husband and the wife at once”. Regardless of the veracity of that claim, women’s main occupation within the cannabis economy is as a trader. In neighboring Rwanda, for example, Emmanual Ngondo, director of Anti-Narcotics at Rwandan National Police, states that women make up the largest percentage of traders trafficking the drugs (Kaitesi, 2012). While women account for a large percentage of the sellers in South and North Kivu as well, many of these women are FARDC soldier’s wives (Anon., 2014), a fact that is also noted by the United Nations Group of Experts on the Congo (2011). Soldiers’ wives interviewed for this study cast their participation against a backdrop of the low monthly salaries that sometimes arrives each month but which more often does not (see also Eriksson-Baas and Stern, 2010). Thus, with their husband’s permission (and frequently also with their encouragement and assistance) wives enter the trade in order to supplement their husband’s meagre wages. While women not affiliated with the FARDC also trade, they make up a much smaller percentage as FARDC wives hold a competitive advantage over civilian women through their very association as FARDC wives. Yet while this affiliation presents a fair level of protection, it is certainly one that is not guaranteed (see for example Kimbale, 2013).

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As Cuvelier (2011) notes in his look at businesswomen in Katanga, trading activities in general serve to provide women greater financial autonomy and to gain a better bargaining position vis-à-vis their husbands. But even these femmes d’affaires often rely on start-up money from their husband’s or parents. This explicit bias against female participation in business was formalized in the country’s legal framework that disallowed married women from getting a job, starting a business, securing a loan, signing a contract or initiating legal proceedings in the DRC without permission of their husbands (Mbambi and Faray-Kele, 2010)10. In the absence of marital and familial support systems, the cannabis trade, which requires less start-up capital than traditional market trades, provides a financially suitable alternative for other marginalized groups who do not benefit from the security that marriage provides. Prostitutes, widows, and handicapped women are also known to benefit from the trade’s inclusive nature. While prostitutes (who have FARDC officials as clients) and widows of former FARDC officers, like their counterpart FARDC wives, may also gain some competitive advantage over civilian women, these social networks are often unpredictable and can change quickly, particular for widowed wives whose advantage quickly deteriorates after their husband’s death. The inclusion of FARDC wives as well as a broader category of civilian women demonstrates that far from the traffic being the purview of doped-up youth gangs, petty criminals, warlords, or corrupt officials, a substantial percentage of the trade is made up by everyday citizens, many of whom rely on the trade to meet basic requirements not being met at the household (through other means) or national level. In particular it provides an alternative source of income to social groups who otherwise are excluded from other traditional licit sources of income. In addition to widows and prostitutes (of soldiers or otherwise), the trade also provides opportunities to the physically handicapped whose abnormalities prevent them from entering into more traditional but physically demanding occupations such as artisanal mining, agriculture, and even legal market trading that nevertheless still requires mobility and strength. While some traders I met attributed their handicaps to the war, these were often demobilized FARDC fighters who had sustained incapacitating leg injuries. Much more common were men and women whose abnormalities were the result of congenital defects, childhood disease, or later adulthood infections that were never properly treated. One popular trader in Uvira territory, for example, revealed how her entry into the trade was partially the result of a severe rounded back protuberance typical of kyphosis that hindered her ability to access other opportunities including the security of marriage. Physical disabilities, not only serve as a factor shaping entry into the trade but as several informants noted, the same qualities that present a hindrance to participation in conventional trades, can prove to be a beneficial asset in the illegal trade. Asked about his entry into the trade, a trader points to his physical disability, “It’s been about eighteen years since I started trading [marijuana]…I had decided to start growing it when I lost all my fingers due to disease. There was no way for me to work anymore. Thus, I got involved in this trade”. Describing how he has managed to avoid arrest during his time as a trader, he again draws on his disability as an important factor, “When the soldiers come to realize that I am fingerless; they decided not to arrest me for this is the only way through which I can get money for my survival”.

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Navigating Risk

Just as the criminalization of the plant has shaped the demographics of those who choose to become involved in the trade, their ability to circumvent the dangers of doing business within this illicit economy depends partly on their ability to subscribe to a new set of growing and selling strategies. In particular, success in the trade relies on the ability of individual growers and sellers “hiding themselves” – a consideration that begins with the location of one’s marijuana field. If one were to map the regional location of cannabis farms, some patterns could easily be identified. In particular, most growing areas are geographically concentrated in the more isolated regions of South and North Kivu, such as the Moyens and Hauts Plateaux, those that are further from roads as well as urban centers. Other patterns might be harder to discern without additional information. Some growing areas, for example, benefit for being in close proximity to mining areas, yet still far from the provincial capitals, such as the areas around the mining center of Masisi Town. Even less obvious are the locations of individual marijuana plots even if specific villages, and even exact household locations have been determined precisely because individual hemp fields are often located far from grower’s households and separate from the agricultural fields used to grow other crops. Despite the plants ability to grow well with other crops, farmers often forego inter- cropping cannabis with other household crops. As one farmer explains, “I do not mix [cannabis with my food crops] because I often fear maybe the soldiers can identify my field and will uproot everything in the field”. Thus the separation of food crops from cannabis ensures that, even in the event of discovery, no subsistence plants go the way of seized cannabis harvests. Fear of having one’s marijuana plot discovered, however, is not limited to being discovered by security agents. As another farmer explains, “I do not mix [cannabis] with any other crop because many people will see that hemp if I mix it with food crops, which could compromise its production, for many people will come to know [that I am growing hemp], for they will see it because the food crop fields we usually cultivate are in open spaces where everybody passes. Whereas hemp, it is always cultivated in hidden places and that is the difference”. For the same reason, farms of cannabis plants are usually not weeded despite its benefit for increasing plant development and production, "since weeding clears the field, making it such that any one from far away can identify that it is hemp [that you are growing]”. Fields of hemp are however often intermixed with other [limited value] weedy plants. As noted by another grower, “when marijuana grows with other plants that we do not use in our lives, it will be difficult for most people to determine what is growing inside the field from far away”. The fear of being discovered shapes not only where cannabis farms are located and how the plant is cultivated within the local environment, it also shapes how labor in the production of cannabis is structured. Unlike the production of food crops that draws on multiple field hands in the various stages of planting, weeding, and harvesting, labor in the production of the cannabis plant is often done by a single individual – that of the cannabis owner himself. As one informant noted, “the land cultivation, the acquisition of seed, the harvest time and the sale period, no one from my family helps me do it”. Another farmer explains, “the harvest time does not involve other people as we usually do in other crops since [those laboring on your marijuana farm] may spread the news that you are a hemp grower and besides many will not agree to come to help you for they know that to do so is to expose themselves to danger”. Thus, cultivators often keep their farms secret even

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from other villagers and neighbors, whom several respondents noted might retaliate for past transgression or to settle an unresolved conflict. As articulated by one grower, “no one knows the place [where I grow marijuana] except myself… they do not know my field because I do not want them to know it…if they come to know the [location of the] field they might plot with security members to arrest me, for one cannot trust anyone in this world”. While the involvement of their wives in the production of marijuana was often linked to claims of their “fearfulness” or as previously noted, their religious devotion, for some growers, not involving their wives represented a similar strategy for remaining safe. “[Wives] they do not want to be arrested. But they are the first to ask for the money you have received [from the sale of marijuana]. And if you want to get arrested easily, please ask your wife to help you in that business for the day you quarrel with them, hemp is the only thing she will be claiming to be in your head that troubles you, and from there everybody will know that you are a hemp grower or smoker”. Strategies for staying safe also shape how and where people store their harvest, when and how transport of cannabis to the market is accomplished, and to whom and in what quantity cannabis is grown and sold. Most respondents, for example, cited some variation of “hiding” or “burying” their sacks of harvested cannabis prior to selling them – an activity that usually occurs in the fields rather than in the household and remains there until a destination for their hemp is determined. As a similar precaution, buyers are usually not permitted to arrive directly at growers’ fields but to an agreed upon meeting place for the exchange. During transportation, marijuana is often hidden through packaging that involves layering either clothing or charcoal that “[are] put on the bottom and [sic] others on the top of the sack so [the marijuana can]not to be easily identified”. Some traders also spray their sacks with perfume in order to mask the strong smell that marijuana typically emits. That the smell much more so than the plants visibility is repeatedly noted as a major factor within the narratives of those who have been caught, confirms the significance of this strategy. Remaining hidden necessitates strategies that reduce visibility but also tactics that reduce exposure. The desire on the part of both growers and traders to reduce exposure shapes the quantity that growers produce and the quantity by which traders sell by. “The insecurity”, one grower lamented, “is the main element that prevents us from not growing more. For the more you grow the more it is dangerous to you because you will have to sell it to different places and that is how it will become dangerous to you”. A trader similarly relates, “I do not want to sell by boules11 because to do so is to expose oneself to multiple risks”. Most marijuana thus tends to be transported and sold from the site of production in larger qualities of 30, 50, or 100 kg sacks in order to reduce the number of buyers and thus minimize the risk to growers of exposure by others. In addition, the fear of exposure strongly influences sellers’ decisions of whom they will or will not trade with. Some traders, for example, refuse to trade with soldiers whom they see as capable of “plot[ing] against me”. As one seller explained, “I sell it to civilians only because I do not want to put myself at risk. Soldiers are always complicated and do not have friends. When he is moneyless, he is your friend but when he has money he becomes otherwise”. Others spoke of the need to be cautious to any potential new buyer particularly in light of the well-known practice of security agents pretending to be buyers. The concern of exposure also shapes the strategies people use to transport marijuana to their intended destination/buyer. Some, for example, choose

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to travel during nighttime as they argue it presents a cover with which to more safely move by, whiles others do not travel at night for fear of meeting with ‘evil spirits’. Strategies for staying safe and reducing risk of exposure and potentially of arrest, are thus multiple and varied. Yet while informants lamented the dangers encountered though their engagement in the cannabis economy, most informants recognized that within the trade a certain level of risk was to be expected. As one big trader noted, “When you start [any type of] work you also must accept its risks. It is like someone who loves a woman and wants her to be his wife but does not want her family-in-law. Or you want to be a fisherman but ignore the risks of drowning, or capsizing”. For most traders then, a key factor for being able to successfully navigate the multiple dangers and risks in the trade was often expressed as individual character traits such as mafu mafu12 (fearlessness) and ndabitwaza13 (without worry). Even amongst those who claimed to have the “heart of a lion” however, one risk in particular presented itself as a formidable and the most significant challenge across all respondents’ stories. As one informant offered in summary, “there is much risk when going to sell because you do a movement. Harvesting, growing or weeding holds some risk but not as much as bringing it to market”.

Negotiating Danger

Speaking on the role of the tobacco plant in Southern Lebanon, which exhibits similar ecologically and economically beneficial qualities, Khayatt (2012, p. 477) privileges the plant as a ‘war-i-time success’, a distinction that can similarly be applied to the role of cannabis in the DRC’s current landscape of ‘no war no peace’. Its ecology (a hardy plant; easy to grow; amenable to interplanting; and relatively fast growing) means that it is attuned to the spatio-temporal parameters of Congo’s warscape (both for victims as a compensation crop, as a source of food security when other crops such as the staple cassava take longer to cultivate, and also to armed groups who can easily grow it. At the same time, the same characteristics that factor into its success to suit the Congo’s warscape and in light of its illegality– its disparate and distant character (being diffuse, and being remote) in order to be hidden – it requires a complex set of social relations to get from grower to trader to consumer which in turn means that such relations consequently shape the very socio-temporal parameter of the trade and the landscape of violence itself. For example, the same qualities that promote the armed group FDLR’s ability to engage in production, notably geographic isolation, also stand as barriers to the group’s ability to participate in the commercialization end of the drug’s trade, necessitating that the group collaborate with members of the military and other armed groups against whom they are said to be fighting. For citizens involved in the trade, it is in “navigating the war terrain” (Vigh, 2016) that the greatest insecurity associated with the trade lies. The engagement in an illegal trade in an area of weak state oversight and control means that traders must navigate the physical crossing of a landscape of insecurity as well as a complex socio-political landscape of insecurity. When asked about the dangers associated with the trade, citizens unanimously cited that the greatest risk faced by growers and traders was often met ‘along the way’. These largely random and unpredictable encounters occur during the transport phase when traders and growers are moving sacks of marijuana from the area of cultivation to its first location of sale

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and are met by individual members of armed militias or FARDC soldiers literally ‘along the way’. While these meetings are commonly seen as being ‘random’ and occurring ‘by chance’, (as opposed to ‘legal’ checkpoints patrolled and enforced by the FARDC) many of the encounters with individual army members, in particular, occur where military checkpoints or bases have been established nearby. During such encounters, transporters may be arrested, have their goods seized, or be asked to pay a fine in lieu of an arrest. In some cases, multiple scenarios happen simultaneously, for example, when military members and individuals from armed group walk away with the sacks of marijuana along with any cash being carried on the individual’s person. Even in instances of arrest, however, after paying a settlement for their release, few traders were ever actually sent on further to the regional prison. While such episodes appear like nothing more than outright cases of banditry and pillage, most interactions do not end leaving transporters in absolute destitution for the very reason that such encounters are mirrors of social relations as much as they are influenced by the search for personal profit. The ability of each actor to secure access to and successfully compete in the cannabis trade, is rooted in their economic and political capacity to manipulate varying personal relations and networks. Familial, customary, friendly and ethnic relations were all cited as necessary precursors to entering potential areas to acquire tradable quantities of cannabis. Strong and extensive social networks are so valued in the trade that when participants were asked to list the qualities that define a successful trader, two of the six characteristics provided spoke directly to one’s social networks while an additional two were closely linked to strong social endowments. According to respondents, the success of a trader depends on (1) their recognition by others as a trader; (2) their fearlessness (3) their experience, intelligence, and knowledge of the trade; (4) the quantity of cannabis traded; (5) their connections to FARDC; and (6) their ability to move across national borders to access more profitable international markets. Thus to be a successful cannabis trader in the Congo requires more than attention to numerical accounts of goods sold or profits gained but rests on the possession of strong social capital to gain access to a wide clientele and to build the connections necessary to minimize the risks of engaging in an illicit trade. Ironically then, success in the business of one of Congo’s most notorious shadow economy requires for traders not to be hidden, but rather “to be known”. To clarify however, this requires that traders are known by the appropriate social networks and individuals and that this act of ‘knowing’ is couched in terms of reciprocity. Traders intentionally develop ‘friendships’ by gifting small quantities of cannabis and sometimes other goods such as beer and/or cash to individual armed group members which is key to securing safe passage and avoid arrest. As a village chief and grower explains, “I stay safe in the area because I often make myself a friend of soldiers and commanders. Most of the time, when there is a soldier who is in my area, he first of all must come to show himself up to me as the chief, after I ask him if he also smokes cigarettes. If he accepts I ask him then what kind of cigarette, even hemp? If he says yes, then I bring it to him for free, I do this same activity a second and third time. From there, he becomes my friend. A soldier or a security member arrests someone depending on your way of expressing or introducing yourself to them. In addition, you must be fast-giving as in providing 3000 FC or 5000 FC14 to give him as transport. I often do so many times. Afterwards I tell him about my hemp activity and the reason I am doing it. That is why I never get arrested”. Conversations with FARDC

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personnel present further evidence of the importance of these connections. As one Commander related, “I remember when I was based in Kabinda territory… There had come a [big] grower to our camp to see our chief. The guy brought 24 bottles of beer with a goat to tell our chief that he grows hemp thus we should protect him. The chief agreed but told him to be giving something like a cigarette to his soldiers so that they might not arrest him when the chief is away”. These connections are not only critical for civilians trading within a militarized landscape, but are crucial for army traders as well. As one FARDC informant noted, “our safety in the trade depends on how we are living or staying with our chiefs”. Success in the trade is consequently seen as being built from and reliant on a positive relational outcome, one that is determined as much by cultural linkages, such as through a common ethnicity, as through a social one. “If some soldiers are not involved or successful in the trade it is because of how they behave when they are trading…. [when] they are too troublesome and impolite towards the authorities,” one FARDC trader remarked, “In that way, you cannot be successful in its trade for every time you will have problems with your commanders for you are rude”. Being “courteous”, illustrating displays of “humility” and not being “haughty” or “impolite” were identified as important traits to show among both civilian and military traders. Behavioral attributes featured as consequential factors not only in determining whether one would be able to garner the support of a high ranking army official but also helped determine the extent to which one’s profits would be seized during a random arrest. “For instance, when you arrest someone who has a lot hemp but he humiliates himself to you and asks for forgiveness, you will reduce the cost of charging him from 80USD to 20USD… But if you arrest a trader or grower and he does not humiliate himself to you, you will ravish the whole quantity of hemp and in addition charge him some money according to the quantity of hemp”. Some FARDC respondents suggested such placates by civilian traders were more important than their drawing on other cultural ties. “Sometimes, you will come across [a civilian trader] saying that he is a family member to a certain chief or he begins speaking in Lingala to show you that you cannot intimidate him. For such people, we do not tolerate them. We ravish the hemp and ask him to call his chief he boasts for”. Even when traders are able to connect to appropriate social networks however, what constitutes the appropriate social networks changes according to different social environments, which are not static. Few traders, for example, are able to access the inner circle of top ranking FARDC officials but most admit to knowing a captain or a lieutenant as well as several rank and file army members that they collaborate with. These collaborations, particularly among the rank and file, are often short lived as groups are frequently rotated after every six months requiring that traders continuously rebuild new ‘friendships’. Some traders rely on connections to members of rebel groups as well. Growers in the Ruzizi Plain for example have in the past called on the FDLR whom they frequently traded with to provide them armed escorts along part of their journey from the rural areas to shelter them from random stops by FARDC personnel. This however has changed as recent military movements against the group pushing them further afield from these communities and as some informant’s argued, upsetting the previous balance established in the area making current interactions with the group increasingly dangerous. Still others draw on government administrators for protection while almost all rely on community leaders for support. Even within official anti-drug networks, hard lines are rarely ever drawn and

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negotiation remains an influential tool for traders. Labeled elsewhere as ‘institutional connectedness’ (Claessens et al., 2013, p. 14), these inter-personal relations then are critical to determining individuals’ success in navigating through what is a complex and plural socio-political landscape. The ability to connect to these networks, however is highly unequal and often reinforces existing social inequities among the local population. For example, big traders can readily purchase future reciprocity, through their ability to pay a more substantial “présentation des civilités”15 while other big traders do so by means of their personal networks to higher ranking officials and administrative staff. One such trader reflected on how his own success in the trade was largely attributed to his connections to important regional actors including an aunt who served as the chief of Uvira city. For traders with less capital to expend towards such ‘gifts of reciprocity,’ or are socially marginalized, their ability to access these same networks is severely restricted and as a result so is their ability to circumvent arrest and the severe fines that often accompany those arrests. As one small trader recounted, “the laws exist to us, people of the lower class, who have no defenders”. Further explained by another small trader, “Every person without distinction who is involved in the trade is vulnerable of pursuit since there is no exception unless you have an authority to defend you...”. Thus while economic concerns may provide the main motivation for entering the trade, to understand the mechanisms shaping the outcomes of the trade, its opportunities, and its restraints, requires taking a socio- political turn.

Conclusion: Revisiting the Curse of the Congo

Responding to the network of informal and formal systems that emerged within Somalia’s wider political environment of armed conflict and criminality, Ken Menkhaus (2004, p. 163) once argued, “that those systems are all but invisible to most external actors does not make them less present or significant”. The place of marijuana in the Congo and in particular the informal networks and systems that are drawn on and reworked therein, draws similar parallels. The Congolese trade in cannabis sativa remains, for the most part, a hidden economy. Just as users of the herb continue to be stigmatized, the trade in marijuana still maintains a “fringe” (see Verbeke and Corin, 1976, p. 16916) position within academic debates on natural resource conflicts, informal economies, and livelihood security. Similarly, it has yet to be able to garner the attention of most international actors working in the region such that when asked about the cannabis economy, a UN political affairs officer in Fizi once emphatically stated that “there is no such trade”. As this article has demonstrated, the presence and significance of the herb to the lives of Congolese and of its economy for the livelihood of Congolese presents a critical alternative perspective. Rather, Congo’s cannabis economy is in fact loaded with cultural and economic significance. It reflects a powerful political history of Congolese resistance. It further serves as a key site for contemporary understanding of how local people navigate, survive, and subvert everyday forms of insecurity and violence in an enduring and fractured landscape of armed groups and gapping inequalities. Yet its importance to Congolese people and society has been overshadowed by outside narratives that continues to place the trade and consumption of cannabis alongside instances of corruption, crime, greed, abuse, and rape, rather than food security,

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livelihoods, reciprocity, and cost-effective (alternative) healthcare. As a result, most policies on the cannabis economy continue to focus on the criminal aspects of the drug, which almost inevitably reduces it to simply a vehicle for violence, underdevelopment and regional instability. In this way, discussions of the trade in marijuana, if and when they happen, do not look very different from when Melville William Hilton-Simpson, writing his travelogue entitled “Land and Peoples of the Kasai” in 1911, singled out hemp smoking as “the curse” of the Batetela (p. 256). Rather perhaps the real curse of Congo’s cannabis trade is that despite mounting evidence to the contrary regarding the causal role of marijuana and violence in the region, despite a growing recognition of marijuana’s role as a legitimate (if not legal) and significant livelihood strategy for rural households across the continent, despite evidence that the real dangers associated with the trade arguably result not in spite of its prohibition but precisely because of it, outside observers continue to reject empirical evidence in favor of dangerous stories (Autesserre, 2012) and toxic discourses (Laudati and Mertens, 2019). Returning to the photographed farmer that began this paper we can thus understand the curse of the cannabis trade another way. Perhaps the real ‘curse’, that the farmer likely already recognizes and subsequently sought to cure through the staging of the photograph as he did, was that we fail to see even when those hidden economies are exposed in plain sight. Menkhaus.K., 2004. Vicious circles and the security development nexus in Somalia. Conflict, Security & Development, vol. 4, n° 2, p. 149-165.

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NOTES

1. Shamba is a Swahili word used by Congolese to refer to a plot of land where one farms, commonly translated as a ‘farm’ in English vernacular. Rather than a single plot of land, however most farming households in the Congo tend to have multiple shambas (i.e. plots) that are spatially diverse in order to take advantage of different geographical-ecological zones. 2. This paper uses the shorthand term cannabis, an abbreviation of the botanical name Cannabis sativa. I note here that Congolese actors use varied terms for the plant, reflecting regional language variations both across Europe and North America and within the country of the DRC itself. For the DRC, where English is rarely spoken as French is the official language, the French term chanvre is the term widely understood in the country, and when translated into English, hemp is the term widely used. Among locally spoken languages, the Swahili translation, bangi, is widely understood in the Eastern part of the country by different ethnic groups although most languages have their own translations. I use these terms together with marijuana interchangeably throughout the text. 3. All quotes presented of local Congolese, unless otherwise noted, are drawn from the author’s fieldwork in the DRC. 4. While this paper does not delve into ongoing debates surrounding the drug’s contribution to violent behavior, that an increasing number of states have drawn up plans to if not already officially legalized the drug certainly offers pause to the drug’s role as an instigator of violence. That within the DRC, peacekeepers as well as international NGO staff are regular consumers of the same drug blamed for perpetrating violence by armed groups in the region presents cautionary evidence against simplistic causal claims between acts of violence and cannabis consumption. 5. There is some debate about the exact ethnic identity of the original group. Even the origins and translation of the term ‘Bene Diamba’ has been argued. The scope of these debates are beyond the relevance of this paper however and instead references are cited here to guide the reader to further reading on this topic. 6. Kivubo or Civubo is a disease that affects children usually under the age of one, on his/her anal and genital area, with symptoms that include diarrhea and emaciation. 7. For an argument linking Patrice Lumumba’s use of cannabis to his eventual assassination, see Ritchie (2012). 8. It is important to note that while previous writing has suggested that armed groups were able to profit from the production of marijuana – in fact few groups have (and continue) to be able to do so. As one informant noted, growing marijuana “requires peace time to deal with it”. Rebel groups, including the national army, are rarely stationed in one place for substantial periods of time and notably for the time that it takes for the marijuana to reach the harvesting stage. This temporal insecurity thus prevents most groups from growing a significant quantity of marijuana (or any other agricultural commodity). Armed group members that do grown then, tend to

F0 produce only small amounts close to their encampments 2D enough for personal use and small enough not to incur a great loss in the case of forced evacuation from their base. 9. See for example; Anon., 2018 and Mupanda, 2018

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10. In 2016, reforms made under the Family Code removed many of these legally binding constraints but research suggests that these reforms have largely failed to be implemented in practice (World Bank 2018). 11. Boules, meaning balls in French, refers to the way that the smallest quantity of marijuana – about one ounce – are packaged – rolled up as small balls often in newspaper. 12. From the Bafuliro language. 13. From the Bafuliro language. 14. FC stands for the local currency, Franc Congolais. This amount converts to roughly $1.83USD and $3.06USD respectively. 15. Translated directly from French as “presentation of civilities”, its use refers to a form of reciprocity payment where the payer can expect, in the case of the cannabis trade, that the payee will advocate on their behalf. These are usually provided to higher ranking officials and administrative staff who have the power to intervene in cases of arrest, or to help facilitate safe passage. 16. One of the earliest (and still few) academic surveys conducted on the use of cannabis in what was then Zaire, the authors grouped results into three associative categories of marijuana users; (1) violence; (2) stardom; and (3) fringe.

INDEX

Keywords: Narratives surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s rich natural resource base have been largely attentive to the way that resources shape the enduring violence in the region. Current policies regarding Congo’s cannabis trade, which advocate for its continued prohibition, exemplify such framings. Drawing on over sixteen months of qualitative fieldwork with those engaged in the production and trade of the drug, this paper presents a direct challenge to the narrative of violence, delinquency, and greed that currently foregrounds most discussions of Congo’s cannabis economy. It reframes the cannabis trade as a response to Congo’s landscape of insecurity, rather than a symptom of it. It offers evidence of how it is rather the plant’s illegality and the extra-legal networks its illegality engenders that are shaping the terms of this dangerous trade. In so doing, this paper seeks to confront how we understand the very terms of risk and insecurity as played out in the day-to-day lives of those who navigate through the hidden economy of Congo’s cannabis trade.

AUTHOR

ANN LAUDATI Ann Laudati, [email protected], is a Visiting Professor and Social Science Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. She recently published : - Laudati A., Mertens C., 2019. Rape and Resources: Congo’s (Toxic) Discursive Complex. African Studies Review, (à paraître). - Laudati A., 2016. The Making of a Shadow Economy: Securing Insecurity in Eastern DRC’s Cannabis Trade. Review of African Political Economy, vol. 43, n° 148, p. 190-205. - Barclay S. M., Laudati A., 2016. The Changing Face of Chattara: African Migrants, Mobilities, and

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Movements in Barcelona. In Grabowska G. (ed), Movers and Stayers: Sub-Saharan African Migration Decisions and Changing Conditions in the Mediterranean

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Known Unknowns and Unknown Knowns: What we know about the cannabis and the Hashish trade in Afghanistan

James Bradford and David Mansfield

Introduction

1 In recent decades, Afghanistan has become synonymous with opium. Whether it is the annually-increasing quantities harvested, or the much-publicized connections to insurgent groups like the Taliban, opium is center-stage in the contemporary narrative of Afghanistan. And yet, opium is but one of a broader mosaic of drugs that include heroin, alcohol and more recently methamphetamine, that comprise the illicit drug economy and Afghan drug culture. One of those drugs, cannabis, has a long history of cultivation and use, longer than opium in fact, and to this day, is grown widely and used extensively throughout Afghanistan. Yet, little is known about cannabis, and significant questions remain about its history, its cultural impact, and its enduring presence in the illicit economy of Afghanistan.

2 In this chapter, we seek to explore how, why, and in what ways cannabis shaped, and continues to shape, the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan and consumer markets around the world. First, by analyzing the historical antecedents of the contemporary cannabis trade we will demonstrate that the Afghan cannabis trade was increasingly influenced by the demands of the global market, laying many of the foundations seen in the industry today. In particular, during the 1960s and 70s, Western hippies and drug- trafficking entrepreneurs traveled to Afghanistan in search of high-quality Afghan hashish that had become an attractive brand for Western consumers. The demand for Afghan hashish pushed many producers to alter methods of production to meet the ever-increasing appetite. Second, we will demonstrate why, in recent decades, cannabis still remains an enduring component of the Afghan drug trade. Unlike the 1960s, or

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during the reign of Amanullah Khan, when Afghan authorities embraced cannabis, the emergence of the Taliban and the subsequent US invasion following the attacks of 9/11, complicated the role cannabis plays within Afghanistan. Despite claims by the United Nations that Afghanistan is the largest hashish producer in the world, the political, economic, and security issues on the ground present a far more varied, and complicated picture. Little is known about the precise amounts of cannabis cultivated, nor where, as cultivation is highly dispersed and interwoven with other agricultural products. What is known, however, is that cultivation and trade has ebbed and flowed as various political factions have either prohibited cultivation or relaxed controls. Furthermore, the prevalence of cannabis cultivation and trade is dependent on local prices and competition, which can influence the extent to which cannabis will be grown as a primary, secondary, or even tertiary agricultural commodity.

3 Ultimately, the precise features and contours of the Afghan cannabis trade are, and always have been, nebulous: where, how much, and why cannabis is cultivated is unpredictable and varied. And yet, what we do know is that cannabis is grown widely, hashish is exported to regional and global markets, and the industry remains an enduring element of the Afghan drug trade and Afghan economy.

Methodology

4 The prevalence of cannabis, especially hashish, as both a domestic and global good in Afghan history, is critically understudied, despite being important to the growth of the illicit opium trade that flourishes in Afghanistan. As an historian, one of the authors expands upon Afghan history, as well as the history of the illicit global drug trade, which has focused predominantly on the Afghan-Soviet war as the transformative period for the history of drugs in Afghanistan. Based off of archival research conducted at the National Archives in the US (NARA II), the UK National Archives at Kew, and the National Archives of Afghanistan (Arshif-e-Milli) in Kabul, this paper argues that the opium and hashish trades have a much longer and more complicated history than previously assumed. Emphasizing the entanglements with the colonial trade of drugs in British India during the early parts of the 20th century, as well as the evolving nature of production and trade in the 1960s and 1970s, Afghan cannabis and hashish were slowly drawn into the shifting global marketplace, laying the foundations for networks that would eventually ship heroin throughout the world.

5 Work on the contemporary cannabis economy draws on in-depth research in Afghanistan by one of the authors over many years. This body of research primarily focused on the changing role of opium poppy cultivation within the wider livelihoods of farmers in different parts of the country, especially in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Badakhshan, and Farah. Cannabis, like opium, is just one crop amongst many grown, and one activity of a multitude that a rural household undertakes in pursuit of its livelihood. Experience has shown that research on both opium poppy and cannabis needs to examine the portfolio of activities that a household is involved in, as well as the wider socio-economic and political environment, to better understand the factors and conditions that lead to illicit drug crop cultivation (Mansfield, 2016b). This livelihood approach mitigates some of the challenges of conducting research on illicit or underground activities: it avoids direct questioning on

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drug crop cultivation – “drugs fetishism” – and the biases that arise, and provides a framework from which to verify the data produced on opium and cannabis cultivation.

History

6 Little is known about precisely when, where, and how cannabis use and cultivation first began in the region. However, Afghanistan is believed to have one of the oldest continuous cannabis cultures in the world, which is reflected in the diversity of cannabis-based products found throughout the country. Although cannabis is grown widely, most Afghans prefer not to consume the dried flowers, known as ganja (marijuana in the West). Rather, most Afghans prefer to smoke the local form of hashish: charas (pronounced chaars in Afghanistan). Charas is native to Central Asia, and is made by sieving the resin glands of the cannabis plant and then storing it in a leather pouch to cure (the word charas is believed to derive from Persian word for leather pouch). Much of the historical basis for Afghan cannabis stems from the oral mythologies and tales of the legendary Baba Ku, who centuries ago roamed the mountains of Central and South Asia using cannabis and hashish as vehicles to heal the spiritual and physical ailments of those in need. In more recent decades, babas, local spiritual and religious teachers, endeavored to preserve the ethos of Baba Ku through the use and distribution of hashish (Clarke, 2010). Cannabis became a mainstay product during the Mughal dynasty (1526-1857), where numerous leaders, including the founder of the dynasty, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, encouraged the cultivation, production, and use of various forms of cannabis and hashish (Honchell, 2012).

7 It was not until the late nineteenth century that the Afghan cannabis trade became increasingly entangled with the global trade in drugs. In particular, the thriving opium and cannabis markets in British India played an important role in luring Afghan producers and smugglers to markets southward. During the reigns of both Abdur Rahman Khan (1882-1901) and Amanullah Khan (1919-1928) they recognized and embraced the viability of cannabis-based products, such as charas and bhang (a paste made from cannabis and consumed in foods or drinks), as export goods, encouraging production and trade, all the while, establishing excessive taxes and strict punishments for production and use that was intended for the domestic market. Abdur Rahman, in an attempt to profit from the large demand for cannabis and opium in British India, reduced taxes on exports to increase trade to the south. In turn, most of the charas and opium found in the markets of the Northwest Frontier Province were coming from Afghan traders to the north (Bradford, 2019).

8 Amanullah Khan’s tenure as ruler of Afghanistan was characterized by attempts to rapidly reform and modernize the political, economic, and legal systems. In an effort to discourage Afghans from using and trading cannabis products, as well as other drugs, inside the country, Amanullah enacted the Penal Code of 1924-25, which put forth a series of strict punishments for users and suppliers (Gregorian, 1969). A 50 percent tax was placed on the distribution of charas, and bhang, and users could receive up to 39 lashings. However, similar to Abdur Rahman before him, Amanullah also sought to take advantage of the Indian market, and reduced export taxes on cannabis and opium exports, even exempting traders from the harsh punishments of the Penal Code, as long as the products were destined for markets outside Afghanistan (Bradford, 2019). What impact the countervailing domestic and foreign policies had on the precise locations of

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cannabis cultivation and production of charas within Afghanistan is less clear. According to the Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, in the 1920s cannabis was found throughout the northern regions in Badakhshan and western regions around Herat, although cultivation was present in other parts of the country (MacDonald, 2007). Nonetheless, the dual policy established by Amanullah had a tremendous impact inside British India. Cannabis and opium that were legally produced in British India were taxed heavily by colonial officials and local authorities, and even though a market existed for Afghan cannabis to be traded legally, it too was taxed inordinately. As a result, the smuggling of Afghan hashish became a growing problem for British authorities as drugs produced in British India were so heavily taxed that they could not compete with the smuggled cannabis and opium from Afghanistan. Eventually, the dual system, which both rulers embraced, contributed to the tightening controls over foreign and domestic opium and cannabis products in British India. More important, Afghan cannabis began to make its way to markets beyond its borders (Bradford, 2019).

9 It was in the 1960s that the cannabis industry in Afghanistan would undergo its next significant evolution. Throughout this decade, thousands of travelers, many of whom were part of the counter-culture movement which was gripping much of the Western world, ventured through Afghanistan via the “Hippie Trail” (Maguire and Ritter, 2014). The trail, which began in Morocco or Turkey, and flowed through Iran and Afghanistan, and ended in India or Nepal, was a catalyst for the changing contours of the Afghan cannabis industry. This was due in part to the fact that many of those travelers found Afghanistan to be an ideal stop on the trail, particularly because of its cheap and abundant hashish. In many ways, Afghanistan was ideal for Western hippies. Although, cannabis and hashish were illegal, Afghan authorities rarely enforced the law (Charpentier, 1973). In many of the major cities, hotels catered to travelers in search of high-quality hashish. In Kabul, the Noor and Mustafa hotels provided safe havens for hash smokers, and in the stalls of merchants on Chicken Street in the Shawr-e Naw district, travelers could easily find cheap potent hash. Special teahouses (saqikhana) that catered exclusively to charas users could be found in Kandahar, Herat, or Mazar-i- Sharif. American consular officials estimated that there were up to 25 variations of hashish being sold in markets around the country, many of which far surpassed American cannabis products in terms of levels of THC, and were clearly indicative of the vitality of the Afghan hashish market (Bradford, 2019).

10 Although larger and larger numbers of hippies descended upon Afghanistan throughout the 1960s, Afghan cannabis cultivation and hashish production were initially ill-suited to meet demand. Traditionally, cannabis farmers did not use chemical fertilizers and hashish was produced manually using sieves or rugs to extract the resin powder from the cannabis flowers. Despite the fact that production was labor intensive the hashish itself was of superior quality and potency. Marked by a government that rarely enforced anti-drug laws, as well as a local culture that viewed hashish use with either indifference or ambivalence, Afghanistan was an ideal stop on the “Hippie Trail”, and more important, for the burgeoning hashish trade. Thus, by the end of the 1960s, Afghanistan was established as one of the world’s main sources of top- quality hashish (Clarke, 2010).

11 Things would change in the 1970s. In May of 1970, counter-narcotics agents raided the Shak-i-Foladi Hotel in Kabul, arresting thirteen people and confiscating nearly 200 grams of hashish. Although the quantity was rather small, the drug bust marked a

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significant evolution in the nature of the drug trade in Afghanistan, as those arrested were not hippies, but a new professional class of traffickers. Thus, it was during the 1970s that these entrepreneurs linked Afghan production with demand to larger markets elsewhere, and Afghanistan evolved from a drug destination to a drug- trafficking hub (Bradford, 2019). For many Afghan and American counter-narcotics officials, it was the growing presence of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love that was indicative of the growing dimensions of the Afghan drug trade. Dubbed the ‘hippie mafia’, the Brotherhood had become well established in America as some of the primary traffickers of hashish and cannabis into the United States, and they were in some ways responsible for fueling the counter-culture movement (May and Tender, 2008). In Afghanistan, the Brotherhood was taking full advantage of the lax enforcement of laws to bring high-quality hash to the West. According to European traffickers, the Brotherhood was most responsible for the big changes in both the production and sale of hashish. Allegedly, members of the Brotherhood paid double or triple the amount for a gram of hashish, and began to drive market prices up throughout the country (Clarke, 2010). The impact of the Brotherhood and like-minded traffickers was that to respond to the shifting and growing demand, more and more Afghans got involved in the cultivation of cannabis and production of hashish.

12 The changing dynamics of the cannabis trade, as it shifted from local demand to global traffickers, led to major changes in the production of hashish. To meet demand, many producers shifted to methods that were more advantageous for producing greater volumes of hashish, however, at the expense of quality. For example, some producers abandoned the cloth sieves that took longer to extract the cannabis resins in exchange for metal sieves, which could sieve more material but would often reduce the potency because excess plant material would remain throughout the powdered resin. To increase volume, some traffickers would mix lower quality resins with those of higher- quality, in turn, reducing the overall potency of the hashish. Others added oils to mimic the texture and consistency of primo hashish, mainly to make it feel sticky, but were otherwise masking the deficiencies in the product (Clarke, 2010). Afghans, nonetheless, were generally responsive to the changing clientele and their demands. By the 1970s, the growing presence of traffickers were not only willing to pay well above market value, but also were willing to invest in the mechanization of cannabis cultivation, such as providing money to purchase tractors or fertilizers, as well as, providing resources to scale-up hashish production, in the form of metal sieves and oils. Furthermore, the changes in production, which were compelled by the need for more quantity, were even being motivated by the government. Some farmers claimed that in 1969, King Zahir Shah, in contravention of Afghan laws which prohibited cultivation, production, sale, and use, sent out official edicts encouraging farmers to use fertilizers to increase yields of cannabis (MacDonald, 2007). In effect, the increasingly global demand for Afghan hashish ultimately reduced the availability of the top-quality hashish that had made Afghanistan such a major destination on the hippie trail. However, it did link Afghan hashish to markets beyond more localized demand in Afghanistan, as well as, south and southwest.

13 By late 1970s, and early 1980s, Afghan hashish remained a lucrative commodity in Afghanistan. Even with the onset of the Afghan-Soviet War, which broke out in 1979, hashish remained in high demand, indicating how cannabis would remain an important part of the Afghan drug economy during the following four decades of war.

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Contemporary

14 Cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan has waxed and waned since the 1980s. There have been periods where national, provincial, and local actors have sought to deter cultivation, on some occasions banning it outright, the most comprehensive being the prohibition imposed by the Taliban. Following the fall of the regime in late 2001, cultivation resumed in many provinces including Balkh and Baghlan in the north, Nangarhar in the east, and Kandahar and Uruzgan in the south. By 2010, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s then Executive Director Maria Antonio Costa labeled Afghanistan “the world’s biggest producer of hashish”; a statement that was widely reported by the media and other agencies (UNODC, 2010; EMCDDA, 2012, p. 60).

15 While there was little doubt that cannabis was widespread at the time, this was a bold claim with little evidence to support it. For one, estimates of cannabis cultivation have proven as unreliable in Afghanistan as they have in other cannabis producing nations, rendering comparisons across countries almost meaningless (UNODC, 1999, p. 80; UNODC, 2006, p. 34).

16 In Afghanistan, some might argue that the reasons for the lack of rigor in cannabis estimates are a consequence of the international community’s focus on opium production. After all, both UNODC and United States Government surveys, as well as the overall anti-drugs effort in Afghanistan have focused almost exclusively on opium production and given only wavering attention to cannabis. However, the challenges of measuring the extent of cannabis cultivation are much more fundamental than that of policy makers pursuing a single crop focus and ignoring the cannabis crop. Most are methodological. For example, the crops dispersal across Afghanistan makes both census and sample surveys difficult and costly. Its growing season, over the spring and summer, as well as its leafy appearance, presents significant challenges differentiating cannabis from the numerous other crops grown over the same period. In Afghanistan, cannabis can also be grown alongside or interspersed with other crops, making accurate visual assessments of area either from the ground or by remote sensing, difficult (UNODC, 2008, p. 6).

17 A second reason for doubting the assertion that Afghanistan had become the largest producer of hashish was the way that the results of data collection methods were mixed in the UNODC survey that underpinned the claim. From 2009 until 2011 UNODC’s cannabis survey for Afghanistan used a combination of methods and produced a wide range of estimates (see illustration 1). For instance, in 2010 the estimate ranged from 9,000 hectares to 29,000 hectares of cannabis cultivation (UNODC, 2011, p. 6). The lower figure in the range was based on remote sensing, the higher figure was drawn from a ground survey; both were viewed as having a high degree of uncertainty (UNODC, 2011, p. 51; UNODC, 2013, p. 9; former UK government official, personal communication, December 2018). In 2012, UNODC moved to a ‘satellite based survey” which they argued would allow “more robust estimates” (UNODC, 2013, p. 9). However, UNODC drew its sampling frame from the potential active agricultural area during the winter months, not the summer when cannabis is actually grown in Afghanistan – and a period when the agricultural area is significantly reduced (UNODC, 2013, p. 27). Concerns over the efficacy of the results and ultimately the integrity of the survey led to the survey being abandoned (former UK government official, personal communication, December 2018).

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Illustration 1 – UNODC estimate of cannabis cultivation, 2009-2012

Source: UNODC 2008, 2010, 2011 & 2013.

18 Given the high degree of uncertainty in these national estimates the question is what do we actually know about cannabis cultivation in contemporary Afghanistan?

19 The first point to note is the fact that the crop has not been neglected by the Afghan authorities as much as it has been by the international community. The cannabis crop has in fact been subject to a number of restrictions over the years. As mentioned above, the Taliban banned cannabis production early on in their rule and long before their successful imposition of a ban on opium production in 2000/01. They argued that the production and consumption of cannabis was un-Islamic and as opposed to their earlier proclamations on the prohibition of opium in 1994, 1997, and 1998, the ban on cannabis appears to have been effective in the areas where they dominated.

20 Subsequently a ban on cannabis cultivation was imposed in the northern province of Balkh under the leadership of Governor Noor Mohammed Atta in 2008, after, and then alongside, his successful prohibition of opium between 2007 and 2012 (Mansfield, 2009, p. 22). Localized reductions in cannabis also took place in a number of the southern districts of Nangarhar in tandem with the ban on opium imposed by Gul Aga Sherzai between 2008 and 2010 (Mansfield, 2011b, p. 3; Mansfield, 2014, p. 34-27).

21 Most recently, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) destroyed the standing cannabis crop in the Mahmand valley in the district of Achin in Nangarhar, after gaining control over the area in July 2015 (Mansfield, 2016a, p. 2). This ban on the cultivation of cannabis F0 F0 2D and then opium 2D was maintained until the ISK abandoned the area in the spring of 2017 following the decisions by the US military forces to drop the “Mother of All Bombs” (MoAB) on the group. In the fall of 2017 the ISK forces then destroyed the harvested cannabis crop in Pirakhel and Wazir in the district of Khogiani, and as they had done in Shadal and Abdul Khel in Achin they closed down the local bazaars where hashish was being traded. In the summer of 2018, and the departure of ISK, fields of cannabis could be seen throughout Khogiani and Achin, as well as Hisrak and Sherzad (unpublished fieldwork, 2018).

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22 A second point of note is the fact that where cannabis is banned in an area following the prohibition of opium poppy, it is typically the first crop to reappear. Thus it was cannabis that was first grown in the districts of Charbolak, Chemtal and Shulgara in Balkh and across the Spinghar Piedmont of Nangarhar in the summer of 2010 before opium poppy returned to these same areas in the 2010/11 growing season (Mansfield, 2011b, p. 11). Here we can only hypothesize that it could be that cannabis cultivation is more acceptable and does not attract the same social opprobrium that opium does? Perhaps, it is farmers putting an initial foot in the water to test whether the authorities will react before they then attempt to plant opium poppy? Or maybe a loosening of the reins by the local authorities as they realize the growing economic impact of the ban on opium production and the potential for mounting resistance from rural communities (Mansfield, 2016b)? Either way in those parts of Afghanistan where both opium and cannabis are grown there is clear evidence that the re-emergence of cannabis will quickly be followed by poppy.

23 A third point is the extreme variability in the economic returns on chars between areas and over time. For example, drawing on in-depth fieldwork over two years in four provinces – Balkh, Helmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar – Mansfield and Fishstein (2016, p. 52-56) showed that net returns on chars varied in 2015 from US$ 424 per jerib (the equivalent of US$ 2,120 per hectare) in Balkh, to as much as US$ 1,352 per jerib (the equivalent of US$ 46,790) in Nangarhar. With similar and relatively low input costs across the provinces, the explanation for these dramatic differences in the profitability of chars lay with variations in regional prices and yields. Whereas in Balkh chars was still being sorted into different grades, with the first grade (awol) being sold for US$ 44 per kg, the second grade for US$ 22 per kg and the final grade (and two thirds of the total yield) for only US$ 11 per kg, the crop in Nangarhar was sold as ‘mixed’ for the equivalent of US$ 145 per kg. While yields of 24.75 kg1 per jerib (the equivalent 123.75 kg per hectare) in Balkh were more than twice that of the 12 kg per jerib produced in Nangarhar (the equivalent of 60 kg per hectare), the low prices (and extra effort required to separate the grades) received in Balkh at the time had a significant negative impact on net returns.

24 Proximity to the market in Pakistan is one possible explanation for the much higher levels of profitability in Nangarhar at the time. Indeed, Pakistan continued to hold significant influence for cannabis growers in the fall of 2018, with growing amounts of chars coming from across Nangarhar, as well as Anderab in Baghlan (but not Balkh) to be smuggled across the eastern border (unpublished fieldwork, 2018). However, in other years, prices may favour other regions. For example, in 2009 prices in Kandahar were markedly higher than in Balkh, where the prices were twice that of Nangarhar (Mansfield, 2009, p. 75). UNODC’s more regional analysis reported that in 2012 prices in the North and Northeast of Afghanistan were 30 per cent higher than in the South, East, West and Central parts of the country (UNODC, 2013, p. 17).

25 A fourth and final point about cannabis cultivation is the continued proliferation of the crop in contemporary Afghanistan. There appears to be few geographical limits on cannabis growth and there is a growing knowledge of its husbandry in areas where the crop was not widely grown in the recent past. In Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan the crop is no longer limited to the upper reaches of the districts of Hisrak, Sherzad, Khogiani and Achin, it is increasingly grown in the lower parts of these districts and increasingly along the roadside. The local authorities impose no restrictions on the

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crop and in Achin cannabis is grown in close proximity to both US and Afghan Special Forces.

Conclusion

26 Given the overwhelming presence of opium in the Afghan economy today, cannabis is often overlooked as an integral piece of the Afghan drug economy. However, cannabis has, and still does, play a prominent role in rural economic livelihoods, and local Afghan politics. By looking at the longer historical formation of the cannabis trade, we see that over the course of the 20th century cannabis was increasingly entangled with the growing and shifting markets for hashish. During the 1960s and 70s, especially, the demand for Afghan hashish from Western traffickers led to the increased cannabis cultivation, and larger-scale hashish production. In recent decades, cannabis cultivation remained highly dispersed, but still omnipresent within the rural Afghan economy. Despite attempts to ban and eradicate the crop by the Taliban, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and more recently, the Islamic State Khorasan, cannabis cultivation persists. This is due in part to the ease with which cannabis can be grown, both intercropped with other agricultural crops, as well as its ability to be grown in various geographic zones. Ultimately, little has changed regarding cannabis in Afghanistan: it is still grown widely, has a complex relationship with groups in power, and is connected to markets globally. With a rapid increase in the price of chars in Afghanistan and Pakistan following the harvest in 2018 there is a high probability of further increases in the amount of cannabis cultivation in 2019; but as in past years there will be little sense of the actual scale of the final crop.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradford J.T., 2019. Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press (forthcoming).

Charpentier C.J., 1973. The Use of Haschish and Opium in Afghanistan. Anthropos, no. 68, p. 482-490.

Clarke R.C., 2010. Hashish. Los Angeles, Red Eye Press, 387 p.

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2012. EMCDDA Insights: Cannabis production and markets in Europe. Luxembourg, EMCDDA, 268 p. [Online] http:// www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/683/web_INSIGHTS_CANNABIS_350894.pdf

Fishstein P., 2015. Briefing note on Fieldwork in Balkh Province: Opium poppy and rural Livelihoods. AREU Brief, October 2015, 10 p.

Gregorian V., 1969. The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 586 p.

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Honchell S., 2012. Pursuing Pleasure, Attaining Oblivion: The Roles and Uses of Intoxicants at the Mughal Court. MA dissertation, University of Louisville, 628 p. [Online] https://ir.library.louisville.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1627&context=etd

Leggett T., 2006. Review of the world cannabis situation. Bulletin on Narcotics, vol. LVIII, n° 1-2, 155 p.

MacDonald D., 2007. Drugs in Afghanistan. London, Pluto Press, 320 p.

Maguire P., Ritter M., 2014. Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade. New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 272 p.

Mansfield, D., 2009. Sustaining the Decline? Understanding the changes in opium poppy cultivation in the 2008/09 growing season. Unpublished Report for the Afghan Drugs Inter Departmental Unit of the UK Government, May.

Mansfield D., 2011a. The 2010/11 Opium Poppy Growing Season: An Initial Brief. Unpublished Report for the Afghan Drugs Inter Departmental Unit of the UK Government, January.

Mansfield D., 2011b. Between a Rock and a Hard Place; Counternarcotics efforts and their effects in Nangarhar and Helmand in the 2010-11 growing season. AREU Case study, 50 p. [Online] https:// areu.org.af/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/1128E-Between-a-Rock-and-a-Hard-Place-CS-2011.pdf

Mansfield, D., 2014. From Bad they Made it Worse: The concentration of opium poppy in areas of conflict in the provinces of Helmand and Nangarhar. AREU Case Study, 92 p. [Online] https://areu.org.af/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/E-NRM-CS6-ver-2-2.pdf

Mansfield, D., 2016a. The Devil is in the Detail: Nangarhar’s Continued Decline into Insurgency, Violence and Widespread Drug Production. AREU Brief, February, 18 p. [On line] https:// areu.org.af/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/1602E-The-Devil-is-in-the-Details-Nangarhar- continued-decline-into-insurgency.pdf

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NOTES

1. Of which 2.25 kg was grade 1, 6.75 kg grade 2, and 15.75 kg was grade 3.

ABSTRACTS

In the past four decades, much of the contemporary narrative of Afghanistan has been defined by opium. However, underneath the veil of the opium economy, the cannabis trade remains an enduring component of Afghanistan’s political economy and culture. Much of this stems from the long history of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in the region. During the 1960s, the growing demand from Western nations for Afghan hashish helped forge key global trafficking networks, as well as significant changes to the cultivation of cannabis and production of hashish. Since then, production and trade evolved, with cultivation of cannabis more widespread. Ultimately, analyzing the cannabis trade and its historical antecedents, reveals how the cannabis trade, like the opium economy, transformed in response to local, regional, and global factors, remaining an important piece of the rural Afghan economy today.

INDEX

Keywords: Afghanistan, cannabis, drug, livelihood, history, methodology, statistic, drug control, taxation

AUTHORS

JAMES BRADFORD James Bradford, [email protected], is an Assistant Professor of History at Berklee College of Music. He recently published: - Bradford J., 2019. Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. - Bradford J., 2019. Global Drugs Today: World Consumption and Shifting Trades. In OUP Companion to Global Drug History. NYC, Oxford University Press. - Bradford J., 2015. Drug Control in Afghanistan: Culture, Politics, and Power during the 1958 Prohibition of Opium in Badakhshan. Iranian Studies, Vol. 48, n° 2), p. 223-248.

DAVID MANSFIELD David Mansfield, [email protected], is a Senior Fellow at International Drug Policy Unit, LSE. He recently published: - Mansfield D., 2019. Denying Revenue or Wasting Money? Assessing the Impact of the Air Campaign Against Drugs Labs in Afghanistan, LSE IDPU, April. [Online] http://www.lse.ac.uk/ united-states/Assets/Documents/mansfield-april-update.pdf - Mansfield D., 2018. Misunderstanding the intersection between development policies and data collection: The Experience in Afghanistan. International Journal of Drug Policy, n° 58, p. 157-165.

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- Mansfield D., 2016. A State Built on Sand: How Opium Undermined Afghanistan. NYC, Oxford University Press.

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American Weed: A History of Cannabis Cultivation in the United States

Nick Johnson

Introduction: Marijuana Menaces the Midway

1 In the summer of 1929, Reefer Madness descended upon the Windy City. In late April, the Illinois house of representatives had passed a bill to ban “loco-weed,” a plant whose “Mexican form” was “marijuana,” a “narcotic” (Brown, 1929a)1 Two months later, as the bill languished in the senate, the Chicago Tribune ran an article and accompanying back-page photo on marijuana, attempting to spur the legislature into action. The paper claimed that the “dangerous, habit forming drug” had been “introduced a dozen years ago or so by Mexican laborers” and was now spreading across the city, ensnaring “thousands of workingmen,” “youths and girls,” as well as “school children.” (Chicago Tribune, 1929a). In the photo, two dark-skinned men with sun hats are crouched next to some cannabis plants “in the southern part of the city,” “gathering marijuana” while the “legislature delays action” (Chicago Tribune, 1929b; Falck, 2010, p. 80-81).

2 The newspaper clearly intended the photo to be visual proof of marijuana’s “Mexican” origins, as well as a swipe at the legislature for stalling while devious foreigners harvested a dangerous drug. The accompanying article claimed that cannabis “seeds” were “brought by Mexicans” and “planted in tiny patches near the box car homes of the laborers.” But if Mexicans were blamed for the drug’s introduction, the rest of the article made clear that they could hardly be held responsible for its spread. In addition to naming two “alleged sellers of marijuana cigarets” as “Harry Johnson” and “Richard Drake,” the report also claimed that marijuana smoking was widespread “in South Chicago, in Blue Island, in Kensington, and other outlying districts, and it can be purchased in restaurants, drug stores, and poolrooms” – all of which were not exclusively the domain of Mexicans (Chicago Tribune, 1929a). Nature, too, helped the “loco weed” spread across the city; not only was marijuana said to be “easily grown in

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this climate,” but “the seed of the plant is used as bird seed” and could thus be distributed by birds as well as drug dealers (Chicago Tribune 1929a; Falck, 2010, p. 85-86; Duvall, 2015: 110; Johnson, 2017a, p. 43-47).

3 Clearly, many factors contributed to marijuana’s spread across Chicagoland in the late 1920s. So why did the Tribune decide to run a photo of two Mexicans harvesting cannabis instead of, say, mugshots of the alleged dealers it mentions in the article?

A Mexican Connection? Theories and Themes in US Cannabis History

4 Answering that question requires engaging one of the most prominent theories of cannabis history in the United States. One popular history of the plant dubbed it the “Mexican connection,” while a cannabis historian recently addressed it as the “Mexican hypothesis” (Lee, 2012, p. 38; Campos, 2018, p. 6). This theory holds that Mexicans were primarily responsible for the introduction and spread of smoked cannabis flower – thereafter called by its Mexican name, “marijuana” – and that racism toward Mexican immigrants prompted cannabis prohibition at the state and federal level. Many cannabis histories present this theory as established truth (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974, p. 32-37; Lee, 2012, p. 38-39; Warf, 2014, p. 429; Duvall, 2015, p. 108; Barcott, 2015, p. 19-20; Hudak, 2016, p. 37-38). However, recent scholarship argues that the relationship between Mexicans and cannabis in the United States was far more nuanced than is typically suggested, and that prohibition was driven by other factors in addition to racism (Johnson, 2017a, p. 17-35; Johnson, 2017b; Rathge, 2018; Campos, 2018, p. 26-29). This scholarship also suggests that while Mexicans were clearly involved in the early American marijuana trade, their responsibility for “introducing” the practice of smoking marijuana was not as clear-cut as earlier works implied (Campos, 2018, p. 17-19; Rathge, 2018).

5 Here, the Chicago Tribune’s coverage seems to support arguments both for and against the Mexican connection. On the one hand, many of Chicago’s Mexicans did reside in so- called “boxcar camps,” (Flores, 2018) and although marijuana was not all that popular in Mexico, its documented presence among the “lower classes” (Campos, 2012, p. 90-94) and laborers makes it entirely plausible that some would plant or harvest it, whether for their own use or to make an extra buck (Johnson, 2017b). On the other hand, it is possible that the Chicago Tribune ran the Mexican photograph to exoticize the plant, playing on anti-Mexican sentiment already prevalent in Chicago and Springfield (Falck, 2010, p. 86-87; Gutiérrez, 1995, p. 55, 72; Flores, 2018). The two men in the photo are clearly picking cannabis, but what they planned to do with it afterwards is not clear – was it for personal or local use, or did they intend to sell it, as the caption implies? It is also hard to tell from the photograph whether the plants were cultivated or feral, which casts some doubt on the article’s claim that Mexicans “planted” marijuana seeds near their “box car homes.” Finally, the article certainly implicates many more neighborhoods and occupations in the marijuana trade beyond “Mexican laborers.”

6 For its part, the Illinois legislature did not share the Tribune’s urgency. The “anti-loco weed” bill eventually passed the senate committee, but Governor Louis Emmerson vetoed it, heeding a warning from the Illinois Pharmaceutical Association that a cannabis ban “might stop the sale of certain cough and corn cures and even interfere

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with the sale of standard bird seed.” (Brown, 1929b). Illinois did eventually follow the lead of dozens of other states and outlaw cannabis in 1931, six years before national prohibition came via the Marijuana Tax Act (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974, p. 32).

Putting the Grass in “Grass”: Centering the Environment in Cannabis History

7 The Tribune’s 1929 marijuana coverage might not do much to settle the scholarly debate over the “Mexican connection,” but it offers a useful starting point to consider some of the most important themes in US cannabis history – not only the plant’s broad association with Mexicans, minorities, and the working class, but also the illicit planting of marijuana and other agricultural concerns, the conflation of hemp and marijuana, and the proliferation of feral cannabis. These themes are evident in the Tribune articles and scores of similar sources, but the existing literature on cannabis in the United States has largely overlooked them in favor of attempts to explain movements for prohibition and legalization (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974; Sloman, 1979; Herer, 1985; Gieringer, 1999; Ferraiolo, 2007; Lee, 2012; Hecht, 2014; Barcott, 2015; Dufton, 2017). Despite a few, mostly recent exceptions (Falck, 2010; Rendon, 2012; Johnson, 2017a), scholars have generally not been willing to consider aspects of cannabis history beyond the political or social concerns wrought by use of the plant’s products, be they drugs or rope. In the same way that cannabis scholars are now offering a welcome reassessment of the previously unchallenged “Mexican connection,” I believe it is also time for a broader reassessment of how we investigate the history of the plant.

8 The focus on marijuana’s political and social history is understandable for contemporary as well as historical reasons, and many of the books and articles that address it are excellent and useful. Nevertheless, there is considerable opportunity to push the literature forward so it can address questions for which the current historiography fails to provide satisfying answers. Why and how, for example, did cannabis (the plant) spread across the country? Why and how did people cultivate it? How did cultivation change over time, and what were the effects of those changes? Why and how did law enforcement attempt to eradicate cannabis – whether feral or cultivated, and what were the effects of those attempts? These are questions that move the line of inquiry away from social and political history and toward environmental history, where scholars may gain a more complete understanding of this human-plant relationship. Indeed, far from ignoring social or political history, environmental history deepens our understanding of both (Crosby, 1972; Worster, 1979; Cronon, 1992; Merchant, 2003; Nash, 2007; Ecrie, 2013).

Pot of a Bigger Picture: Testing the Regional Analysis in Cannabis History

9 In addition to offering a starting point for more environmentally focused studies, this article tests the usefulness of another popular approach to US cannabis history – the regional or local analysis. This approach has considerable precedence in the literature, including my own work (Mosk, 1939; Hopkins, 1951; Raphael, 1985; Brady, 2013; Hecht,

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2014; Johnson, 2017a; Rathge, 2018), so I was curious as to whether experiences with the plant differed in other major regions, as well as whether a comparative regional analysis was a useful model for telling the plant’s story in the United States. Accordingly, this article explores environmental aspects of American cannabis history across three distinct regions of the country – the West, South, and Midwest2. I argue that while there may be some unique regional experiences with cannabis, both the ways in which the plant spread across those regions and the response to that spread were remarkably consistent. Thus, individual regional analyses may prove useful in some respects, but in general they do not offer the most accurate framework for understanding cannabis in the US.

10 Instead, I submit that a more macro-scale approach to the plant’s history – one that identifies broader themes pulled from a multitude of state, local, and regional experiences – might help put critical questions of the plant’s history and historical geography to bed. For instance, it might be easier to interrogate theories about cannabis’s association with ethnic minorities, including Mexicans, when we consider a more geographically diverse set of sources. Likewise, it is easier to understand how the United States become one of the world’s premier centers of cannabis cultivation when we consider the fact that indoor cannabis farming boomed all over the country in the 1980s and 1990s, not just in California or other states where cannabis was gaining increased acceptance. When we consider that local authorities enlisted farmers and citizens in “noxious weed” campaigns against feral cannabis, the extent to which the plant embedded itself within traditional American agriculture becomes clear. Finally, one can only perceive the massive level of chemical use during the government’s war on marijuana during the 1970s and 1980s by looking at eradication efforts in many states, not just “ground zeros” like northern California (Miller, 2018, p. 13-109).

11 By highlighting these and other themes in the American context, this article presents an abridged example of a different kind of cannabis history, one that need not only be applied to US-based scholarship. Indeed, there is already precedent for environmental cannabis history beyond the United States (McNeill, 1992). My hope is that this article will encourage further investigation of cannabis along those lines, so that we may better understand humanity’s experience with one of the modern world’s most controversial crops.

Early Cannabis History in the United States

12 There are two main types of cannabis in the world – that grown for fiber and other industrial purposes, commonly referred to as “hemp,” and that grown for drugs, commonly known as “marijuana” (McPartland, 2017). Famously, hemp was the first type of cannabis cultivated in what became the United States. From the early seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, hemp could be found all over the American colonies and the fragile nation that emerged from them. Prominent early sites of hemp cultivation included the Jamestown Colony and the Virginia farms of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

13 By the time Kentucky joined the union in 1792, the Bluegrass State was already the nation’s leading hemp producer. There, hemp was inextricably bound with the institution of slavery; not only did slaves perform the difficult and essential labor of harvesting and breaking the hemp crop, but the resulting rope and twine was used to

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tie bales of slave-produced cotton (Hopkins 1951). The American hemp industry peaked before 1860 and declined with the loss of slave labor and the rise of metal baling clasps and new fiber crops after the Civil War (Hopkins, 1951; Evans, 2007).

14 Meanwhile, drug cannabis had made its way into the American pharmacopoeia by 1851, though its use in medicine was sporadic and ill-defined (Johnson, 2017, p. 21-24)3. Often referred to as “Indian hemp” or “cannabis indica,” most early cannabis drugs were imported from India via Britain. By the early 1900s, however, the US government began experimenting with the domestic production of certain imported drugs, including cannabis (Stockberger, 1919). Many of these agricultural experiments cropped up in the South, where the soil and climate were thought to be ideal for drug cultivation (Stockberger, 1915, p. 19).

Muggles and Minorities: A Muddled Theory

15 Around the same time, the practice of smoking marijuana appeared in the United States. Exactly when and how it was introduced is unclear, but most early reports of marijuana smoking come from two main areas: the Southwest, where local reports claimed it was introduced by Mexicans, and the port of New Orleans, which became “one of the earliest urban markets for illicit marijuana use” (Rathge, 2018). Reports of “marijuana,” a “Mexican” drug, began to appear from cities and towns in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas (Johnson, 2017a, p. 17, 26-28). Of course, the drug was not new at all; “marijuana” was simply the smoked version of the well-known medicinal compound “cannabis indica,” which was sold in pharmacies, both in flower and tincture form (Campos, 2018, p. 22). In 1915, motivated by an alleged Mexican dope menace, the city of El Paso, Texas, became the first US municipality to ban the nonmedical cannabis trade (El Paso Herald, 1915).

16 Importantly, marijuana use did not appear to be especially common in Mexican immigrant communities, and a Mexican presence did not always lead to cannabis bans in the West (Campos, 2018, p. 14). In 1913 California became the first state to ban the trade in nonmedical cannabis. That law, however, had less to do with the state’s large Mexican population than it did with broader efforts to curb all kinds of vice activity during the Progressive Era (Gieringer, 1999). Colorado’s 1917 cannabis ban was likely a result of the same Progressive sentiment, as complaints about “Mexican marijuana” do not show up in the state’s newspapers until the 1920s (Johnson, 2018).

17 Meanwhile, by 1920, reports from New Orleans referred to marijuana – often using its street name, “muggles” – as a “Mexican” drug, and city police seized several large shipments of marijuana on Mexican ships. The average Crescent City user, however, was young and white, and a historian of the New Orleans marijuana trade points out that there was little effort on behalf of either newspapers or city officials to target Mexicans as the source of what they considered to be a deadly and addictive vice (Rathge, 2018). The same went for blacks, who, contrary to claims made in an earlier cannabis history, comprised only a small number of marijuana arrests in the city between 1920 and 1930 (Rathge, 2018; Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974, p. 42-43).

18 Wherever it originated, the practice of marijuana smoking spread rapidly during the 1920s, especially in industrial hubs like Kansas City and Chicago. By the 1930s, a small population of Mexican laborers grew marijuana on farms and rural spaces across the American West (Johnson, 2017). Meanwhile, jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong

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brought “reefers” to various gigs across the country, provoking outrage in many cities (Falck, 2010, p. 81-82; Lee, 2012, p. 9-14).

19 Reports associating marijuana with Mexicans increased amidst growing anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1920s (Parrish, 1992, p. 109-122; Gutiérrez, 1995, p. 71-73). In 1927, Ray Talbot, a Colorado state representative from Pueblo, declared that “20 to 40 percent” of the city’s high school students used “marijuana,” which he asserted was “grown in large quantities by Mexicans in their backyard” (Denver Post, 1927). Talbot failed to note any specific “Mexican” peddler, and he tried to blame Mexican marijuana for the death of one student even though local newspaper coverage indicated that the young man died “following a short illness” (Pueblo Chieftain, 1926a; Pueblo Chieftain, 1926b). Also in 1927, police in Gary, Indiana, broke up a “quarrelsome” group of young people at a hotel and learned that they had been “smoking cigarets impregnated with marijuana” (Chicago Tribune, 1927). After learning that the youths had been sold some “reefers,” they then arrested “three Mexicans” who “admitted the traffic”; the report does not make clear, however, how police traced the specific transaction back to these three men. Even if the men had sold some joints to the teens, that act alone would hardly constitute “a systematic effort to enslave high school students to marijuana,” as the Chicago Tribune asserted.

20 If marijuana reports from the Midwest and West tended to focus on Mexicans during the 1920s, reports from the South affirmed the plant’s association with a broad spectrum of the working-class, youth, and other minorities. In Nashville, for instance, marijuana was said to be used by “society people, musicians, and many negroes” (The Tennessean, 1936). In Atlanta, it was “gaining many converts among the high school students… and also in the negro sections of the city” (Atlanta Constitution, 1935) In Greensboro, North Carolina, marijuana found “growing in an apartment house window- box” was determined to be “a source of the marijuana cigarettes that are said to have gained many victims among the young of that city” (News-Record, 1935).

21 The claims in these reports about typical marijuana users were likely passed on from law enforcement and not fact-checked by newspaper reporters.4 When faced with reports like the 1929 Chicago Tribune article, which mentioned a wide range of marijuana users, it is difficult to accept that cannabis was popular only among Mexicans in Gary, “musicians” in Nashville, or “negro sections” in Atlanta. In addition, like Talbot’s baseless assertions in Colorado, most reports claiming a rash of marijuana- addicted youth relied on hearsay and offered little actual evidence. Indeed, in 1937 a representative from the American Medical Association challenged this widespread notion at the hearings for the Marijuana Tax Act5.

22 There is enough evidence to say that the nation’s earliest marijuana users were broadly working-class, but we cannot say much more than that. Instead, reports from disparate regions point to the cosmopolitan nature of cannabis consumers, complicating simplistic or local narratives that hinge on the plant’s association with minority communities. They also confirm historian Zach Falck’s argument that “cannabis was desirable, useful, and valuable” to a wide range of users and “cultivators” (Falck, 2010, p. 85). These “cultivators” – and their weedy crop – are the subjects of the next section.

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Forbidden Farms: Early Illicit Cultivation

23 Concern about marijuana only increased in the 1930s, as newspapers amplified the alleged “menace” and population displacement during the Great Depression spread the habit (Falck, 2010, p. 82-83). At the state and local level, authorities’ response was staggered and fraught, but fairly uniform: by 1933, thirty-three states, including the entire American West and much of the Midwest, had banned the nonmedical cannabis trade (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974, p. 52). Federal prohibition did not come until 1937, thanks in large part to widespread concern about youth drug use and the efforts of Harry Anslinger, chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).6

24 At the time of federal prohibition, large-scale, domestic cannabis cultivation was rare. Most of the marijuana in the United States was likely imported from Britain for the pharmaceutical industry, with Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean as other potential sources (Rathge, 2018; Campos, 2018; Abel, 1982; Beach, 2016; Rubin and Comitas, 1976; Angrosino, 2003). In the South, reports of illegal cultivation from this period are especially rare and often involved a small number of plants (News-Record, 1935; The Times, 1930; Tennessean, 1936b). In the West, where expansive irrigation projects drew large agricultural work forces and created ample habitat for cannabis, Mexican sugar beet workers were caught growing pot in Montana and Wyoming (Billings Gazette, 1931; Helena Independent, 1933; Billings Gazette, 1935)7. Californians, too, produced illegal bumper crops in the 1930s (Woodland Daily Democrat, 1934; Bakersfield Californian, 1938). Still, large-scale grows remained few and far between until decades later.

Weeds Gone Wild: The Intractable “Problem” of Feral Cannabis

25 In addition to illicit cultivators, authorities increasingly targeted so-called “wild marijuana.” This trend, which began after the tax act and would continue through the 1980s, was based on the largely incorrect assumption that any cannabis plants would or could be made to produce marijuana. Most of the “wild” marijuana” authorities destroyed or worried about was either non-psychoactive hemp or feral varieties of marijuana that are far less potent than a cultivated plant (Clarke and Merlin, 2013, p. 52). The Tax Act stipulated that producers of hemp birdseed must sterilize their product before it went to market, lest it sprout into harvestable “marijuana” (Johnson, 2017, p. 54-57; Daily Press, 1939). But in the three years prior to the Tax Act, the American oilseed industry imported some 193 million pounds of (unsterilized) hemp seed, ensuring that sterilization would not prevent birds and other wildlife from spreading hemp.8

26 Authorities everywhere were concerned about stray cannabis, but in the early years of prohibition this concern was remarkably acute in the Midwest9. Midwestern authorities tasked with eradicating so-called “wild marijuana” quickly realized what they were up against and began recruiting local citizens to help locate and destroy cannabis. In rural areas, this deputizing was often carried out in the context of “noxious weed” removal, which would have been familiar to farmers and rural residents all over the country (Timmons, 2005, p. 753; Fiege, 2005). Officials in Polk County, Iowa, appointed “weed

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commissioners” specifically tasked with helping federal agents eliminate marijuana, which “may be classed as among the ‘noxious’ weeds” in state law (Des Moines Register, 1938). The Wisconsin legislature considered a bill “to declare marihuana a noxious weed” (Chippewa Herald Telegram, 1938). In Illinois, De Kalb County farmers were asked to look for cannabis “in the corners of their fields where weeds usually thrive,” and “members of the noxious weed committee” in Whiteside County met with a federal narcotics agent after county supervisors agreed to help stamp out feral cannabis (True Republican, 1938a; 1938b; 1938c). This occurred despite the fact that Illinois state laws did “not provide for the forced destruction of marijuana” and did “not classify it as a noxious weed” (Weekly Review, 1938).

27 In Illinois and other Midwestern states, though, laws compelling citizens to take part in anti-marijuana drives proved to be totally unnecessary. At the urging of newspapers, officials, or law enforcement, citizens in at least four Midwestern states voluntarily participated in annual or one-off eradication campaigns from 1938 to 1941. Weed- whacking Samaritans included farmers and volunteer groups in Illinois (True Republican, 1938c; 1940a; 1940b) and Indiana (The Times, 1938), newspaper reporters in Michigan (The Saline Observer, 1938), and the American Legion in Minnesota (Minneapolis Star, 1938). In Michigan, the Ludington Daily News tried to involve the entire citizenry, breathlessly pleading for not only farmers but “Sunday drivers, Boy Scouts and Girl Scout groups and country hikers… every man, woman, and child” to be on the lookout for marijuana (Ludington Daily News, 1940).

28 With so many willing participants, some of these public drives against feral cannabis found modest success. In northwestern Illinois, farmers, law enforcement, and the De Kalb County Volunteers reportedly reduced De Kalb County’s stray marijuana crop from 200 acres (about 81 hectares) to “a few isolated patches” in just over a year (True Republican, 1940b). By the end of 1938, the police-public alliance in Davenport, Iowa, managed to uproot more than three tons of cannabis (Quad City Times, 1939); that same year, anti-cannabis forces destroyed 2,188 tons (1,984 metric tons) of plant material in Wisconsin (Oshkosh Northwestern, 1939). In all, federal narcotics agents eliminated some 26,000 tons (23,586 metric tons) of feral cannabis across the country in 1938, much of it with the public’s help (Oshkosh Northwestern, 1939). It is difficult to put these numbers into context, but it probably does not matter; cannabis was so successful in the American landscape that for every plant authorities ripped up, many more were surely growing, seeding, or sprouting somewhere else.

29 Concern about feral cannabis stemmed from the belief that if the plant was left to grow in its natural state, a shadowy class of users and dealers would eventually come by and “harvest” the illegal drug. Sometimes these fears were simply xenophobic, like when an Illinois paper claimed in 1938 that “a certain element among the foreign residents may take advantage of the situation” (True Republican, 1938c). Much, if not most of the time, this fear was chemically unsubstantiated, as the plants in question likely sprang from hempseed carried by birds or the wind. Actual reports of people harvesting feral marijuana are extremely rare before World War II, but they are more frequent in the decades that followed, as wartime hemp cultivation increased the population of feral cannabis and the counterculture swelled the ranks of those searching for it.

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Hemp for Victory

30 What little success authorities had controlling feral cannabis in the 1930s would be undone during and after World War II. In 1942, with the nation’s hemp supplies in the Pacific and Europe cut off by the Axis Powers, the US found itself without a reliable source of rope and rigging for its Navy. In response, the government launched the Hemp for Victory program, propping up hemp prices and issuing thousands of licenses in accords with the Marijuana Tax Act (The Pantagraph, 1945a). This was a stunning about-face that could only be rationalized in wartime: the government had spent the past six years urging farmers (and everyone else) to destroy all traces of cannabis; now it asked them to sow acre upon acre of it – 300,000 acres (about 120,000 hectares) in one year, to be exact (Johnson, 2017, p. 59-62).

31 The Midwest would be the heart of wartime hemp production, but most of the seed would come from Kentucky and Tennessee (The Tennessean, 1942).10 Iowa, which had no hemp acreage in 1942, set a goal of 60,000 acres (about 24,000 hectares) by 1943 (Des Moines Register, 1942). Indiana’s 1943 target was 20,000 acres (about 8,000 hectares) (Indianapolis News, 1942), but Hoosiers only planted around 8,000 (Maddox, 1943), while Wisconsinites planted 31,000 (Leader-Telegram, 1943). After securing commitments from hundreds of local farmers, the US government built hemp processing plants in dozens of tiny towns across the rural Midwest (Lafayette Journal and Courier, 1943; Belvidere Daily Republican, 1943; St. Cloud Times, 1944; Marshfield News Herald, 1944). Unsurprisingly, the government found it far easier to grow hemp than eradicate it; the nation reportedly grew some 226,000 acres (about 90,000 hectares) in 1943, making the Hemp for Victory campaign a resounding success (Leader-Telegram, 1943).

32 In fact, the program was apparently too successful. The government had so much surplus hemp in 1943 that it had to pay American cord manufacturers to “absorb a portion of the domestic hemp supply” (Humboldt Independent, 1944). As the end of the war drew near, the government tried to gradually reduce the nation’s hemp acreage and use every last bit of fiber it produced. However, having reaped the rewards of a humming wartime industry (Globe Gazette, 1944; Daily Chronicle, 1944), many rural Midwesterners were not ready to watch hemp prices fall or see job-providing hemp plants shuttered (Marshfield News Herald, 1944; The Brook Reporter, 1944; Chicago Tribune, 1944). By 1944, War Hemp Industries, Inc. – the company that managed the government hemp plants during the war – expected “at least a moderate revival of the industry” (The Times Herald, 1944) and noted that “farmers and townsmen at 42 government hemp mill locations in the [M]idwest would welcome a return to a hemp growing program” (The Pantagraph, 1945b). Company executives pointed to new machinery and production methods that would allow the US to “produce hemp cheaper than… any place else in the world” (Asheville Citizen-Times, 1944). In August 1945, veterans of the wartime hemp industry organized the American Fibers Industries, Inc., a cooperative dedicated to sustaining the industry in America. The group claimed hemp would bring $60 million in wages for “farmers, mill workers, and processors” (St. Cloud Times, 1945).

33 Alas, the highly anticipated revival of the US hemp industry never happened. The government resumed hemp imports from Latin America and the Caribbean in 1944 (Chicago Tribune, 1944; Council Bluffs Nonpareil, 1944), and from the Philippines in 1945 (Post-Crescent, 1945); meanwhile, domestic hemp prices collapsed with the removal of

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wartime price supports (Courier-Post, 1954). And of course, there was the issue of all those hemp plants being possible sources of “marijuana.” In 1945, the US Treasury Department ordered Wisconsin hemp growers to “remove the leaves and flowers before sending their product to the mills” (Chippewa Herald-Telegram, 1945). Irate farmers protested, arguing that “such a process would not only injure the plant but would be so costly there would be no point in growing it.” To continue raising hemp profitably, the state’s farmers needed an exemption in the Marijuana Tax Act to allow “hemp to be transported tax-free to the mills”; they got no such modification, and the domestic hemp industry sputtered out (Chippewa Herald-Telegram, 1945).

Postwar Bumper Crops

34 With the decline of the wartime hemp industry came the resurgence of the “marijuana menace.” During the war, federal narcotics agents were generally reluctant to raid cannabis farms, but afterward they resumed these raids with trademark intensity. In the West, where wartime production resulted in explosive population growth, there was a ready market for all kinds of illicit pastimes, including pot. Denver, for instance, saw an uptick in marijuana traffic and so-called “marijuana dens” – secret places where people would buy and/or smoke the drug. Although most marijuana was still being smuggled in from Mexico and other countries, a growing base of illegal cultivators found the sprawling cities and farmland of the West quite amenable to cannabis farming. In Colorado and California, two states that experienced huge population spikes during the war, authorities found some of the largest postwar marijuana farms in the country. A survey of eleven California newspapers between 1950 and 1960 yielded no fewer than 103 reports of cannabis growing somewhere in the state, whether feral or cultivated. The relative paucity of cultivation reports from other states over the same period suggest that illegal growers in Colorado and California were among the leading producers of domestic marijuana between 1945 and 196011.

35 In the 1960s, cannabis was adopted by the counterculture – that nebulous, youth- infused movement that grew out of the 1950s beatnik scene and swept the nation, protesting the Vietnam War, marching for Civil Rights, and generally resisting the conformist, consumerist nature of postwar America (Johnson, 2017, p. 86-92; Lee, 2012, p. 66-79). Beats, hippies, back-to-the-landers, and other counter-culturalists made no attempts to hide their affinity for marijuana, and American soldiers sampled Thai and Vietnamese varieties to stave off the boredom and horror of war in Southeast Asia (Kuzmarov, 2009). While many American pot smokers still mostly relied on drug smugglers, many apparently took to plucking the residual fruits of the US government’s wartime hemp industry.

36 Uncultivated cannabis produces very little THC (Clarke and Merlin, 2013, p. 51), the major psychoactive compound in marijuana. The hemp produced on Midwestern farms in the 1940s had only trace amounts of it, insufficient for a buzz. Still, it is possible that the escaped progeny of those hemp plants expressed natural genetic variation and began producing small amounts of THC12. To produce a psychoactive effect, the THC content of the female flowers only needs to be in the single-digit percent range. Though this marijuana would have been grossly inferior to the imported stuff, it could still get someone high (Clarke and Merlin, 2013, p. 51-52).

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37 That was apparently enough for many of the nation’s tokers. While it is still rare to come across hard evidence of marijuana “harvesting” after World War II, the stray cannabis of postwar America had a far greater chance of being picked than the rogue plants of the Depression era. As in the 1930s, reports of “wild” cannabis after the war were heavily concentrated in the Midwest, where its presence was often attributed to the Hemp for Victory program13.

38 By the 1970s, harvesting of feral cannabis became so common in northwest Indiana that dozens of people were arrested in a single season and county officials began posting signs “in fields and drainage ditches” that read “If Grass Is Your Bag, Don’t Fill It In Newton County” (King, 1970). Jails in Newton, Pulaski, and Jasper counties became crowded with “pickers who come from all over the country,” including “an ordained minister, a professor and a cowboy as well as some area high school students” (Pensacola News Journal, 1976). Just as they did in the 1930s, local authorities enlisted “church groups, Boy Scouts, 4-H clubs, as well as farmers” and a “12-man volunteer sheriff’s posse” to help them cut stray cannabis each autumn, before the plants matured (Pensacola News Journal, 1976). Clearly, if there was still harvestable cannabis in northwest Indiana each year, it wasn’t for lack of effort.

“Just Spray, No?”

39 By that time, law enforcement did not have to rely solely on overworked officers and armies of volunteers. Thanks to chemical advancements in agriculture and modern warfare, local authorities now had the option of eradicating cannabis with herbicides (Mart, 2015, p. 92-97)14. But chemical sprays were not always the best option. Not only did they threaten surrounding plant and animal life, but they often did not kill cannabis. In northwest Indiana, local attorneys noted in 1970 that “much of the marijuana-producing area has been sprayed three times,” but that “the spraying only served to kill the weaker marijuana plants and strengthen the strain that grows wild in Newton County” (King, 1970).

40 While these kinds of reports often do not mention which specific chemicals were used on cannabis, a widely circulated USDA pamphlet recommended the herbicide 2,4-D, one of the most popular weedkillers at the time (Mart, 2015, p. 93)15. Based on its known tendency to damage surrounding crops, 2,4-D was likely the chemical employed in Indiana. It was also a main component of Agent Orange, the chemical that the US Army used to defoliate huge swathes of the Vietnam jungle and that caused severe health problems amongst the Vietnamese population and American troops (Mart, 2015, p. 105-106).

41 The chemical was sprayed on feral cannabis all over the country, but explicit reports of its use come from Kansas, where county officials covered the cost of spraying and crews. In 1969, Governor Robert Docking proposed a new law that would declare cannabis a “noxious weed,” freeing up more resources for spraying and other eradication initiatives (Great Bend Tribune, 1969). But in a rare move, a citizen’s group – the Riley County Fish and Game Association – actively opposed the plan on ecological grounds. The group’s president, Ted Cunningham, argued that cannabis routinely grew among other weedy plants, so destroying it by force or chemicals would remove “prime types of cover which also provides food for wildlife.” The harvesting of wild cannabis

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was “a social problem,” the group maintained, and it instead proposed making the harvesting of feral cannabis plants illegal (Manhattan Mercury, 1969).

42 Despite Cunningham’s informed argument, chemical eradication of cannabis continued in Kansas. In 1973, researchers from the state’s Agricultural Experiment Station and Marijuana Steering Committee tried to head off the ecological argument against eradication, arguing that their recommendations “would produce no long term environmental hazards and would probably improve environmental quality in Kansas” Like the USDA, the researchers recommended 2,4-D as part of their strategic, multi- chemical, and multi-year approach to eradicating feral cannabis. Despite his assurances that it was safe, a former agronomist at Kansas State University who helped draft the recommendations warned farmers to “avoid drift damage to nearby susceptible plants… and don’t spray on windy days.” The researchers never articulated exactly how routinely dumping toxic chemicals in their communities would “improve environmental quality” (Salina Journal, 1973).

43 2,4-D wasn’t the only herbicide applied to cannabis crops in the 1970s. Beginning in 1975, the US government helped the Mexican government destroy Mexican pot farms with paraquat, an herbicide that would kill a cannabis plant in one day. When American pot smokers found out about this program in the late ‘70s, it provoked widespread panic, as most of the nation’s weed was still imported from Mexico. Even though the paraquat scare turned out to be entirely baseless – only a fraction of the annual Mexican crop was affected, and the chemical is rendered harmless upon combustion – it galvanized domestic production, a trend that was already turning into a small cottage industry in the secluded hills of northern California (Johnson, 2017, p. 120-122).

From Hills to Homes: The Evolution of Modern Cannabis Cultivation

44 The first generation of pot growers in northern California were back-to-the-landers: hippies and other counter-culturalists who fled the cities to scrape out a more subdued and peaceful existence in nature. On makeshift homesteads, they grew scattered plots of cannabis for their own consumption, or to barter and share with neighbors. But as expenses mounted, some of these homesteaders realized they could sell marijuana to make ends meet. The US government’s crackdown on Mexican marijuana, as well as the paraquat scare, made American cannabis desirable for the first time (Johnson, 2017, p. 106-108; Raphael, 1985; Brady, 2013).

45 This marijuana “cottage industry” soon became a fact of life in the hills of northern California and southern Oregon (Raphael, 1985; Johnson, 2017a, p. 122-127), helping fill the baggies of the nation’s 20 million pot smokers (US Drug Enforcement Agency, 1985, p. 11). In the latter region, authorities estimated the value of the marijuana crop to be around $7 million in 1978. By the mid-1980s, growers in northern California’s Humboldt and Mendocino counties were raising annual crops with an estimated value between $300 and $400 million. The explosion of clandestine marijuana growth in California during the 1980s prompted state authorities to launch a state-wide eradication effort called the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP. Running each summer from 1983 through the present and using National Guard helicopters, CAMP pulled up hundreds of thousands of plants and made hundreds of arrests. The CAMP reports also

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document the increasing trend of growers cultivating on public lands, where there was a lower chance of detection. By 1989, a third of the 147,000 plants seized in CAMP raids were taken from federal and state lands16. These “trespass” growers employed a variety of ecologically destructive tactics, including the wanton dumping of pesticides and fertilizers, the diversion of natural streams for irrigation, and leaving huge piles of trash at grow sites (Miller, 2018, p. 13-68).

46 Illegal marijuana growth on California’s public lands continues today and gets a lot of attention from scholars, journalists, and cannabis enthusiasts (Lee, 2012; Hecht, 2014; Brady, 2013; Raphael, 1985; Miller, 2018). But large-scale marijuana cultivation occurred in other states and played out in much the same way as it did in California. The same year that CAMP began raids on the West Coast, authorities in West Virginia launched a similar campaign, using aerial surveillance to spot marijuana crops in rugged hills and forests that closely resemble the terrain in northern California. In 1985, this campaign uprooted 15,739 plants, which authorities estimated was only “20 percent” of the state’s total crop. Like their California counterparts, West Virginia marijuana farmers were “remnants of the ‘back-to-the-earth’ movement” (The Hour, 1985).

47 In Kentucky, marijuana was “as common as hair on a dog’s back” during the 1980s (Brock, 1981). Between 1982 and 1988, authorities took more than 3 million plants from Kentucky’s clandestine pot grows (Heckel, 1988), dwarfing the total number of plants seized by CAMP over the same period17. Indeed, a single raid on three central Kentucky pot fields in 1986 yielded an astonishing 384,000 plants, more than CAMP took in any year prior to 2000 (Cropper, 1986). In Arkansas, the average illegal marijuana patch held more than 200 plants in 1982, and that year the US Forest Service destroyed $20 million worth of cannabis in the Ozark and St. Francis National Forests. The Forest Service estimated that there was still $200 million worth of the crop to be found in the state (Montgomery, 1982).

48 These reports make clear that illegal marijuana cultivation was widespread anywhere the climate and geography supported it, not just in northern California’s renowned “Emerald Triangle.” Indeed, data from the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1985 shows “high occurrence” of marijuana farming across the South, Midwest, and West Coast. The agency also reported that authorities in forty-eight states were participating in federally sponsored eradication campaigns, and that these campaigns destroyed a total of 13 million plants in 1984 (US Drug Enforcement Agency, 1985, p. 2-3).

49 By the late 1980s, ramped-up state and federal enforcement campaigns made growing pot outdoors extremely risky. Accordingly, the nation’s marijuana growers moved inside, to cultivation “labs” with grow lights and other sophisticated equipment. Reports of indoor growing become extremely numerous after 1989, and they describe cannabis being grown in basements, aquariums, apartments, and greenhouses (Baxter Bulletin, 1989; Hershberg, 1994; Franceschina, 2001; Moroney, 2003).18 By the time California became the first state to re-legalize marijuana for medicinal use in 1996, indoor growing was the established norm for America’s cannabis cultivators (Hecht, 2014; Johnson, 2017a, p. 136-139). Thus, it should come as no surprise that when Colorado and Washington state re-legalized the adult use of marijuana in 2012, officials in both states generally ignored cannabis’s long history as an outdoor crop, preferring instead to craft regulations that privileged energy-guzzling indoor cultivation (Johnson, 2017a, p. 153-156).

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50 As of December 2018, cannabis is entirely legal in ten states, while an additional twenty-three allow production for medical purposes. Though most marijuana is still cultivated indoors, the legal cannabis industry is gradually moving toward a model that includes more greenhouses and open-air grows. From Colorado to Kentucky, the long- lost American hemp industry is also being revitalized, and Congress recently lifted the national ban on hemp farming. Of course, cannabis cultivation also continues in states that disallow its use.

Conclusions

51 Though the environmental history of cannabis proceeded more or less along the same trajectory in most parts of the country, there are some important regional distinctions. In the Midwest, for example, the plant embedded itself within a strong agricultural tradition, alternating between the boon and bane of Midwestern farmers, and appearing in greater quantities in the wild than almost anywhere else. With the exception of Kentucky and the major cities, cannabis cultivation and use was apparently far less common in the South, at least until the 1960s. In the West, illegal marijuana farmers in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s laid the foundation for the surge of domestic cultivation that swept the entire nation beginning in the 1970s.

52 Despite these distinct regional experiences, geography appears to be a non-factor in many hallmarks of US cannabis history, including the appearance of wild cannabis, its illegal cultivation in forests, farms, hills, and public lands, and its proliferation indoors from the 1990s through the present. At the same time, authorities’ response to the diffusion of cannabis remained remarkably similar across time and space; they enacted local laws and drives to stamp out its use and cultivation, routinely called on the public (as well as toxic chemicals) to assist these efforts, and associated cannabis with minorities and young people in order to accentuate its danger to American communities. And as tirelessly as cops, lawmakers, and some citizens worked to contain its spread, people and nature thwarted them at every turn: immigrants, transients, and musicians ferried plants and seeds from town to town and region to region; birds and the wind carried seed across the country; and nearly every feature of human civilization – roads, fences, fields, vacant city lots, farms, ditches, river banks, basements, homes, and apartments – seemed to offer a perfect place for these seeds to settle and thrive.

53 So while it is tempting to take at face value reports claiming that cannabis was introduced by Mexicans or that it was smoked only among youth, “negro districts,” or hippies, and while it might make sense that cultivation is a unique feature of sunny California or the hempen hills of Kentucky, a broader, more environmentally focused history reveals, if nothing else, this: cannabis was and remains a crop of the masses, a plant whose usefulness is continually reasserted and reinforced by different people and cultures across time and space. Whatever the nature of people’s claims, warnings, and experiences with cannabis, it was and is a plant of, by, and for the people – a true American weed.

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NOTES

1. In the early twentieth century, newspapers often inaccurately used “hashish” (also spelled “hasheesh”) and “loco-weed” to refer to “marijuana”; “marijuana” is the psychotropic flowers of the cannabis plant, while “hashish” is resin collected from drug-producing cannabis varieties. “Loco-weed” refers to an entirely different plant, usually astragalus varieties (see Johnson, 2017a, p. 28-36). 2. The primary source base for this article is a collection of more than 1,500 newspaper reports from 32 states, spanning the entire twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These reports

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were procured during two major research periods between 2013 and 2018. The first period focused on the American West – defined as all the states west of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, including Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii – and included approximately 1,300 reports. The second, and far less expansive, research period focused on the Midwest – an area of eleven states, including Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri – and the South/Appalachia region, an area of ten states, including the traditional Deep South as well as Kentucky and West Virginia. Approximately 300 news reports were taken from these two regions. Most of the news reports referenced in this article deal with illegal cultivation or wild growth; some are simply arrest reports, while others include a more general discussion of marijuana. The newspaper reports are supplemented by other sources, including state and federal reports and pamphlets that deal with illegal marijuana cultivation. 3. The Pharmacopoeia of the United States (Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1851), 50. 4. In a trend that continues in some reporting today, most newspapers in the twentieth century took law enforcement’s claims about marijuana at face value. Essentially, newspapers agreed for decades with the sentiment voiced by El Paso County Sheriff Stanley Good in 1915: “We officers have had the best opportunity to study the effects of the drug upon the human system” (El Paso Herald, 1915). 5. Statement of Dr. William C. Woodward, Hearings on H.R. 6385 before the Committee on Ways and Means, Seventy-Fifth Congress, May 4, 1937. 6. An out-and-out racist, Anslinger exaggerated marijuana’s association with Mexicans and African Americans, as well as the effects of the plant itself, to argue that federal prohibition was urgently needed. He was helped in this regard by Mexican newspapers, which had produced a steady stream of articles about marijuana’s alleged propensity to cause insanity and violence since the 1890s (Campos, 2012: 203-223). This sensationalist tack was picked up by American newspapers, which began blaming marijuana for all kinds of grotesque acts of violence. By amplifying the message of these articles and stoking fears that Mexicans, blacks, and the “criminal class” could easily hook children on drugs, the FBN chief was able to dominate the national perception of cannabis in the 1930s (Sloman, 1979: 52-64; Lee, 2012: 48-54). 7. Though he was not a sugar beet worker, “Jesus Hernandez” was arrested in Grand Junction, Colorado, in 1933 for growing 200 plants, a fairly large amount for the time (Las Vegas Daily Optic, 1933). 8. Statement of Hon. Ralph F. Lozier, Carollton, Mo., General Consul of the National Institute of Oilseed Products, Hearings on H.R. 6385 before the Committee on Ways and Means, Seventy-Fifth Congress, 1937, April 28. 9. For examples, see “Marijuana Grows Profusely on Vacant Lots in Marysville,” The Marysville Advocate (KS), 1938, June 16; “Women Rotarians Hear Drug Chief,” Indianapolis News, February 25, 1941; “Marijuana Grows Wild,” The Sentinel (Carlisle, PA), 1936, September 8; “War on Marihuana,” Escanaba Daily Press (MI), 1938, September 13. 10. Not only did the Midwest already have a strong agricultural tradition, but as one report from Indianapolis notes, “the well-cared-for corn fields of the Middle West offer the best soils for the production of hemp;” see “Hoosier Farmers Find New Crop Interest as Season for Hemp Harvest Approaches,” The Indianapolis News, July 2, 1943. 11. Reports of domestic marijuana seizures fall off dramatically between 1941 and 1945 but become more common from 1946 onward. For a sampling of postwar marijuana activity in Denver, see “Denver Dope Ring Smashed,” Denver Post, December 19, 1949, p. 1; John Snyder, “Raid Bares Huge Marijuana Cache,” Denver Post, November 5, 1949, p. 1; Rolle Rand, “Arrest Bares Marijuana Traffic at Fitzsimons,” Denver Post, July 23, 1947, p. 17. For activity in San Francisco- Oakland, see “Four Arrested in Dope Raid,” Oakland Tribune, November 19, 1947, p. 19, and “Dope Cache Found Here,” Oakland Tribune, February 4, 1947, p. 1; for activity in Los Angeles, see “Dope Bootlegged in L.A. Like Speakeasy Drinks, Says Judge,” Oakland Tribune, January 8, 1948, p. 3,

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“Sheriff Breaks Up Marijuana Ring,” Oakland Tribune, December 18, 1946, p. 15, and “Reefer Habit Hops Up in America,” Bakersfield Californian, September 9, 1948, p. 12; See “US, City Officers Push Drive on Marijuana Ring,” Denver Post, April 10, 1948, p. 1; See “Big Marihuana Crop is Seized at Mead, Colo.,” Denver Post, June 12, 1946, p. 1; John Snyder, “Peddlers of Marijuana Lead Youth to Crime—Harvest Near for ’48 Crop,” Denver Post, July 18, 1948; “Marijuana Crop Planters Hunted,” Oakland Tribune, July 28, 1948, p. 1; “Rancher Accused of Having $200,000 Worth of Marijuana He Is Said To Have Grown,” Corona (CA) Daily Independent, July 15, 1947, p. 1; Reports in this survey come from the Redlands Daily Facts, Bakersfield Californian, Hayward Daily Review, Oakland Tribune, Long Beach Independent, Corona Independent, Long Beach Press-Telegram, San Mateo Times, Pasadena Independent, Van Nuys News, and the Star News (Pasadena). 12. While the natural purposes of THC remain generally unclear, botanical studies suggest that the compound may have evolved to help preserve moisture, as a defense mechanism – similar to terpenes in that effect – (Clarke and Merlin, 51), or to protect its flowers from UV radiation (Pate, 1983; Lydon, Teramura, Coffman, 1987). 13. For reports attributing wild marijuana to the World War II hemp program, see “US Plans To Rip Up Marijuana,” Orlando (FL) Evening Star, June 22, 1970, p. 9; Fred Pettit, “Marijuana? Destroy it!” Des Moines Tribune, October 25, 1954, p. 1, and “Find Marijuana Growing Wild,” Journal Gazette (Mattoon, IL), January 27, 1951, p. 1. For examples of wild marijuana in the postwar Midwest, see “Arrest three men possessing marijuana,” Manhattan (KS) Mercury, September 18, 1968, p. 13; “Marijuana Grows in City,” (report from Cleveland, OH) Orlando (FL) Sentinel, June 27, 1958, p. 2; “Marijuana is Gary’s Problem,” The Call-Leader (Ellwood, IN), August 30, 1951, p. 6; Roy Campbell, “Big Marijuana Cache Found in Depot Locker,” The Lincoln (NE) Star, November 5, 1955, p. 15. 14. In King, 1970, the Pulaski County sheriff is quoted saying his office sprayed feral marijuana with herbicide but stopped because residents complained about damage to surrounding crops. 15. US Department of Agriculture, “Wild Hemp (Marijuana): How to Control It” (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, July 1970). Another report from Illinois in 1960 notes that “512 acres were sprayed with a[n] herbicide,” but does not specify which one; see “Marijuana Grows Wild in Illinois,” Journal-Gazette (Mattoon, IL), August 10, 1960. 16. Campaign Against Marijuana Planting Final Reports, 1984-1987, available at http:// library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/CAMP.htm; For example, see CAMP Final Report, 1989 (Sacramento, CA: CAMP Headquarters, 1989), p. 9; National Guard helicopters are mentioned in Appendix E; Analysis of CAMP reports, 1983-1996 (prepared by author). 17. CAMP raids netted 758,526 plants between 1983 and 1988. 18. Including the reports cited, research for this article revealed at least 25 reports of indoor cultivation after 1989.

ABSTRACTS

The illegal cultivation of cannabis in the United States has a long history, the weight of which is currently propelling a number of US states to legalize and regulate the plant after more than eighty years of outright prohibition. While each region has its own distinct history with the crop, this article outlines the history of cannabis cultivation in three parts of the country – the Midwest, South, and West – in an attempt to map out the driving social, economic, geographic, and environmental forces of illegal (and in some cases, legal) cannabis cultivation in the United States. Understanding how the US became one of the premier cannabis-growing regions of the

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world in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries will help scholars pinpoint major themes in the world history of cannabis, such as its adoption and distribution by marginalized peoples, its transnational appeal in a globalized capitalist system, and how the plant embeds itself within the urban and rural ecology of human civilization. With a clearer picture of these themes, cannabis scholarship can better inform future studies, discussions, and public policy related to the plant.

INDEX

Keywords: marijuana, cannabis, agriculture, weed

AUTHOR

NICK JOHNSON Nick Johnson, [email protected], independent historian and associate editor of the Colorado Encyclopedia, Colorado, USA. He recently published: - Johnson N., 2018. Seizing the Initiative: A Short History of Direct Democracy in America. Process: a blog for american history, April 3. http://www.processhistory.org/johnson-ballot-initiatives/ - Johnson N., 2017. Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the United States. Corvallis, Oregon State University Press. - Johnson N., 2017. Workers' Weed: Cannabis, Sugar Beets, and Landscapes of Labor in the American West, 1900-1946. Agricultural History, vol. 91, n° 3, p. 320-341.

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Illegal cannabis cultivation in Europe: new developments

David Weinberger, Michel Gandilhon, Jalpa Shah and Nacer Lalam

Introduction

1 Cannabis is by far the most frequently used illegal psychoactive substance in Europe. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 27.4 % of the population (that is, 91.2 million individuals) aged 15 to 64 living in the European Union have tried cannabis at least once in their lifetime (EMCDDA, 2019). In 2017, prevalence rates of use among 15 to 34-year-olds ranged from as low as 3.5% in Hungary to as high as 21.8 % in France, with a 2-to-1 ratio of use among males in this age group relative to females (EMCDDA, 2019).

2 To the difference of the United States, allegedly the world’s largest cannabis market, where herbal cannabis is by far and large the favored cannabis by-product, Europe is a hashish (compressed cannabis resin) consuming region. This is especially the case in France and Spain where Moroccan hashish is very popular. However, since the early 1990s the growing European demand for marihuana (herbal cannabis) has led to the local development of cannabis cultivation. Cannabis seizures numbers reflect this shift in consumption, with herbal cannabis seizures largely surpassing those of cannabis resin as of 2009. In 2017, European law enforcement organizations have reported 439 000 seizures of herbal cannabis, 330 000 of cannabis resin and 22 700 of cannabis plants (EMCDDA, 2019).

3 This article begins by providing an overview of the current situation in Europe, followed by a historical description that underlines the principal role played by the Dutch hub in disseminating marihuana production to the rest of Europe in the 1980s. We will then examine current players in mass production across Europe, taking into consideration the integral role of small growers and cannabis social clubs. Ultimately we aim to show that the European landscape of cannabis cultivation cannot be reduced to a criminal business, and is, in fact, much more complex, with a multitude of actors involved.

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4 This article is mainly based on primary sources: qualitative data from interviews conducted in 2009 during an INHESJ research on cannabis cultivation in France and in Europe, and quantitative data from the OFDT-TREND reports. The secondary sources are based on academic literature, reports from the French judicial police (OCRTIS: Central Office for Illicit Drug Traffic Control) and the EMCDDA with which the authors maintain privileged institutional relationships.

The ongoing transformation of the European cannabis supply

5 During the last 20 years, the number of cannabis plantations discovered in Europe has increased significantly. If we consider that eradicated cannabis plants could be used to a certain extent as indicators of European production (EMCDDA, 2019), the situation is such that economist Adrian Jansen did not hesitate, already in the early 2000s, to mention a real green avalanche in Europe (Jansen, 2002). What was valid at the time with 1.5 million plants seized is no less relevant today with 3.4 million plants seized on average (EMCDDA, 2015, 2019). In the Netherlands (Korf, 2008) and in the United Kingdom, both trendsetter countries with respect to European marihuana production, according to estimates published in 2008, local production of herbal cannabis allegedly supplies over 80% of domestic cannabis consumption, up from 40% in the late 1990s (Korf, 2008).

A shift among resin-centric countries

6 Even in historically resin-centric countries, such as France, Spain, and, to a lesser extent, Italy, recent cannabis herbal seizures show that the cannabis resin hegemony tends to decrease. In France, in a ten-year time span (1999-2018), hashish seizures declined from 90 % to 74 % of all cannabis by-products seized (OCRTIS, 2019). In addition, since the early 2010s seizures of cannabis plants regularly exceed 100 000 versus 50 000 between 2005 and 2009 (Masson and Gandilhon, 2018).

7 In Spain, cannabis cultivation has increased with the development of illegal indoor and outdoor cultivation, especially in the south of the country, despite the fact that it is Europe’s primary entry point for Moroccan cannabis resin (Alvarez et al., 2016). This increase led to a surge in plant seizures in 2018, with over 1 million plants seized from indoor and outdoor cultivation (up from 724,000 in 2016 and 815,924 in 2017) (DEASRI, 2019). The fact that “Spain has become an important producer of herbal cannabis in Europe” was confirmed by the OCRTIS) (DEASRI, 2018) since Spanish production is not only consumed within the country but is also increasingly exported to foreign markets, including to France with French organized crime groups (OCGs) increasingly sourcing their herbal cannabis from the Catalonia region. In 2018 90 % of herbal cannabis with known origins seized by the French police came from Spain whereas prior to that most herbal cannabis was imported from the Netherlands (DEASRI, 2019). In Italy, marihuana is increasingly consumed and has become the most seized illicit drug: with an ever- increasingly high number of seized plants: 464 723 plants in 2016 vs 138 013 in 2015 and 121 659 in 2014 (EMCDDA, 2018).

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Illustration 1 – Seizures of cannabis resin and herbal cannabis, 2016 or more recent year

Source: EMCDDA European Drug Report 2018

8 In Eastern Europe, where Moroccan resin has never been a product of choice, domestic cannabis production1 has recently increased, primarily in response to domestic demand, which has reached levels equivalent to those observed in Western Europe. This change stems from a shift in cannabis production and culture from the Netherlands to other EU countries, beginning as early as the 1980s (Potter et al., 2011).

9 Having reached maturity2, the European cannabis market is now increasingly marked by a quest for quality. Quality is determined by the content of the cannabis by-product (marihuana, hashish), by its taste, and by its effect (high), all aspects that depend on the proportion of indica and sativa strains (Ben Lakhdar and Weinberger, 2011). This trend is supported by the listed average prices for product in Europe, where the per- gram sales price for high potency cannabis products is 1.4 to 5 times higher3 than that of other herbal cannabis varieties (EMCDDA, 2018).

Beginning with the Dutch hub

The Californian-Dutch connection

10 In the early 1980s in Amsterdam, Dutch citizens, such as Wernard Brüning, met Californian cannabis growers, such as David Watson (aka Sam the Skunkman), and shared their breeding and cultivation knowledge and techniques. In the 1960s and 1970s, Californian cannabis growers had started experimenting with hybridization and improved cultivation techniques in order to increase the potency of a Mexican cannabis variety (Weisheit, 1992). The sinsemilla (seedless in Spanish) technique was later adopted, the uprooting of male plants4 during cultivation enabling female plants to achieve maximal THC potency5. Partnerships between Dutch and American cannabis growers led to a major transformation in the Western European cannabis market. Driven by increasing repression by the Reagan administration as a continuation of

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Nixon’s War on Drugs, this "green team", as they called themselves, decided to introduce indoor experimental plantations in Canada and the Netherlands (Decorte, 2010). These growers were able to benefit from a favorable context for their activity: the partial tolerance of cannabis consumption6 and the agricultural and indoor horticultural know-how of the Netherlands: new cannabis strains with high THC rates capable of growing in temperate latitudes were created (Brüning, 2003). At the height of the success of their cannabis products, the “green team” opened a shop (the "Amsterdam lowland seed", 1980-84) to sell their new seeds. In 1985, Brüning went one step further and created the Growshop in Amsterdam, selling lamps, seeds, cuttings, and nutrients for indoor cannabis cultivation. By supplying the equipment, seeds and know-how for home cultivation, Brüning’s Growshop launched a new trend (Brüning, 2003). Indoor cultivation methods and a new, adapted generation of cannabis seeds were the first step in the development of the European home-grown culture. Made possible through the development of new varieties that could be cultivated indoors, the movement of cannabis production in Europe started to become important in the early 1980s in the Netherlands. At that time, however, cannabis cultivation remained marginal and only a limited numbers of aficionados were involved in cultivation. This model of cultivation symbolized a time of community-based living and a rejection of consumerist societies. Indeed, these first European cannabis cultivators were usually not interested in a commercial approach. In fact, the cannabis sold in coffee shops was mainly imported, such as resin from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and more marginally from Morocco.

From an inner market to northern Europe

11 The situation began to change in the mid- to late 1980s with a shift in the consumer market, as an increasing number of users aspired to more potent products that Dutch growers were able to supply. Coffee shops increasingly answered to this demand by offering Dutch products. According to Dutch authorities, about 50% of the cannabis by- products consumed in Dutch coffee shops in the mid-1990s were produced locally (Rijswijk, 1995, Jansen, 1991). Today, an estimated 80 % of marihuana sold in Dutch coffee shops is produced in the Netherlands (Nederwiet) (Janssen, 2015).

12 The booming production of Dutch cannabis was not limited to domestic sales. In the late 1990s, Dutch cannabis production began to be exported to the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Nordic countries, Germany, and some Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (Decorte, 2010; Potter, 2008). After successfully meeting local demand (Korf, 1991), the Netherlands become the leading herbal cannabis producing country in Europe and the leading "Eurocannabis" exporter, sending over 500 tons per year to Belgium, Germany and Scandinavia (Lalam and Weinberger, 2010).

An opportunity for Dutch OCGs

13 Fuelled by the prospect of profit, Dutch criminal networks began specializing in high potency marihuana that could be sold at much higher prices than traditional herbal cannabis. Previously, the majority of these 100 or so crime networks were involved in synthetic drug production – particularly ecstasy. However, they seized the opportunity to increase their profits in the 1980s by setting up indoor plantations in the southern

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Netherlands. The creation of a special “Hemp Task Force” in 2004 has since curbed production via a series of interventions, including the dismantling of cultivation sites, leading to the relocation of Dutch production units from 2006 onwards. Armed with considerable experience in indoor production, these organized crime networks proceeded to develop cannabis factories elsewhere in Europe. Former Dutch producers also reoriented themselves as "consultants" for setting up new plantations, enhancing their technical expertise while providing criminal groups who want to start cultivation sites with the necessary equipment (Korf, 2019).

Controlling the industry

14 The Dutch criminal networks’ growing expertise in indoor production was accompanied by a takeover of the exotic plants legal retail market through so-called “grow shops” specialized in selling the same cultivation equipment needed for indoor cannabis cultivation. These shops now make-up an important component of the criminal networks who own them in the Netherlands and in other European countries. It appears that, among others things, criminal networks fund select shop managers to start cultivating cannabis and to incite exotic plants growers to grow cannabis. Setting up such criminal cooperatives ensures that cannabis production is divided in discrete small- to medium-sized sites that limit losses due to potential seizures or thefts. Grow shops also provide money laundering opportunities to criminal networks7. Dutch crime networks have also been investing in grow shops in Spain to spur cannabis cultivation there and in Morocco, to compete with European cannabis (Potter et al., 2016)

Balloon effect: Foreign resettlement and counselling

15 In response to law enforcement, criminal networks began moving their plantations to the Flemish Region of Belgium. The country has seized about 416,000 plants in 2017 and has become a key player in the European cannabis industry (EMCDDA, 2019). Nearby, Northern France has also been targeted to become a production hub to supply the growing the French market as well as that in other European countries. In 2015, 600 cannabis plants were seized at a French farm operated by a Dutch man, in the Allier department. The equipment required for cultivation had been installed by Dutch organized crime actors, and the products, after passing through the Netherlands, were intended for sale in the United Kingdom (Potter, 2008; Masson and Gandilhon, 2019).

16 At the same time, OCGs decided to promote their expertise in countries where cannabis cultivation was beginning to draw interest from local players. Certain European police forces have identified the presence of "facilitators" in many countries, including Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, and Morocco (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). In France, it seems that some criminal sectors are increasing cannabis production, as was illustrated with the discovery of a 600-plant farm in 20078. In this case, independently funded cannabis growers received technical assistance from a Dutch investor, while "helping hands" were recruited amongst local dealers. Since then, much more complex methods of trafficking have been uncovered by the OCRTIS, potentially announcing the end of amateurism. For example, a recently dismantled "criminal cooperative" of cannabis nurseries in a dozen houses throughout the French territory mimics a modus operandi previously observed in the Netherlands and Great Britain. In France, the

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decentralization of production creates a higher number of small production sites, relinquishing economies of scale for security.

17 Then, in a second stage, this trend was “democratized” through the Internet (sharing of expertise online and selling materials and seeds by mail order) as well as through the spread of grow shops in most European countries. For example, a 2013 study on French small growers showed that the ban on the sale of cannabis seeds for cultivation benefited online seed shops. In France, Dutch online grow shops have become the main source of seeds and cuttings (36.2 %), just ahead of traditional trading (purchase, sell, gift) (33 %), and recovery from previous crops (20.2 %) (Boulat et al., 2016).

Contemporary players in European mass production

18 From the Netherlands, cannabis cultivation has continued to spread to the rest of the continent, from northern Europe to some of southern Europe. With a market that is increasingly dominated by a variety of transnational networks involved in cannabis cultivation, it would appear that the time of the Dutch monopoly has officially come to an end.

A Vietnamese network: From the United Kingdom through France via Eastern Europe

19 The British drug market is often characterized as being at the forefront of new trends and commercial indoor cannabis cultivation appeared there in the late 1980s (Hough, 2003; Potter, 2008). Subsequently, indoor production became a huge phenomenon in the UK, as evidenced by the discovery between 2005 and 2007of 1 500 plantations in London alone (SOCA, 2009). Moreover, the British findings revealed that two thirds of the discovered plantations were owned by Sino-Vietnamese criminals9. Laborers in these cannabis farms were primarily recruited through illegal immigration networks (EMCDDA, 2012). As is often the case with prostitution and cigarette trafficking, working on these plantations is one way for immigrants to repay their passage into the country. Meanwhile, organizers come from Sino-Vietnamese communities present in the UK for at least a generation, thus explaining why they are well-integrated into society. Organizers rent the sites, purchase the needed equipment and sell what they produce to British dealers. Profits are often laundered through complex commercial channels in the UK, such as nailbars and Vietnamese companies. Organizations are discreet with well-delineated networks of small plantations. Thus, cannabis production is not handled by a single organization, but rather, a whole host of user-dealer micro- networks based on local and family social ties (Silvestone and Savage, 2011) where trust plays a key regulatory role in production and associated money laundering activities. Such low-key operating methods are very different from the image of a flashy and opulent drug dealer. The ostentatious lifestyle is eschewed and other than exploiting migrant workers for labor, violence is rare10 because the purpose is not to control territories, but rather to produce cannabis and sell it to local dealers.

20 Today, cannabis cultivation remains a key challenge for law enforcement services. In 2016 the United Kingdom seized 340 531 plants, one of the highest amounts in Europe (EMCDDA, 2018). However, the current market is changing along with British organized crime landscape: the role of Vietnamese networks is declining in favor of other, local

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OCGs drawn to the profitability of the herbal cannabis market (National Police Chiefs Council, 2014). In turn, an increasingly competitive market is likely responsible for the delocalization of these networks in other European countries such as Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia11 and France.

France: A market in the making?

21 In February 2011, about 700 cannabis plants were discovered in a clandestine indoor plantation located in the Courneuve suburb just north of Paris (Weinberger, 2011). This ‘factory’ was capable of producing more than 100 kg of sinsemilla cannabis annually. The people running the plantation could earn over 400,000 euros in sales per year, generating significant profits given the low labor costs. Workers were illegal Vietnamese immigrants who paid for their passage to Europe by working for several months under near slavery conditions (Weinberger, 2011). Since 2011, additional cases involving Vietnamese networks have been uncovered in France, but their role remain marginal when compared to the phenomenon observed in the UK. Alongside Sino- Vietnamese criminals, a range of other types of criminals are emerging in the French cannabis market, such as gangs specialized in hashish supply who have been reconverting into marihuana production and supply. Some court cases in France have demonstrated that these criminal groups run numerous plantations, set up primarily in the countryside, and supplying dealing retail spot implemented in urban areas (Lalam and Weinberger 2009; Masson and Gandilhon, 2018).

The growing role of mafias

22 As is the case in France, the Italian domestic market was historically dominated by cannabis resin. However, an increasing demand for highly-potent herbal cannabis spurred local production at the end of the 1990s, with increased quantities of homegrown cannabis and a larger role played by organized crime groups. This is exemplified by the fact that Italy holds the absolute European record for the largest dismantled plantation, with over 2.5 million plants discovered on a single plantation in 2003. In 2014, an astounding 4 million plants were seized throughout the country, primarily in the south where the climate is most favorable to outdoor cultivation, and where the mafia is very powerful. This is the case in Calabria where cannabis is known as the "green gold of Aspromonte" (the local mountain range) and where a significant portion of Italian cannabis production is concentrated. Here, cultivation is controlled by the 'Ndrangheta crime network, which has been exporting its expertise to Australia since the 1970s, and where outdoor cultivation is still controlled by a few major Calabrian families (Weinberger, 2011). A recent case, in the summer of 2018, illustrates the key role played by this mafia, with 18 people belonging to the Calabrian organization arrested and 26 000 plants seized (Euronews, 2018).

23 The Italian market is also supplied by low-potency Albanian marihuana. Albania started producing cannabis on a commercial scale after the collapse of the Stalinist regime in the 1990s (Zhilla and Lamallari, 2015). The country was so poor at this time that cannabis cultivation spread easily, first to the south of the country (Vlorë, Teplenë, Mallakastër, Berat), then to the north (Shkodër, Tropojë, etc.). Today, a 17 % unemployment rate and an average gross salary of 340 euros highlight a socioeconomic vulnerability that criminal organizations, rather specialized in heroin trade, exploit to

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their advantage. Geographically, Albania is well-situated given its proximity to Italy (as little as 80km away in some regions). Despite a much publicized War on Drugs12 and frequent cannabis seizures, the Albanian market remains dynamic as reduced exports to Italy have been offset by the opening of the Austrian, Croatian, or even Swedish markets (EMCDDA, 2012).

24 Between January and October 2017, over 32 tons of herbal cannabis were seized in Albania (versus 30 tons in 2016) and more than 2.5 million plants were uprooted. As a comparison, 89 tons of cannabis herb and 11.4 million plants were seized in the entire EU (DEASRI, 2018). It is noteworthy that, at this time, Albania had become, according to some estimates, the leading producer of marihuana, 1300 t in 2016 versus 900 t in 2015 (DEASRI, 2019), with a high level of products cultivated outdoors in the northern and southwestern mountainous regions of the country. It also appears that a “flight to quality” is underway with an increased cultivation of hybrid cannabis on indoor plantations. Hungary and Slovenia have since reported seizures of the top-quality Skunk strain of cannabis from Albania (Zhilla and Lamallari, 2015). In parallel, the Albanian mafia clans have also distinguished themselves via their capacity to increase production of hashish oil, as discovered in laboratories in Lazarat (Zhilla and Lamallari, 2015). All of the above paint Albania as the new Eldorado for cannabis traffickers, to the point that such production may represent 30% of the European cannabis market (DEASRI, 2018).

25 That being said, it would appear that other mafia organizations remain key competitors in the European market. In 2017, a major Chinese network from the UK was dismantled in Spain by the Central Unit for Specialized and Violent Crime (UDEV). Two plantations – out of a total of 12 – containing 2 500 marihuana plants were located in Girona and Barcelona. The involvement of Chinese mafias in the marihuana business “has led to a boom in its production in Spain in the last four years. They control the [entire] chain of production, from cultivation to final distribution” thus increasing their profit” (Ortega Dolz, 2018).

The rising of Home Growers

26 The growing importance of large-scale commercial cultivation in Europe and the key role played by OCGs in this sector must not obscure the persisting reality of small growers, whether they are individuals or groups, who are essentially cannabis aficionados. In countries like France and Spain, where resin has long dominated the market, small growers and users are moving away from low-quality standardized cannabis by-products, opting instead for niche organic products (INHES, 2009). This trend is not limited to cannabis cultivation and proceeds from a strong desire to control the conditions of production by favoring short supply chains.

Post-1968 France

27 The roots of cannabis culture in Europe date back to the counterculture of the 1960s, in the wake of anti-establishment strikes, protests, and civil unrest lead by young people (EMCDDA, 2012). In France, cannabis cultivation took root in the years following the May 1968 events, as numerous youth broke from industrial society, relocating to the countryside, especially in the south of the country. In the 1990s, in a market dominated

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almost entirely by resin from Morocco, and to a much lesser extent Afghanistan and Lebanon, small-scale outdoor grows run by noncommercial growers in France had persisted (Boekhout van Solinge, 1995). A 2009 report on French cannabis cultivation documented how important self-growing was in France (INHES, 2009). Another study showed that people engaged in cultivation out of ecological and self-reliance choices (Lefour, 2006). Despite the growing involvement of OCGs in cannabis cultivation, autonomy and a connection with nature likely remain key motivators for small-scale, non-commercial outdoor growers. The same is true in other European countries, including England and Wales (Hough et al., 2003), Belgium (Decorte, 2010) and Finland and Denmark (Hakkarainen et al., 2011a), where similar motivations were expressed by individual growers.

28 Free market legalization in some American states has led to the creation of a “green” capitalism (Gandilhon et al., 2018). Commercial models are affecting the cannabis industry. There is a real fear that the non-profit dimension of cannabis cultivation, which remains strong among individual growers and Cannabis Social Clubs (Pardal, 2018), is on its way out in Europe if business friendly models of production prevail. Specifically, small growers are caught between the growing involvement of criminal organizations and a legal accumulation of capital. Nevertheless, the principle of gifting is still very present. In France, the biggest cannabis market in Europe, in 2017, only 35 % of individuals who had consumed cannabis in the past month said that the product they used was gifted to them or obtained through personal cultivation (Spilka et al., 2019). Research shows that the aspect of sharing cannabis persists among many small growers in France (Decorte, 2010; INHES, 2009).

Breaking with criminal markets

29 Alongside this dimension, many growers express a desire to avoid the ‘criminal element’ of the illegal drug market. This was frequently underlined in studies conducted in Western Europe in Denmark, Germany, France, and Finland (EMCDDA, 2012). While the primary motivation is to maintain the security of users avoiding violence and law enforcement, an additional dimension recently emerged in France: a strong desire to avoid contributing to cannabis criminal markets, both out of fear and ethics (Le Parisien, 2012).

30 Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to say that the idyllic pastoral world of cannabis cultivation exists separately from the resin market run by gangs. In France, almost 6 out of 10 small growers are unable to satisfy their needs and are forced to buy from the black market (Gandilhon et al., 2019). Therefore, the era of the Moroccan resin are not over, despite the advent of a much more competitive market. This is especially the case now that the hybrid revolution that has deeply transformed traditional cannabis production has made the production of high quality resin easier and increasingly available (Afsahi and Chouvy, 2015; Chouvy, 2019). Moreover, this fragmented reality of herbal production in France is challenged ‘internally’ by the growing presence of commercial interests among small growers.

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Illustration 2 - The evolution of average THC concentrations in confiscated resin (STUPS) versus resin voluntarily brought for testing by users (SINTES) from 2000 to 2017

Sources: INPS, SINTES OFDT.

A gray zone: Commercial growing

31 Observed across five TREND13 sites (Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes, Lille and Paris) and by various law enforcement services since 2011, indoor cultivation by individuals has emerged in France without any connection to criminal networks to supply a local market. The development of commercial cannabis cultivation among small-time growers stems from the profitability of the practice in a context marked by an economic crisis. Moreover, a soaring demand for high quality, “organic” cannabis (Obradovic, 2017) and increasing prices (€ 5.5 in 2006 versus € 8/€ 10 in 2017) means that a small installation of 50 plants can generate an annual turnover of approximately € 50,000 (Cadet-Taïrou et al., 2013). Based on continued observations at TREND sites since 2011, it appears that profit-oriented growers are multiplying in France, notably in relation the multiplication of grow shops (MILAD, 2016). However, conclusions regarding small-time commercial growing must be made with caution. First, there has been a concomitant development and growth of an intermediate “craftsmen” category (“artisans”) that falls between the “small growers” and “grower-traders” categories. Focused on quality and innovation, craftsmen travel to fairs and markets, especially in the Netherlands, Spain, and the Czech Republic (High Times Cannabis Cup, Spannabis, Cannafest, Konopex, etc.), where they market their products. Second, as demonstrated about Belgium, there is a clear risk in observing the market to overestimate the number of commercial growers due to extensive media coverage and the difficulty that there is to clearly define when exactly cannabis cultivation becomes commercial (Decorte, 2010a). Moreover, a Norwegian study has shown that many practical obstacles block small growers who wish to significantly increase their production, such as a lack of financial means, technicity, and/or retail customers (Hammersvik et al., 2012)

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Conclusion

32 Over the two past decades or so, the European cannabis market has undergone major developments. The primary change was the shift towards marihuana consumption rather than resin consumption, which spurred an ever-increasing local cannabis production that is subject to industrialization processes. Nevertheless, after a phase marked by amateurism, local cannabis production, in the wake of the counterculture generated by the Protests of 1968, has gradually become more professional, with the increased participation of actors from organized crime groups based in the Netherlands’ "Rif" of Dutch North Brabant. As a consequence, mass production made possible by indoor cultivation of hybrid seeds varieties has grown across the rest of Europe, attracting new actors. This is exemplified by the cannabis factories controlled by Asian criminal groups in the United Kingdom, and by the emergence of Albania and southern Italy as centers of outdoor cultivation in some of Europe most mafia- controlled regions.

33 Local cannabis cultivation has also impacted countries such as France and Spain with a long and strong tradition of Moroccan hashish consumption. In France, a strategic market in the heart of Western Europe, an increased availability of marihuana has been observed alongside a surge in illegal cannabis cultivation. In Spain, changes to the legal status of cannabis in Catalonia and the subsequent social cannabis club movement means that cultivation has developed in a context where the boundaries between legality and illegality are increasingly blurred.

34 The growing power of criminal networks must not overshadow the persistence of small-time growers and the attempt to create Cannabis Social Clubs run for non-profit purposes across Europe. The continued presence of non-profit motivations for cannabis cultivation highlights the importance of the principle of gifting, free sharing, and “love” for the plant. Time will tell if this “alter cannabis world” will be a counterweight to the business models coming from OCGs and big corporations (Altria, Novartis, Constellation Brands, etc.), that are positioning themselves in the future European market of legal cannabis (Gandilhon, 2019).

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NOTES

1. Domestic cultivation is now reportedly the source of 30 % of the marihuana used in Hungary and Poland, and of more of 50 % of that used in the Czech Republic (2009 National focal points). 2. The diversity of available by-products, the change in prices due mainly to increased THC content and the importance of marketing for certain cannabis products reflect a trend towards prevalence stabilization seen in certain European countries – all signs of a mature market. 3. Average cannabis prices in France vary from € 3 to € 10 per gram of resin and € 3 to € 16 per gram of herbal cannabis. The increase in the price of herbal cannabis has been exclusively linked to Sinsemilla, while resin prices have remained stable and are trending downwards. 4. About 50 % of male plants have to be removed. Now, all-female seeds are available and can be grown without risking male plants, but all-female plants can and will be seeded if male pollen reaches them, especially in outdoor cultivation. 5. With an average of 20 %, that can sometimes reach 35 % (Chouvy and Macfarlane, 2018). 6. In the early 1970s, the first coffee shops appeared in Amsterdam, such as Wernard Brüning's Mellow Yellow coffee shop, replacing dealers’ houses installed in the "House of youth and culture" at the end of the 1960s. 7. Eurojust coordinated a large case on selling cannabis cultivation tools to foreign buyers: http://www.eurojust.europa.eu/press/PressReleases/Pages/2011/2011-01-27.aspx 8. Interview with the public prosecutor of Nimes and the SRPJ (Police criminal investigation department) of Montpellier (2008). 9. Asian criminal specialization in cannabis cultivation did not begin in Asia, but rather, in Canada, in British Columbia to be specific. British Columbia has had a prevalent Sino- Vietnamese population since the 19th century (Brochu S., Perras C., (2009). "Le marché des stupéfiants dans une société mondialisée", Rivista di criminologia e sicurezza, vol. III, n° 3 & vol. IV, n° 1). Along with California and Amsterdam, British Columbia is a key region for the origins of high-THC cannabis cultivation. Aware of the possibilities

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offered by developing sinsemilla, some Canadian criminals of Asian origins supposedly decided to export this method to Europe, specifically to the United Kingdom. 10. This is not the case in the Netherlands, where criminal clashes related to herbal cannabis turf wars caused about 20 deaths in 2009 according to Dutch police authorities at a "Cannabis plant cultivation in France" symposium held in June 2010 in Paris (France). 11. They have their roots in the waves of Vietnamese labor immigration to these countries prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. 12. The war on drugs in Albania is guided under pressure from the European Union, who has been using Albania’s candidacy to join the EU as impetus for cracking-down on the arrival of drugs from this region. 13. The aim of the TREND scheme of the French Monitoring Center for Drugs, which was established in 1999, is to provide information about illegal drug use and users, and on emerging phenomena. Emerging phenomena refer either to new phenomena or to existing phenomena that have not yet been detected by other observation systems. The system is based on data analysed by eight local coordinating sites (Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Metz, Paris, Rennes and Toulouse).

ABSTRACTS

Herbal cannabis is one of the most consumed illegal drugs in Europe, with increasing local production. Illicit cannabis cultivation is not new to Western Europe. It first emerged on the scene in the 1970s, in the wake of the counter-culture following the 1968 Protests. Since then, it has gradually become more professional due to the increased diversification of involved actors, such as Organized Crime Groups (OCG), and the growing role of players linked to mafia organizations in both Italy and Albany. In Spain and France, where Moroccan resin has long dominated supply and demand, the cannabis market has seen a rise in herbal cannabis production. This, in turn, challenges the role of OCGs invested in resin importation. Yet, European marihuana production cannot be defined as a strictly criminal business. Small growers remain significant actors in production. This trend in production must be examined against evolving attitudes towards marihuana at the global level, linked especially to new legislation in the United States and in Canada.

INDEX

Keywords: cannabis, cultivation, Europe, trends, organized crime group

AUTHORS

DAVID WEINBERGER David Weinberger, [email protected], is a researcher at the French National Institute of higher Studies on Security and Justice (INHESJ). He recently published: - Gandilhon M., Weinberger D., 2019. The Legalization of Cannabis in the United States and

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Uruguay: Initial Findings. International Journal on Criminology, vol. 6, n° 2. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.18278/ijc.6.2.2 - Weinberger D., 2018. Afghan opiates along the northern route. UNOCC Report, June. - Weinberger D., 2017. Légalisation du cannabis et criminalité en Uruguay. Sécurité Globale, vol.4, n° 12.

MICHEL GANDILHON Michel Gandilhon, [email protected], is Head of studies in the French Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT). He recently published: - Gandilhon M., Weinberger D., 2019. The Legalization of Cannabis in the United States and Uruguay: Initial Findings. International Journal on Criminology, vol. 6, n° 2. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.18278/ijc.6.2.2 - Gandilhon M., 2019. Colorado: Cannabis Legalization and the Challenge of Organized Crime. International Journal on Criminology, vol. 6, n° 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18278/ijc.6.2.3 - Masson C., Gandilhon M., 2018. Culture du cannabis en France : de l’artisanat à la production industrielle. Cahiers de la Sécurité et de la Justice, n° 43.

JALPA SHAH Jalpa Shah, [email protected], is a researcher at Santé Publique France. She recently published: - Janssen E., Shah J., Néfau T., Cadet-Taïrou A., 2019. Age of Initiation and Patterns of Use among People Who Inject Drugs Welcomed in Harm Reduction Facilities in France from 2006 to 2015. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, January, p. 1-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2019.1567960 - Milhet M., Shah J., Madesclaire T., Gaissad L., 2019. Chemsex experiences: narratives of pleasure. Drugs and Alcohol Today, vol. 19, n° 1, pp. 11-22. - Shah J., Janssen E., Le Nézet O., Spilka S., 2019. Doping among high school students: findings from the French ESPAD survey. European journal of public health [Online], June. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckz116

NACER LALAM Nacer Lalam, [email protected], is head of Studies and research Department at the French National Institute of higher Studies on Security and Justice (INHESJ). He recently published: - Lalam N., 2018. Payback - towards a EU data management system for seized assets. European Project Co-funded by the Internal Security Fund of the European Union, Directorate-General Migration and Home Affairs. - Lalam N., 2018. L’INHESJ, lieu singulier d’expression du partenariat entre chercheurs et praticiens de la sécurité et de la justice. In Clay T., Fauvarque-Cosson B., Renucci F., Zientara- Logeay S. (dir), États généraux de la recherche sur le droit et la justice. LexisNexis. - Lalam N., 2018. Le faux monnayage en France, acteurs et organisations. France Forum, n° 71.

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Territorial control and the scope and resilience of cannabis and other illegal drug crop cultivation

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

1 Illegal drug crop cultivation is a highly geographical issue since it is, as any other agricultural activity, a spatial phenomenon with obvious territorial dimensions. As such, the extent of illegally cultivated areas in a given country is directly linked to the degree of – or lack of, for that matter – politico-territorial control exerted by the state and its apparatus. Whether cannabis, coca bushes or opium poppies are concerned, drug crop cultivation can only be illegally undertaken and carried out on a large commercial scale in very specific politico-territorial settings. Illegal drug crops are of course cultivated by individual farmers and farming communities for various economic reasons (lack of resources, food insecurity, lack of or limited access to markets, etc.), which have been described and analysed at length in other publications, but this article focuses on what makes drug crop cultivation possible in certain countries despite its illegality.

2 Here the research question is not why farmers illegally cultivate drug crops but why they can do so in spite of it being illegal, that is, is spite of the laws, policies, and actions of the concerned states. In this regard, one can say that the territory is a central issue of illegal drug crop cultivation (Chouvy, 2002) and this paper therefore looks at how the various degrees and types of politico-territorial control exerted by states and their apparatuses explain the existence and the prolongation of illegal drugs cultivation in certain countries or territories.

3 Having worked for decades on illegal opium poppy cultivation in Asia, over the past few years I have started comparing the contexts and drivers of illegal poppy cultivation with those of illegal cannabis cultivation, predominantly in Morocco but also in India and in the United States of America. Comparing illegal cannabis and opium poppy cultivation in very different countries within and outside of Asia proved valuable not only because comparative analyses are always beneficial to the understanding of complex phenomena but also because different illegal drug crops (cannabis, coca,

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opium poppies) are most often studied independently from one another. Therefore, taking opium poppy cultivation into consideration instead of focusing only on cannabis raises questions that would otherwise be ignored.

4 I first included cannabis cultivation in my research in 2004 when I briefly compared (Chouvy, 2004) Afghanistan and Morocco, two Muslim countries where the king is (was in Afghanistan’s case) Amir al-Mu'minin (Commander of the Faithful), where the area of arable land is similar, where the cultivated areas in poppy (Afghanistan in 2004) and cannabis (Morocco in 2003) were equivalent (slightly above 130,000 hectares), and that later (2012) became known as the world’s two foremost hashish producers. As a consequence, this article delves on various case studies from Asia, North Africa and North America (where I have conducted empiric field work) but doesn’t draw on Latin America’s realities and on coca cultivation/production (no empiric data of my own in that region of the world), although similar research questions and explanations most likely apply (given that cannabis, coca, and opium poppies are all cultivated illegally in Latin America).

5 While armed conflicts cannot, on their own or in all cases, fully explain the emergence of illegal agricultural drug industries, they are often and rightly mentioned amongst the foremost factors that lie behind the spread or the sustainability of illegal drug crops, (McCoy, 1991; Labrousse and Koutouzis, 1996; Chouvy, 2002; Labrousse, 2004). Admittedly, the outbreak or the prolongation of armed conflicts in countries or regions already home to illegal drug crop cultivation considerably increases the chances of expanding existing drug crop areas (Chouvy and Laniel, 2007). Indeed, in Afghanistan and in Burma (now also known as Myanmar) long and costly armed conflicts have led to the growth of illegal opium production, notably because the drug economies in each country contributed, to some extent at least, to the funding of their respective wars (Chouvy, 2009). And this is all the more so since their wars, in their many forms and dimensions, have been prolonged to the point of never ending, as if opium production and war were self-sustaining. Whether in Afghanistan or in Burma, the political fragmentation of both state and non-state actors involved in the armed conflicts further drove the recourse to thriving drug economies that ended up motivating at least some of the belligerents (Chouvy, 2002).

6 While there are cases, such as in Morocco, where illegal drug crop cultivation (cannabis) is a historical heritage of distant wars (the 1920s Rif War), there are of course also cases where large-scale commercial illegal drug crops have developed outside of war or armed conflicts, as evidenced by the United States (indoor but also vast outdoor cannabis cultivation) and India (both outdoor cannabis and opium poppy cultivation) (Chouvy, 2008; 2014; 2015). The case of the United States is most interesting for it actually invalidates two of the most often cited causal explanations of illegal drug crop cultivation: war and underdevelopment (along with so-called failed states, overt corruption, etc.). In truth, the fact that there exists a large but not absolute correlation between underdevelopment (or poverty or unemployment outside of the so-called Global South, such as in the United States) and illegal drug crop cultivation, which is comparable to the correlation between agricultural drug economies and war economies, does not seem to be a convincing explanatory factor in itself. Indeed, here correlation is clearly not causation or else there would be a much larger number of countries (at war and, or, poverty-stricken) concerned by large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation.

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7 Yet, one can reasonably estimate that most of the world’s cannabis, coca, and opium poppy growers (peasant farmers or not: see below about the United States and Morocco) resort to the drug economy, out of need, that is, to cope with either poverty (most often, the resource poor in Afghanistan, Burma, Morocco, etc., who have to cope with food deficits and/or the lack of other viable cash crops) or structural unemployment (out-of-work individuals or families in the United States, European countries, Morocco, etc.). There is also, of course, a minority of growers and/or land owners that clearly opts for drug crops out of economic opportunity, as a form of capitalism (some would say greed) (Chouvy, 2009).

8 Also, the large ecological flexibility of the cannabis plant, and in particular the fact that greenhouse and hydroponic growing can be and are largely resorted to, partly explains, along with the global development of a cannabis subculture, the phenomenon that is increasingly taking place in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. Yet, the opium poppy, unlike the coca bush, can also be grown in some of the most diverse parts of the world, due to its large adaptability to very different climatic and edaphic conditions. As a result, legal and illegal opium poppy cultivation is actually found across varied climates in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and even Africa (Chouvy, 2002). However, to the difference of cannabis, whose cultivation and consumption has benefited from a decades-long and quasi-global subculture, the opium poppy is not illegally cultivated on a commercial scale in the Western World (only pharmaceutical opiates are produced) or even in Africa.

9 In the end, it seems that, in the current context of the global prohibition regime of certain drugs and the war on drugs that accompanies it, the occurrence of largescale illegal drug crop cultivation in very diverse countries can be partly explained according to various types (and levels) of politico-territorial control deficit, whether such deficits proceed from corruption, lack of physical or financial means, conflictual and often violent relations between state and non-state actors (or sometimes between opposed state actors), or tacit agreements akin to realpolitik, again between state actors and non-state actors (in which case tacit agreements, such as in Morocco, serve to preserve a certain level of politico-territorial control by the state, and, as a consequence, social and political stability). While a lack of politico-territorial control is never the cause of illegal drug crop cultivation, it can clearly ease the onset and development of an illegal drug industry and one can safely say that such a sufficient level of control deficit is necessary for cannabis, coca or opium poppy crops to be illegally cultivated on large commercial scales against the laws and willpower of concerned states.

Illegal drug crop cultivation and types of politico- territorial control deficit

10 This paper challenges the assumption that illegal drug crop cultivation is necessarily an indicator of failed development and state weakness (as exemplified by the case of the United States). Still, weak politico-territorial control, failed development and state weakness/failure can clearly play crucial roles in enabling or even stimulating the development of illegal drug industries. In fact, territorialisation processes are always complex, fluctuating and often contradictory. This is especially the case in drug- producing areas where multiple ongoing territorial dynamics take place, notably by way of power rivalries over space: in such cases, space control and territorial

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construction or competition can occur through drug production (when the control of illegal drug production enables or facilitates, if only financially, territorial control: northeast India, Morocco), for drug production (control of prime agricultural lands or even non-arable lands, such as deserts, turned into arable lands: some areas of Afghanistan and Burma), or, of course, against drug production (when the state or even some non-state actors are opposed to drug production: United States) (Chouvy, 2002).

11 In other words, illegal drug economies, and especially illegal drug crop cultivation, can and actually most often do proceed from absent, weak, or insufficient politico- territorial control – whether imposed by, or negotiated with, non-state actors (war or armed conflicts, as well as poverty – individual, familial, regional, etc. – being a frequent catalyst or condition, without being necessarily a cause). Here, control is meant as the capacity of the state and its apparatus to exercise restraining influence over its territory and its population, that is, in our specific case, its capacity to forbid largescale drug crop cultivation as implied by state laws and international conventions. When corruption or realpolitik (tacit agreement between the state and parts of its population, as is the case in northeast India and in Morocco but clearly not in the United States) allow for illegal drug cultivation, it obviously and directly affects politico-territorial control (even, of course, if the state has to tolerate drug crops in order to politically control its territory and population) or, rather, the enforcement by the state of its written laws over its territory (law-enforcement capacity). In fact, it can be said that the toleration of illegal drug crops by the state amounts to de facto control of its territory when and where its enables social and political concord (as, again, in northeast India and Morocco) (Chouvy, 2014a; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014).

12 Illegal economies can in turn underpin political settlements that shape processes of state formation or consolidation. After all, the illegal drug productions of Afghanistan and Burma, which can be initially understood as coping strategies in – and of – peripheral and marginalized regions and communities removed from the states’ political centres1, have eventually and gradually enabled (or provoked) the territorial inclusion of the countries’ margins by their respective states, along, notably, processes of economic integration (Shahrani, 1986; Ispahani, 1989; Chouvy, 2002). As Mahnaz Ispahani explains about Southwest Asia’s borderlands, “Whereas states cannot come into existence without the ability to deny access, they cannot be physically consolidated and politically sustained without the ability to expand access ‒ without the extension of the authority and the legitimacy of the center to the peripheries” (Ispahani, 1989, p. 7).

13 Indeed, in Asia’s most important “opium territories”, that is, in the so-called Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent areas, the individual and collective strategies of the various drug entrepreneurs have ended up being means of integration into regional and global economic and political games, as well as the means of economic and political circumvention of what have basically long been centrifugal state policies. Peripheries and, or, margins (in Afghanistan, unlike in Burma, opium poppy cultivation is far from being only relegated to border areas or even to mountainous areas) and their actors have eventually turned such centrifugal policies into centripetal dynamics, notably by transforming from peripheries or margins into centres (it is in the most remote peripheries of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, far away from the region’s political centres and capitals, that the centre(s) of the Golden Triangle emerged). Peripheries and margins can and sometimes do become centres of their own (Chouvy, 2002).

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14 In the end, while politico-territorial control deficit is a sine qua non for illegal drug crop cultivation on large commercial scales, the reasons for such a deficit are as diverse as the considered countries. They are non-exclusive and include armed conflicts, corruption, political bargaining and other domestic or foreign realpolitik, lack of human, economic or material resources, territorial vastness, etc. Clearly, the fact that largescale illegal drug crop cultivation takes place in a given country implies that either the state or parts of its apparatus are actively involved in drug production, or that the state and its authorities do not control (enough to enforce the state’s laws), for whatever reasons, the entire territory that is under their jurisdiction and nominal control.

15 The first case scenario, that of a state that would be actively engaged in illegal drug production, is paradoxical since it has a name of its own (narco-state) that has become extremely common despite a pervasive lack of definition and, even more so, despite the fact that, as I have argued elsewhere, there are no such things as narco-states (Chouvy, 2016). The three most pertinent criteria by which to judge whether a given country would qualify as a narco-state, provided it exists at all, would be: the absolute and relative surface area covered by illegal drug crops; the size of the illegal drug economy relative to the overall economy and, most importantly, the state-sponsorship of illegal drug production and/or trafficking.

16 Contrary to what most definition attempts have described, the ideal narco-state would be the opposite of a state whose institutions have been penetrated by drug trafficking organizations or of a state whose officials have been corrupted by drug money. A state cannot qualify as a narco-state unless illegal drug production and/or trafficking are/is the result of top-down economics where the state developed, if not initiated, an illegal drug industry. For a state to be rightly categorized as a narco-state, the illegal drug industry would have to be sponsored by the state and should contribute to the majority of a country’s overall economy.

17 According to such a definition, neither North Korea nor Afghanistan, arguably the world’s two most drug-tainted economies, can be called narco-states. Indeed, in Afghanistan as well as in all illegal drug-producing countries, North Korea apart, the drug industry is developed through private extraction regimes or through joint extraction regimes that involve both rulers and private actors (Snyder, 2006; Goodhand, 2008). Only in North Korea, where the state is the closest to what a narco- state could supposedly consist of, has the illegal drug industry been developed through a public extraction regime, the state (and not only some state actors of government officials) reportedly coercing some farmers to produce opium rather than grain on parts of the state farms land they till (Hurst, 2005; Lankov, 2011; Perl, 2003).

18 That very specific case apart, most illegal drug-producing countries, and especially states at war, such Afghanistan, Burma or Colombia, are weak or failing states where non-state actors are too strong to be suppressed or ignored by the state. As Joel Migdal wrote, “there can be no understanding of state capabilities in the Third World without first comprehending the social structure of which states are only one part” (Migdal, 1988, p. 34). He further explained how “in circumstances of fragmented social control, the state has become an arena of accommodations”, something that is echoed by the limited access order of Douglass C. North’s natural state (Migdal, 1988, p. 264; North et al., 2009). It therefore appears that weak, failed or natural states – where violence is limited by political manipulation of the economy and the subsequent creation of

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privileged interests (North et al., 2009) – that cannot reign in their strongmen-turned- drug lords, and other powerful potentially anti-government non-state actors, cannot reasonably be called narco-states.

19 The second scenario, that of illegal drug crops permitted by a deficit of territorial control (imposed or negotiated), is much more relevant than that of the so-called narco-state since such national cases exist and abound. There can be said to be three different and non-exclusive types of politico-territorial control deficit. Firstly, there is the case of the state that disposes of all the necessary means of territorial control and that regards the fight against drugs as a non-negotiable principle, but that nevertheless finds itself incapable of fully and permanently controlling its own territory by effectively enforcing its laws (such is the case of the United States). Secondly, there is the state that holds the means of control required, in particular the coercive means, but that chooses to tolerate, to some extent, illegal drug crop cultivation on its territory as a consequence of a binding political and socio-economic context: here, the partial deficit, more than the lack, of politico-territorial control is determined by local realpolitik, and drug law enforcement is not a priority (such are the cases of Morocco and India). Thirdly, there is the state that is challenged by a significant degree of armed opposition and that lacks the means to effectively extend its writ over its entire territory: here, effectively opposing illegal drug crop cultivation is not materially possible (such are the cases of Afghanistan and Burma). The latter two cases are in general also those in which a significant degree of corruption by the authorities (that frequently participate in the protection racket of producers and traffickers) can diminish the effectiveness of the state’s anti-drug policies and actions.

20 The aforementioned deficits in politico-territorial control obviously raise the question of the limits that exist between legality and illegality, between toleration and corruption, and between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The three politico-territorial conditions presented above in the second scenario as distinct types or subtypes (inherent state limitations, state toleration, and state powerlessness) are drawn from case studies presented in previous work and that cannot be reproduced here for lack of space (Chouvy, 2008; 2009; 2014a; 2014b; 2016; Chouvy and Afsahi, 2014)2. Their diversity shows in particular that large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation can be undertaken regardless of political regimes (democratic, dictatorial, monarchical) or of legislative or coercive apparatus (not even the most powerful). In the end, various types and levels of politico-territorial deficit can help explain various types and scales of illegal drug crop cultivation, depending on the politico-territorial contexts of course, but also, obviously, on physical geography.

Types of politico-territorial control deficit and cultivation patterns

21 The types and levels of politico-territorial control deficit can determine not only the scope of drug crop cultivation but also its spatial forms and dimensions. Conversely, the specific spatial forms taken by cannabis, coca and opium poppy cultivation end up reflecting the attitude of the considered states toward drug control and the means at their disposal or invested in their anti-drug actions. The size of the fields, whether they are rain-fed or irrigated, their isolation or grouping into large areas devoted to illegal quasi monoculture, their concealment or not, their distance from roads, towns and

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even regional and national capitals, are among the many indications of a state’s attitude toward illegal drug crop cultivation (or, of course, of its relation to the population involved in illegal cropping).

22 According to the William G. Hoskins a landscape is “both a record, a rich body of evidence about the past, and a problem to be investigated, a complex set of questions to be addressed” (Baker, 2010, p. 115). While landscapes can bear clues of a more or less distant past3, they can also be read as an indication of how state and non-state actors have adapted and keep adapting to one another through mobility, change, and even conflict. Such clues can be found in observing what John Brinckerhoff Jackson has termed the political landscape (produced by the power) and the vernacular landscape (produced by the inhabitants) (Brinckerhoff Jackson, 1984). In most illegal drug crop cultivation areas, whether in the United States, in Morocco, in India, or in Afghanistan and in Burma, drug-crop landscapes tend to display more vernacular features (“where evidences of political organization of space are largely or entirely absent”) than political features (“spaces and structures designed to impose or preserve a unity and order on the land, or in keeping with a long range, large-scale plan”) (Brinckerhoff Jackson, 1984, p. 150). In these countries, the peripheries and margins, or simply the remote areas, being geographically distant from the political centres and their public facilities and infrastructures, are conducive to illegal drug crop cultivation (mountains, deserts, national forests and parks, border zones, etc.).

23 What landscape analysis can reveal about the politico-territorial control exerted by a given state is made obvious, for example, by the contrast that exists between the spatial forms taken by cannabis cultivation in the United States and in Morocco, two very different countries obviously, but two countries where illegal commercial outdoor cannabis cultivation is important, where most growers operate on small-scale “family farms”, and where most of the labour is done by family members, and also neighbours and friends (especially in the United States during the harvest / trimming season when “trimmigrants4” are also needed). Both countries also have their share of growers who are not originally peasant farmers but have come back to their land (“back-to-the- landers” in the USA) or country (“Marocains de l’extérieur” ou “Marocains résidents à l’étranger” (MRE) in Morocco): out-of-work construction workers (Moroccans coming back from Spain), coal miners (Kentucky) or loggers and fishermen (California’s Emerald Triangle) (Meisel, 2017)5.

24 Beside these similarities, cultivation and production techniques differ very much in both countries, not only because the United States produces marijuana and Morocco produces hashish, but also because the cannabis landscapes are radically different. In Morocco, cannabis cultivation is undertaken over entire valleys and slopes. It extends along wadi beds and even runs along some of the Rif’s main roads, in full view (although some fields happen to be somehow dissimulated behind rows of corn) despite its illegality and partly because of the tacit agreement and/or corruption of the authorities. On the opposite, in the United States, when cannabis is not cultivated indoor (including in greenhouses), it is usually grown out of sight, carefully hidden on public land or in third-party agricultural fields. Either way, cultivation is concealed and carried out on lands that usually do not belong to the growers so that they can avoid having their land and property seized by the authorities under the Asset Forfeiture Programme. Cannabis fields have increasingly been cultivated in federal forests, where fields are often booby-trapped to protect the crops from the authorities but also from

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harvest thieves. In the Midwest (America’s corn belt) cannabis fields are often concealed, as is sometimes the case in Morocco, in the middle of cornfields that belong to unsuspicious third-party famers (although in Morocco cannabis and corn would belong to the same farmer).

25 Despite a steady and significant increase in its human and financial means since its inception in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the US counter-narcotics law enforcement federal agency, has never been able to reduce either illegal cannabis cultivation or the number of methamphetamine laboratories, much less drug trafficking in general. Toleration is as evident in Morocco as repression is in the United States, “where researchers have characterized these growers as committing crimes of resistance and accommodation against those perpetrating the exploitation of their labor and environment” (August, 2012, p. 21). The fact remains that cannabis cultivation exists in both countries over vast and comparable areas (reportedly 47,500 ha in Morocco in 2012 and 44,000 ha in the US outdoors only, in 2009), despite its illegality and in part because of the absence (Rif) or the collapse (California, Kentucky) of agriculture-based economies and resource-intensive industries (logging, mining or fishing) (UNODC, 2013; HIDTA, 2010; August, 2012, p. 22).

26 In the radically different Afghan context opium poppies are cultivated over vast areas (201,000 ha in 2016, according to the UNODC), often covering entire valleys, in a proximity to main roads that depends on the local presence and power of the state. The fact that poppy cultivation (and also, increasingly, cannabis cultivation) is so widespread (even if it concerns only about two per cent of Afghan arable lands) and that it is overwhelmingly carried out in plain view attests to the weakness and even, of course, to the corruption of some of the state agencies and agents, which sometimes simply cannot establish the authority of the state in provinces or districts controlled to various degrees by anti-government insurgents. In Afghanistan, as well as in Burma, the armed contestation that takes place in parts of the national territory makes large- scale illegal opium production feasible, whether by non-state armed groups, by some of the poorest rural populations, or by well-connected and powerful landlords who can play their part in the corruption that undermines otherwise limited antidrug policies and actions. The valleys and plains of southern Afghanistan, some of which are covered with irrigated poppy fields, contrast of course with the multitude of much smaller and much more discrete swidden fields that dot the mountainous slopes of northeastern Burma (where the valley bottoms can also occasionally be covered with poppies). In both cases, the weakness and/or corruption of the authorities is readable in the landscape.

27 The same is true of Arunachal Pradesh, India, where state toleration is high but where the mountainous terrain dictates the spatial and altitudinal distribution of poppy fields, from the large plots of land that can be found in the vast flood plains (often on large and poorly accessible silt-rich river islands exposed during low-water periods) to the smaller swidden fields found on even less accessible mountain slopes. Only topography, therefore, blurs the maps of the spatial forms taken by illegal drug crop cultivation and of their political-territorial significance (Chouvy, 2009; 2014).

28 Obviously, and as stressed by geographer Joseph J. Hobbs, “drug landscapes are no ordinary landscapes” (Hobbes, 2004, p. 301). They “either are or are meant to be hidden landscapes, concealed in sometimes unique and creative ways”, as exemplified by the “series of elaborate environmental interventions” mentioned by James H. Mills about

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cannabis cultivation in nineteenth century India: “In seeking to use these landscapes in surreptitious ways they transformed them imaginatively, as they began to look at their local environments in novel ways for the new purpose of avoiding the state’s planned intervention” (Mills, 2004, p. 226).

Politico-territorial control, (il)legality, (il)licitness, and (il)legitimacy

29 When lack or deficit of politico-territorial control is important enough to make large- scale illegal drug crop cultivation possible, it obviously raises questions about how illegality can be decreed by a state and about how illegality can nevertheless be adopted by non-state actors but also by certain state actors. In most cases, the illegality of drug crop cultivation and even of the drug trade actually raises issues of legitimacy and compatibility: illegality of an economic activity often deemed legitimate by those who undertake it, and subsequent incompatibility between legal categories. This is notably the consequence of the slow construction of political-territorial control by modern states that, according to the “Westphalian” ideal type model that underlies nation-states, imposes, not without difficulties, a unitary national law not only over various preexisting, and sometimes contradictory, customary laws, but also over a territory bound by modern borders that replace traditional frontier zones.

30 A border, through its definition and its delimitation processes, modifies the very nature of any traditional trading that preceded its imposition. In fact, the activities suddenly termed smuggling or trafficking are often nothing else than traditional trading turned illegal or traditional goods turned illegal. As Christopher Tomlins aptly stresses: “Legalities generate illegalities, for the two are necessary conditions of each other’s existence. Law, after all, makes outlaws, not law’s absence. Their cheek-by-jowl intimacy, in fact, helps explain how easily, and frequently, legality and illegality trade places » (Tomlins, 2001, p. 3). For example, “what is now called smuggling was normal among the Pashtun nomads of eastern Afghanistan for many generations” (Canfield, 1986, p. 97). Between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as between Burma and Thailand, imposed boundaries cut through frontier zones and tribal land, changing F0 frontiers into borders and creating de facto jurisdictions 2D in effect, bounded legal territories. But boundaries also affect the very nature or existence of trading routes, as “a road through tribal territory is much more than an avenue of mobility” and as borders and state’s legislation eventually imply that “the laws of the state intersect with the laws of the tribe” (Ispahani, 1989, p. 141).

31 As Lord Curzon, Governor General and Viceroy of India (1899-1905), remarked, “the earliest frontiers [actually referring to borders] ‘erected a barrier or created a gap’, that is, restricted movement and access” (Ispahani, 1989, p. 3). What was true in the borderlands of Southwest Asia, and for its borderlanders, can also be observed in the frontier area that stretched between Burma and Siam in the 19th century. The frontier was then said to be “golden, silver paths, free for traders” and “the tribal people wandering in the mountain forests were subjects of no power” (Thongchai, 1994, p. 73). Borders were then far from being boundaries: they were frontiers. Lord Curzon depicted this “widely diffused type of ancient Frontier” that was that of “the intermediary or Neutral Zone”: “This may be described as a Frontier of separation in

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place of contact, a line whose distinguishing feature is that it possesses breadth as well as length”6.

32 Boundaries eventually cut through transfrontier routes and altered the Southeast Asian frontiers from areas linking polities into areas separating polities (Chouvy, 2002). Colonialism and, later, the rise of “nation-states”, required having boundary lines clearly demarcated: “The major principle behind the Asian frontier system was recognition of the desirability of avoiding direct contact between the administered territories of the various colonial empires concerned” (Lamb, 1968, p. 62-63). In Asia, where the power over individuals was traditionally separated from the power over land, since a subject was bound first and foremost to his lord rather than to a state, modern boundaries have “violently and arbitrarily” divided “ethnic peoples into different nationals” (Thongchai, 1994, p. 164). Hence, the ‘external’, or alien, may not really be external “while the ‘internal’ can be made alien or external” as various tribal or refugee people can still experience in Thailand, where many have spent decades waiting for Thai citizenship and thus have never “belonged” to any state or nation (Thongchai, 1994, p. 170).

33 Politico-territorial control and ways of exerting it have been deeply affected, first by colonialism, then by the emergence of nation-states and the imposition of their national laws and their “international” borders. Drug production and trade were obviously amongst the activities affected as the colonial powers happened to encourage and even sometimes coerce farmers into drug crop cultivation especially in peripheral and/or marginal areas. This is clearly what happened in northeast India whose long geographic and political isolation is a clear explanatory factor of its (now illegal) opium production (Chouvy, 2014b).

34 In the same way that the opium and cannabis trades have not been illegal everywhere and at all times, cannabis cultivation (in Morocco or in India) and opium poppy cultivation (in Afghanistan or in India) have not always been prohibited, depending on time and location and the evolutions of international law (the international prohibition slowly developed starting in 1906) and national laws (all the aforementioned countries issued various prohibition edicts). This actually further complicates things for states as consumptions habits and traditions inherited from more or less distant pasts, and still in existence to various degrees in local cultures, make drug law enforcement and broader politico-territorial control all the more delicate and difficult. This is especially the case when drug crop cultivation, but also drug trade and consumption, have been declared illegal under state laws but remain perceived as legitimate by parts of the populations. This was the case, for example, when the 1957 Afghan prohibition of opium was enforced in Badakhshan province (and only there), where opium production was historical and had long been legal. As James Bradford explains, the opium ban in Badakhshan was perceived by the population as “an intrusive and coercive cultural policy” that “exacerbated deeply rooted sentiments that government policy was overtly pro-Pashtun”, thereby “ultimately fragmenting and already fractures state- society relationship” (Bradford, 2015, p. 225-226).

35 Therefore, it is important to distinguish, following Itty Abraham and Willem van Schendel, between what is legal and what is licit, that is, between what “states consider to be legitimate (“legal”)” and what people “consider to be legitimate (“licit”)” (Abraham and van Schendel, 2005, p. 4). The advantage of this distinction is that it allows an approach to legality and illegality that is not binary and, above all, not based

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solely on state-centred conceptions. As the authors rightly stress, “the state’s claim to a monopoly of regulated predation and redistribution of proceeds (i.e., taxation and state expenditure) is based on the delegitimization of other forms of predation that are constructed as robbery, piracy, fraud, warlordism, or racketeering. But, historically, the boundary of illicitness has shifted back and forth as bandits helped make states and states made bandits” (Abraham and van Schendel, 2005, p. 7). This is what Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen remind us of when they write that it was in “the hothouse created by China’s disintegration and the League’s successes, that gangsters and politicians molded the modern international narcotics trafficking industry”. As a consequence, they explain that “the symbiotic relationship between trafficker and politician that has become the dominant feature of the contemporary drug trade has its roots in Asia in the early twentieth century” (Meyer and Parssinen, 1998, p. 12). In fact, beyond such symbiotic relationships it appears that in most major illegal drug producing countries, and as Kathleen Frydl has stated, drug control sometimes becomes “a valued tool of statecraft”, one that can, eventually, develop “into less of a specific mission and more of a modality, a way to exercise state power” (Frydl, 2013, p. 25).

36 Whether traditional opium consumption in Iran, religious cannabis consumption in India, or modern “recreational” cannabis consumption in the United States is concerned, the people and communities involved in what is basically illegal drug production, trade and consumption “defy the norms and rules of formal political authority” because they find their illegal activities to be acceptable and legitimate (Abraham and van Schendel, 2005, p. 4). Therefore, illegal drug crop cultivation reveals the contradictory relations that different and opposed actors have to legality and illegality. While drug crop cultivation is prohibited under international law and most national laws, drug production for non-pharmaceutical uses is widely perceived as legitimate, some will say licit, by producers and consumers alike. Indeed, Abraham and van Schendel explain: “Legal restrictions often come up against socially sanctioned practices, and while this may have the effect of driving these practices into the sphere of criminality, it does not eliminate them nor does it necessarily force them into hiding” (Abraham and van Schendel, 2005, p. 19). This helps to understand why the debates on the legitimacy of drugs illegality have multiplied worldwide in the past decade and especially in the United States (where a few states have legalized cannabis production and consumption), in Latin America (where the failure and the costs of the prohibition and its associated war on drugs have been denounced by several heads of states), or in Morocco (where the illegality of the cannabis industry has been discussed in parliament).

37 The inherent and necessary limitations of the politico-territorial control exerted by the states, whatever their political regimes and the means at their disposal, are made obvious by the dimensions and various spatial forms taken by illegal drug crop cultivation. It is ultimately the territory that lies at the very centre of the illegal drug crop cultivation issue, being the theater of the many rivalries, the often duplicitous games and the many interrelations that take place between societies, states and their apparatuses. Complete politico-territorial control is of course impossible and as a consequence neither drug production and trafficking, nor drug consumption7 are achievable goals. Between total repression, state toleration, corruption, and even the abandonment of a costly and ineffective war on drugs, the states and the societies involved in the drug industry draw an ever-revised map of illegality. At the end of the

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day, and in spite of the battles that have been waged and sometimes won here and there, the impossibility of complete politico-territorial control, even by the most powerful, calls for the recognition that the war on drugs has long been lost (Chouvy, 2009).

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UNODC, 2013. World Drug Report 2013 [Online]. New York, United Nations, 115 + xvii p. https:// www.unodc.org/unodc/secured/wdr/wdr2013/World_Drug_Report_2013.pdf

Whitehead A. N., 1925. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 296 p.

NOTES

1. Furthermore, in the “galactic” or “mandala” polities of Southeast Asia where frontier and border areas were traditionally managed differently (Tambiah, 1976). 2. Texts available on www.geopium.org. 3. “The English landscape itself, to those who know how to read it aright, is the richest historical record we possess. There are discoveries to be made in it for which no written documents exist, or have ever existed” (Hoskins, 1955, p. 14). 4. Migrants whose labour is needed for the labour-intensive trimming of cannabis leaves. 5. In the United States, businessman growers (including the so-called “hustler growers”) are a minority and subsistence farmers a majority: “back-to-the-landers”, “pragmatists” and “communal growers” in California for example, and “low-lifes” in Kentucky. The resort to seasonal workers (Mexicans in California) only takes place on larger farms, mostly those of the businessman growers (August, 2012, p. 15-20). 6. Text of the 1907 Romanes Lecture on the subject of Frontiers by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India (1898-1905) and British Foreign Secretary 1919-24): Website of The International Boundaries Research Unit (http://www-ibru.dur.ac.uk/docs/curzon1.html).

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7. As the biologist and pharmacognosist Jean-Marie Pelt pointed out: “drug sticks to Man like the skin to his flesh” (Pelt, 1983, p. 14).

ABSTRACTS

As revealed by the examples of Morocco, northeast India, Afghanistan, Burma/Myanmar, and the United States of America, degrees of politico-territorial control or law-enforcement deficit by the state can explain, to some extent, the existence of large expanses of illegal drug cultivation. Causes of politico-territorial control deficit are many and non-exclusive. They include armed conflicts, corruption, loosely integrated territories, and lack of financial, human and material means of asserting state control. Large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation can take place according to three main scenarios: that of a full-fledged but inefficient war on drugs; that of toleration, for various motives, of illegal drug plant cultivation by the state (which can amount to negotiated but effective control); and that of the militarily-challenged state that cannot exert full control over its territory. The fact that total politico-territorial control by the state, no matter how powerful and resourceful, is deemed impossible, shows that the war on drugs is doomed to fail despite how many battles were won. Eventually, the very limits of the state’s politico- territorial control, when applied to counter-narcotics and law enforcement, implicitly question the illegality of a practice that is considered legitimate by many.

INDEX

Keywords: Drug crop, territorial control, counter-narcotics, world, state

AUTHOR

PIERRE-ARNAUD CHOUVY Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, [email protected], is a geographer at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France, UMR 8586 Prodig. He edits www.geopium.org and www.chouvy-geography.com. He recently published: - Chouvy P.-A., 2018, De la recherche de terrain sur la production agricole illégale de drogue, L’Espace Politique [En ligne], vol. 35, n° 2. http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/5372 - Chouvy P.-A., Macfarlane J., 2018. Agricultural Innovations in Morocco’s Cannabis Industry. International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 58, p. 85-91. - Chouvy P.-A., 2018. Illegal drug plant cultivation and armed conflicts. Case studies from Asia and Northern Africa. In Zurayk R., Woertz E., Bahn R.A.(ed.), Crisis and Conflict in the Agrarian World: An Evolving Dialectic. Oxon, CABI Publishing, p. 64-72.

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Sur l'Ecrit

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Du terrain à la fiction : l’écriture d’une Mexamérique méconnue Entretien avec Jean-Baptiste Maudet autour de son roman Matador Yankee (2019), réalisé à Paris le 3 avril 2019

Jean-Baptiste Maudet et Serge Weber

RÉFÉRENCE

Jean-Baptiste Maudet Matador Yankee Prix Orange du Livre 2019 2019. Paris, Les Éditions Le passage, 192 p.

Serge Weber (SW). Jean-Baptiste Maudet, merci d’avoir accepté de parler de votre livre Matador Yankee, paru en janvier 2019 aux Éditions Le Passage. En guise de résumé, voici la quatrième de couverture : Harper aurait pu avoir une autre vie. Il a grandi à la frontière, entre deux mondes. Il n’est pas tout à fait un torero raté. Il n’est pas complètement cowboy. Il n’a jamais vraiment gagné gros, et il n’est peut-être pas non plus le fils de Robert Redford. Il aurait pu aussi ne pas accepter d’y aller, là-bas, chez les fous, dans les montagnes de la Sierra Madre, combattre des vaches qui ressemblent aux paysans qui les élèvent. Et tout ça, pour une dette de jeu. Maintenant, il n’a plus le choix. Harper doit retrouver Magdalena, la fille du maire du village, perdue dans les bas-fonds de Tijuana. Et il ira jusqu’au bout. Parfois, se dit-il, mieux vaut se laisser glisser dans l’espace sans aucun contrôle sur le monde alentour… Alors les arènes brûlent. Les pick-up s’épuisent sur la route. Et l’or californien ressurgit de la boue. Avec Matador Yankee, sur les traces de son héros John Harper, Jean-Baptiste Maudet entraîne le lecteur dans un road trip aux odeurs enivrantes, aux couleurs saturées, où les fantômes de l’histoire et du cinéma se confondent. Les vertèbres de l’Amérique craquent sans se désarticuler. Si vous le voulez bien, je vous propose de commencer par vous inviter à commenter une brève citation de votre roman : « l’immense frontière entre le Mexique et les États-Unis

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regorgeait de massacres exotiques qui n’avaient rien à envier à ceux d’aujourd’hui » (p. 28). Il me semble en effet qu’un des personnages principaux de votre roman, c’est cette région de frontière entre Mexique et États-Unis qu’on a appelé Mexamérique, et dont les ambiances sont omniprésentes dans ce livre. Le titre que vous avez choisi le souligne peut- être plus encore. Jean-Baptiste Maudet (JBM). Cette frontière est très cinématographique, on la voit fréquemment à l’écran au sujet des migrants, des trafics de drogues, des mafias, des rivalités entre les États-Unis et le Mexique. Ces éléments contribuent à la fixer dans son iconographie, dans sa géographie et sa linéarité alors qu’elle a été longtemps une marge floue, une zone indécise de conflits dans le cadre de l’empire espagol puis d’une guerre territoriale dans les années 1846-1848. Ce fait a été en quelque sorte occulté par la conquête de l’Ouest, alors qu’elle était non pas une frontière fixée, mais un confin aride et rugueux, objet incessant d’aventures, de pénétration, de circulations d’Indiens, de Mexicains, de Métis, de Blancs. Aujourd’hui on retient surtout l’histoire de la conquête de l’Ouest ou bien l’opposition Nord/Sud de la frontière linéaire, du mur, des patrouilles, des contrôles sans parvenir à faire assez coexister son épaisseur historique et géographique de marge indécise et de mélanges qu’elle continue d’être dans de nombreux domaines.

SW. « Les arènes de la frontière » (p. 26) : cette expression semble indiquer que le thème qui guide votre écriture aussi bien que votre travail de chercheur, les jeux taurins, jouent comme un révélateur de cette histoire frontalière. JBM. Oui, à partir du moment où les États-Unis ont interdit la pratique de la tauromarchie, des clivages Nord/Sud importants sont apparus au sein de cette trilogie humains-chevaux-bovins commune à tout le continent. Il y avait des arènes dans des villes comme Los Angeles ou San antonio, il y avait des spectcales taurins dans ces confins septentrionnaux du Mexique qui sont aujourd’hui du côté étatsunien. À partir du moment où les États-Unis ont récupéré la Californie, le Nouveau Mexique, l’Arizona et le Texas et qu’ils ont fixé la frontière, à l’issue de la guerre de 1846-48, ils ont récupéré entre un tiers et la moitié du territoire mexicain. Dès ce moment, les corridas ont disparu. Elles ont été interdites pour des raisons éthiques, qui touchaient déjà à la violence faite aux animaux et à un puritanisme anglosaxon plus général au sujet des spectacles. S’est donc fixée là une frontière, en particulier en Californie, avec d’un côté un pays taurin, le Mexique, et de l’autre une immense agglomération, Los Angeles, à proximité, avec un public potentiellement intéressé par tout ce qui se passait chez le voisin, les jeux, la prostitution, les casinos, l’alccol, les corridas. La frontière a fixé des lieux, les arènes pour la corrida, qui longent cette frontière, à Tijuana, Tecate, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez, etc. Elles ont longtemps été nourries par le public de Los Angeles et le chapelet de villes jumelles situées de l’autre de côté de la frontière. Les arènes de Tijuana ont connu des heures fastes dans les années 1940 et 1950 avec toutes les stars d’Hollywood qui s’y pressaient. On a ces images d’un public de stars comme Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, Hemingway, James Coburn, Yul Brunner… Puis la corrida est quelque peu tombée en désuétude, peut-être aussi une certaine fascination pour le Mexique, et surtout c’est devenu politiquement incorrect dans le milieu hollywoodien d’aimer la tauromachie, et ce jusqu’à aujoudhui.

SW. On sent que vos recherches sur les corridas et les rodéos, pour lesquelles vous êtes connu comme géographe, vous ont donné une sensibilité particulière à ce monde où les relations entre humains et animaux sont si présentes. Vous évoquez notamment les liens avec l’élevage et la filière agroalimentaire en arrière-plan. « On pouvait encore voir à son

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époque quelques corridas aux États-Unis, notamment dans les villes du bétail ou l’on stockait les vaches avant de les envoyer aux abattoirs de Chicago » (p. 27). Comment avez vous tissé ces fils à votre intrigue littéraire ? JBM. La principale piste du bétail est orientée sud-nord : c’est le bétail du Texas qui remonte vers les villes des grandes plaines, jusqu’aux gares ferroviaires qui acheminent les bêtes vers les abattoirs de Chicago. Les pistes du bétail et des cowboys passaient par des relais comme Abilene, Dodge City, qui sont des hauts lieux de l’imaginaire western. Les cowboys qui y récupéraient, en arrivant, la paie du transport du bétail la dépensaient immédiatement aux saloons, en jeux, prostitution et, justement, à de rares occasions, à quelques corridas, dans une ambiance où l’offre de spectacle était très forte ; il est ainsi arrivé que quelques toreros mexicains tentent d’exporter le spectacle plus au Nord. En l’occurrence, les témoignages de l’époque que j’ai pu trouver montre que la mise a mort a créé des problèmes, refusée par les autorités locales et par les ligues puritaines, mais ces lieux-là plus largement ont favorisé des mélanges d’influences en tous genres entre cowboys, entre spécialistes du bétail et entre quantité de pratiques spectaculaires. C’est cette liaison entre les abattoirs de Chicago et l’élevage extensif de l’Ouest qui a participé à la création de l’imagerie western où finalement se mêlent des influences beaucoup plus larges.

SW. Comment avez-vous réussi à vous défaire d’une façon scientifique d’écrire ? Votre écriture est absolument libre de lourdeur documentaire, elle est au contraire très concise, épurée, rythmée, sensible et sensuelle, elle se restreint à rendre palpables et présents les atmosphères et les caractères. Comment avez-vous réussi à rendre aussi léger ce bagage d’un chercheur qui s’est longtemps immergé dans les « terres de taureaux » et qui compte certainement dans l’économie du roman ? JBM. Les jeux taurins sont en effet au cœur de mon travail de thèse, avec Terres de taureaux, publié en 2010. Nous avons ensuite approfondi cette question dans un travail avec l’anthropologue Frédéric Saumade en Californie, qui a donné lieu à l’ouvrage Cowboys, clowns et toreros (2014) autour des relations entre corrida et rodéo. Ce qui mérite d’être noté, c’est que ces deux univers spectaculaires se tournent le dos, les deux figures, du cowboy et du torero, ne sont presque jamais articulées. Or, le rodéo et la corrida sont les deux seules pratiques spectaculaires mondialement connues où s’affrontent des hommes, taureaux et des chevaux, il n’y en a pas d’autres. Si on dit à un aficionado de corrida que le rodéo a quelque chose en commun avec la corrida, il va le rejeter comme un spectacle vulgaire de bouseux texan. À l’inverse, un amateur de rodéo va prétendre que, pour des raisons éthiques, le rodéo n’a rien à voir avec la corrida qui lui semblera barbare. Or, n’oublions pas que le mot rodéo est un mot d’origine hispanique, ce mot à lui seul peut suffir à illustrer l’importance de ce cousinage. Il faut bien avoir en tête qu’il n’y avait ni taureaux ni chevaux sur le continent américain avant l’arrivée des Espagnols : le rodéo se pose nécessairement comme une transformation culturelle sur le temps long de l’élevage extensif de bétail et des spectacles, tous deux importés par la colonisation espagnole. On a deux imaginaires qui se tournent le dos alors qu’il existe une filiation historique entre ces pratiques. Ce qui est intéressant, c’est que le cowboy est souvent associé à l’imaginaire de la conquête de l’Ouest, c’est-à-dire de ces colons qui se projettent vers l’Ouest par un front d’américanisation du sauvage et de la wilderness. Or, l’histoire réelle des cowboys est liée à l’héritage hispanoaméricain, bien plus qu’à celle des farmers progressant par l’est et qui, au départ, ne connaissent rien à l’élevage extensif de

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bétail propre à la péninsule ibérique et à ses conquêtes coloniales. Il y a d’une certaine manière une forme de « blanchiment de l’histoire » à cet égard.

SW. Oui, vous l’écrivez p. 105, « un immense blanchiment de l’histoire »… JBM. Les cowboys sont d’abord métis avant d’être Anglo, on s’en aperçoit simplement si l’on observe qu’il y a des rodéos dans tous les pays de l’Amérique latine. Dans les réserves indiennes où j’ai fait du terrain en Californie, notamment la Tule River Reservation où vivent des Indiens Yokut, ils sont très conscients que ce sont pour nombre d’entre eux des « Indiens cowboys », ils élèvent du bétail, ils organisent des spectacles, ils font partie de cette histoire américaine du rodéo, ils sont fiers d’être d’une certaine façon les premiers cowboys au sens historique, même si, bien évidemment, ils n’y pensent pas tous les jours. Dans ce contexte précis de la Sierra Nevada, car la réserve s’éleve assez haut dans la montagne, ils sont en outre « les derniers cowboys » à pouvoir faire véritablement de l’élevage extensif « à l’ancienne ». En effet, les autres ranchers, généralement des Anglo, sont spatialement contraints par la présence des parcs naturels régionaux ou nationaux. Les cowboys blancs sont cantonnés dans le bas du piedmont, plus secs, alors que les Indiens ont de magnifiques alpages d’altitude en été. En Californie, entre les taxes, la sanctuarisation et l’extension de l’agriculture irriguée dans la vallée, l’activité d’élevage de la Sierra Nevada se trouve limitée à un espace de plus en plus étroit. Pour ce qui est de la question littéraire, j’ai en effet souhaité me démarquer absolument d’un roman qui serait historique ou géographique. Mais la bonne connaissance de cette région m’a permis paradoxalement de m’appuyer sur cette matière sans aucun souci de documenter ma fiction par du vraisemblable. D’une part, j’ai senti une grande liberté car j’avais dans la tête des images, des voix, des gueules omniprésentes au moment de l’écriture, et d’autre part j’ai été particulièrement vigilant à ne pas faire le géographe de service qui « plante le décor » ni l’ethnologue qui aurait l’intention de mettre en fiction une enquête ethnographique. Connaître la « langue scientifique » m’a certainement permis d’être à l’aise pour m’en libérer, pour raconter une histoire, faire vivre des êtres par les mots et cet immense mystère qui s’ouvre au moment de l’écriture, dès qu’on est pris par le vertige de la littérarité et de la poétique de notre rapport au monde. Comme le dit beaucoup mieux que moi Barbara Cassin1 : « il faut au moins deux langues pour savoir qu’on en parle une » (Durand-Bogaert, 2014).

SW. L’essentiel de votre roman se passe dans la montagne, une autre Sierra, la Sierra Madre occidentale. Les principaux lieux du roman s’y trouvent, le village de Cerocachi, Hermosillo, la route de la fuite en voiture… Pourriez-vous nous en dire plus ? JBM. J’avais envie de souligner la cohérence de cette immense barrière montagneuse pacifique. Elle a souvent été effacée par des frontières politiques, alors que sur le plan faunistique, floristique ou autre, elle a constitué à la fois une grande voie de circulation, de refuge et un espace de diversification. Les hautes terres forment un lien et relient le continent, même irrégulièrement. J’utilise cette image de « vertèbre de l’Amérique » qui craque mais ne se désarticule pas et qui joue comme une ligne de fuite visuelle et musicale. J’ai cherché à ce que les personnages puissent se mouler dans cet axe méridien qui n’est pas celui des oppositions frontalières ni des États, mais une fluidité sur le temps long du continent. J’ai préféré situer ce village, cette fuite, cette montée à Hermosillo dans des hautes terres plus diversifiées, plutôt que

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dans des déserts, aussi pour montrer d’autres paysages que ceux de l’Ouest américain qui saturent notre imaginaire dès qu’il est question de western et d’aridité.

SW. Même si vous restez très discret, on sent que vous portez malgré vous un regard de géographe sur les lieux. Comment avez-vous construit le village dans lequel l’intrigue débute, quel regard portez-vous sur la communauté rurale au Mexique ? JBM. Le village de Cerocachi n’existe pas. J’ai inventé un toponyme qui pourrait correspondre aux toponymes de cette région, au sud d’Hermosillo. C’est une région très enclavée que j’ai utilisée à la fois comme un confin montagneux et comme un modèle de communauté rurale tiraillée par la pauvreté, par les problèmes d’une agriculture vivrière qui souffre des enjeux de l’agriculture commerciale, et où se posent des problèmes ethniques et raciaux entre Indiens, Blancs, révélant les hiérarchies liées aux degrés de métissage. Les Indiens sont souvent les plus pauvres, les plus discriminés. Les classes moyennes, les édiles, les notables sont souvent plus blancs de peau. J’avais aussi envie de réintroduire cette idée toute simple qui nous échappe parfois, car on est focalisés par les minorités et le communautarisme américains : il y a des Indiens au Mexique, en particulier au nord, la question indienne n’est pas réservée aux régions plus au sud et mieux connues comme le Chiapas. Il y a une sorte d’aveuglement sur l’identité mexicaine. On a l’impression que cet univers se partage entre les cowboys, les Indiens et les Mexicains qui constituent la trilogie hollywoodienne de cet espace géographique alors que les Indiens peuvent être cowboys, les cowboys peuvent être des Indiens, les Mexicains sont aussi des Indiens, etc. Stetson, plumes et large sombrero ne suffisent pas à parler des personnes qui vivent dans ces régions.

SW. Au cours du développement de l’intrigue, il semble qu’un maillage géographique se dessine, avec des logiques spatiales. En particulier une hiérarchie spatiale des arènes (p. 109), qui permet également de pénétrer dans ce monde étrange et fascinant des arènes, avec leur économie, leurs acteurs, les propriétaires ou les impresarios, leur déclin… (p. 24) JBM. La hiérarchie spatiale de la « planète des taureaux », terme utilisé pour décrire cette communauté d’amateurs de corrida, est clairement centrée sur l’Espagne, en particulier Madrid et Séville. Centralité plutôt économique à Madrid, centralité davantage esthétique et patrimoniale à Séville. Même depuis l’Amérique, où elles sont nombreuses, toutes les arènes regardent ce qui se passe en Espagne. Les toreros d’Amérique du sud essaient de faire carrière en Espagne. Il y a également toute une hiérarchie américaine : celles de Mexico font partie des grandes arènes latino- américaines, même si elles sont régulièrement montrées du doigt pour leur mauvaise gestion ; mais il y a aussi Aguascalientes (également au Mexique), Lima, Cali, Manizales, quelques hauts lieux de la tauromachie américaine. Viennent ensuite, bien sûr, les petites arènes de province. Plus elles sont petites, plus les pratiques s’hybrident avec le rodéo : dans les fêtes de village, quand on descend en bas de la hiérarchie des arènes, qui sont parfois éphémères, construites sur la place du village avec des planches en bois, bien malin celui qui pourrait y différencier corrida et rodéo. Ici, dans les pratiques populaires, en grande partie invisibles pour le grand public, on joue à « los toros ».

SW. Le personnage principal, Harper, dont l’esprit flotte non sans une certaine nonchalance vers des ailleurs récurrents, des lieux où il a toréé, des villes qu’il a connues et fréquentées, me donne envie de vous demander si, pour ancrer avec autant de vie et de force ce personnage nonchalant et un peu évanescent, vous avez eu l’occasion de rencontrer des personnes qui auraient pu servir de modèles. Votre manière de le situer, presque en creux,

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avec une virtuosité de l’économie de moyens, laisse imaginer que vous avez eu le temps de vous familiariser avec le métier de torero, et les déplacements à travers le pays en truck, pour aller d’une arène à l’autre... JBM. Le terrain que nous avons mené avec Frédéric Saumade en Californie, qui s’est étalé sur quatre ans, nous a permis de suivre des trajectoires de cowboys, et de prendre en compte cette fascination qu’ils ont pour la route, fascination qui n’est pas sans évoquer d’ailleurs celle pour la piste chez les premiers cowboys, voir celle des pionniers américains et de leur charriots. On voit qu’un parallèle se crée, une analogie entre les cowboys de la piste qui vont dépenser leur argent dans les tripots et les cowboys de rodéo qui traversent l’Amérique en truck pour gagner peut-être de l’argent, s’ils sont touchés par la grâce, qu’ils vont dépenser immédiatement dans les fêtes de village.

SW. Il semble que vous faites la même chose pour un autre métier plutôt surprenant, celui de karateka, puisque le maire du village est un ancien karateka… JBM. Cela m’est venu plutôt comme ressort littéraire, avec l’idée de ne pas exotiser ni d’essentialiser la culture des Mexicains. Evidemment qu’au Mexique il n’y a pas que des pratiques mexicaines ! Evidemment, on fait du karaté au Mexique aussi ! Disons que ce serait un peu la touche postcoloniale et humoristique. Pourquoi cela nous surprendrait qu’un Mexicain soit un champion de karaté ? Au-delà de cette pique qui nous renvoie à nos propres représentations de l’exotisme, je ne pas choisi par hasard un sport de combat qui pose toujours des questions sur la vie et sur la peur (la mort et le courage si l’on préfère) et l’engagement du coprs. Cela m’évitait aussi de forcer le trait de la couleur locale. C’est peut-être aussi absurde d’être un karateka mexicain qu’un torero étatsunien de Los Angeles ; et pourtant il faudrait peut-être considérer cela comme assez banal. Disons que ce serait ici la touche de liberté du sujet face au regard culturaliste.

SW. Le lecteur découvre des éléments de contexte inattendus, que vous évoquez, au détour d’une phrase, et qui produisent un effet de surprise permanente. Par exemple, à propos de la place de l’animal dans votre texte, dont on comprend au fur et à mesure qu’elle est liée à élevage de façon plus générale et à la filière agroindustrielle (p. 60), tout en ayant un envers « culturel » et identitaire, le lecteur qui ne connaît pas ce monde découvre l’existence d’« amis portugais spécialisés dans l’élevage » (p. 56)… JBM. Il y a en effet une grosse communauté portugaise en Californie. Ce sont des descendants d’immigrants qui venaient des Açores, qui n’avaient jamais mis pied sur le sol du Portugal continental. Ils ont perpétué et continuent à perpétuer des fêtes locales en Californie. Or, ces Portugais, avec les Hollandais, maîtrisent environ la moité du business du lait en Californie. Il faut avoir présent à l’esprit que la Californie est le premier Etat agricole des États-Unis et le lait constitue une ressource économique de premier plan. Il s’agit donc d’une puissante communauté portugaise et c’est elle qui a réussi à réintroduire, en 1957, la pratique de la corrida sur le sol américain. Néanmoins le spectacle a été quelque peu transformé pour respecter les lois de protection des animaux en vigueur, il s’agit d’une corrida sans mise à mort (conformément à ce qui se fait au Portugal) mais également sans effusion de sang puisque les banderilles ont des pointes en velcro qui viennent se « planter » sur un tapis fixé sur l’animal. Il y a donc eu des corridas sur le sol américain par le passé, qui ont ensuite été interdites lorsque ces territoires sont passés du coté étasunien et, finalement, elles font leur retour par le biais de l’émigration portugaise en Californie, avec quelques incursions au Texas. Une des justifications de ce revirement repose sur

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le fait qu’elles intègrent les fêtes religieuses portugaises et s’appuient ainsi sur le premier amendement de la constitution américaine relatif à la liberté religieuse. Voilà pourquoi il y a cette allusion en apparence incongrue dans le roman : les Portugais sont allés chercher les taureaux de combat au Mexique et ont fondé aux États-Unis des élevages de taureaux pour leurs corridas. Il y a aujourd’hui une quinzaine d’arènes luso-californiennes qui proposent annuellement des spectacles, y compris à Los Angeles.

SW. Plusieurs personnages semblent connecter le roman et l’intrigue du roman avec les espaces de la mémoire, notamment la mémoire indienne, en particulier cette vieille femme assise dans le bus et le grand père d’Adela, Jeromo, que l’on croit être un ancien marin et qui finalement réincarne à sa façon la présence de Geronimo, personnage historique et quasiment légendaire, qu’on retrouve à contempler l’océan depuis la Floride… JBM. Geronimo est intéressant car il a combattu l’armée mexicaine et l’armée des États-Unis. Et je trouvais intéressant qu’un personnage de fiction puisse être le fantôme d’un personnage historique. Le double patronyme du grand-père, Jeromo Miranda Miranda, qui vient du verbe « voir », fonctionne un peu comme une clé de lecture, un double effet miroir, le personnage qui, effacé au départ, va se transformer au fur et à mesure, va devenir lui-même et va permettre aux autres de se voir en lui. Pourquoi contemple-t-il l’océan depuis la Floride ? J’avais envie d’utiliser le fait que ce personnage de Geronimo, au gré des multiples déportations des Indiens, est allé jusqu’à Miami, c’est-à-dire qu’il a vu l’océan par lequel les européens sont arrivés. Il se retrouve face à la mer qui a charrié les hommes qui feront le malheur de son peuple et il y voit malgré tout une poésie, celle des grands espaces, des baleines qui lui rappellent les bisons dans la plaine et ses ondulations de prairies. Et, inversement, Miguel refait la route des Indes à l’envers, plus exactement la route de l’or à l’envers : l’or qu’il va découvrir à Tijuana, il le rapporte à Séville. C’était essentiellement des clins d’œil à l’histoire de la colonisation, celle des massacres des Indiens, du commerce de l’or, je n’avais aucune ambition pédagogique, mais ces fils réveillent les multiples imaginaires qui connectent l’Europe et l’Amérique, ils réveillent les mouvements historiques profonds des relations trans-atlantiques. Volontairement, c’est une fiction et rien d’autre, j’ai été attentif à ne pas inclure de la connaissance scientifique accessoire au récit, il y a très peu de descriptions, le moins possible, et l’arrière fond historique ou géographique n’est quasiment pas documenté. J’ai essayé d’être le plus attentif possible à la séparation des genres, car écrire un roman en tant que chercheur rend particulièrement sensible la question de la transmission des connaissances. Je sais bien qu’elle peut-être intéressante, je sais bien que de grands romans peuvent-être aussi de grandes sources d’information sur une époque ou un milieu. Mais je souhaitais dans mon écriture interroger ce sur quoi repose le vraisemblable, le romanesque, le fictionnel, et cela peut reposer sur très peu de choses, sur quelques détails capables de faire tenir un édifice qui est co- construit entre l’auteur et le lecteur, d’autant plus lorsqu’on s’appuie sur un univers saturé de représentations comme celui de l’Ouest américain. C’est volontaire, de documenter le moins possible, j’ai apporté beaucoup de soin à la recherche de cet équilibre.

SW. En effet, là aussi, c’est une remarquable économie de moyens, il n’y a rien en trop dans l’écriture. A ce propos, même si cette question peut sembler déplacée, en lisant Matador Yankee et en découvrant votre maîtrise de la narration, j’ai évidemment pensé à quelques écrivains, dont les ambiances, la concision, les atmosphères m’avaient marqué de la même

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manière que votre roman, comme Raymond Carver ou John Fante. Vous placez-vous sous le signe de certaines inspirations littéraires américaines ? Ou bien le cinéma, beaucoup plus explicitement présent (notamment les westerns, p. 54, p. 105, etc.), est-il prépondérant ? JBM. Pour les dialogues, oui c’est vrai, je suis un grand admirateur de Carver et d’Hemingway, j’aime ces façons de faire dialoguer les personnages, avec peu de gras, mais ce sont des influences, plutôt que des auteurs, sur lesquelles je m’appuie, ce sont des genres qui m’ont inspiré, le polar, le western, les romans d’aventure, ceux qui mélangent littérature et cinéma. Le cinéma m’a en effet davantage influencé. Les westerns, de nombreux westerns, tous ceux de Sergio Leone, ceux qui réussissent l’articulation entre culture savante et culture populaire. C’est cela qui m’a beaucoup influencé dans mon roman et qui me fascine dans les productions littéraires et dans le cinéma. Bien sûr, Jeremiah Johnson. Les films de Sydney Pollack avec Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy et le Sundance Kid, qui est un modèle de film d’aventure, plein de nostalgie, qui équilibre très subtilement culture savante et culture populaire, qui noie le clivage, le dissout. La couverture du livre en est issue, ce sont les jambes de Robert Redford que l’on voit sur la couverture. Egalement, les films de Tarantino, qui relèvent de cette même tension, de ce même équilibre. Bien évidemment, The Misfits ( Les Désaxés), dont les dialogues sont absolument merveilleux, un film qui parle de façon visionnaire de la transformation de nos rapports aux animaux. Et plus encore dans le livre d’Arthur Miller que dans le film, les dialogues sont véritablement une claque. Ce qui m’intéresse tout particulièrement dans Butch cassidy and the Sundance Kid de Geroge Roy Hill, c’est cette fin : l’image reste figée à l’écran et le son continue, cette image immobilisée est un procédé également utilisé, je crois, dans Jeremiah Johnson. Cela m’a d’autant plus intéressé que dans la vraie histoire de Butch Cassidy et le Kid, on n’est pas certain qu’ils soient vraiment morts là, à l’endroit où ils sont censés être enterrés. Il y a une querelle historique pour savoir s’ils sont bien morts à San Vicente. Je crois même qu’il y a eu des analyses ADN, on a déterré les corps et, en fait, les tombes où l’on pensait qu’ils étaient enterrés ne sont pas les leurs. Des témoignages tendent à prouver que Butch Cassidy aurait continué à vivre aux États-Unis.

SW. Le lieu de la mort et de la sépulture n’est donc pas pour rien dans la géographie de Matador Yankee ? JBM. Cette fin où les personnes de fictions rejoignent les personnages réels et qui semble dire qu’on a davantage de certitude sur ce qui arrive aux personnages de fiction qu’aux personnages réels, c’est justement le thème d’un des derniers films dans lesquels a joué Sam Shepard, un Butch Cassidy âgé qui aurait échappé à la fusillade de fin… C’est pour cela que le livre s’ouvre sur cette phrase de Sam Shepard tirée de son ouvrage Lune Faucon : Comme au cinéma Comme la vie imitant le cinéma Comme la chair et le sang.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Durand-Bogaert F., 2014. Barbara Cassin – “Il faut au moins deux langues pour savoir qu’on en parle une” [Entretien]. Genesis [En ligne], vol. 38. http://journals.openedition.org/genesis/1294 - DOI : 10.4000/genesis.1294

Maudet J.-B., 2010. Terres de taureaux. Les jeux taurins de l’Europe à l’Amérique. Madrid, Casa de Velazquez, 494 p.

Maudet J.-B., Saumade F., 2014. Cowboys, clowns et toreros. L’Amérique réversible. Paris, Berg International, 343 p.

Shepard S., 1987 [1985]. Lune Faucon. Paris, Christian Bourgois, 254 p.

NOTES

1. Coordinatrice du Vocabulaire européen des philosophies : dictionnaire des intraduisibles, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, Le Robert, 2004.

AUTEURS

JEAN-BAPTISTE MAUDET Jean-Baptiste Maudet, [email protected], est maître de conférences en géographie à l’Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, membre du laboratoire Passages, UMR CNRS 5319. Il a, entre autres, récemment publié : Maudet J.-B., 2018. Geografía de la Tauromaquia. Séville, Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 656 p. Maudet J.-B., 2017. Le rodéo : le mythe du cowboy face à la diversité américaine. In Atlas géopolitique mondial Édition 2018, Editions du Rocher, p.126-127. Maudet J.-B., 2016. Le rodéo : une fête américaine. La Géographie, n° 1563 (Les territoires de la fête), p.17-20.

SERGE WEBER Serge Weber, [email protected], est Professeur d’université en géographie à l’UPEM (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée) et membre du laboratoire ACP.

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