What is the difference between hashish and opium

Soft drugs, such as marijuana and hash, are less damaging to health than hard drugs, such as ecstasy and cocaine. But soft drugs are also illegal in the Netherlands. This means that those found selling, producing, dealing or in possession of these drugs are liable to prosecution. However, the Netherlands applies a policy of toleration in relation to the sale of soft drugs in coffee shops.

This means that the sale of soft drugs in coffee shops is a criminal offence but the Public Prosecution Service does not prosecute coffee shops for this offence. Some farmers claimed that in , 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, 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. Even with the onset of the Afghan-Soviet War, which broke out in , 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. 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 , cultivation resumed in many provinces including Balkh and Baghlan in the north, Nangarhar in the east, and Kandahar and Uruzgan in the south. 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, , p.

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, , p.

For instance, in the estimate ranged from 9, hectares to 29, hectares of cannabis cultivation UNODC, , p. 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, , p.

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, , p. 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 The cannabis crop has in fact been subject to a number of restrictions over the years.

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 , , and , the ban on cannabis appears to have been effective in the areas where they dominated.

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 and Mansfield, b, p. In the fall of 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 , and the departure of ISK, fields of cannabis could be seen throughout Khogiani and Achin, as well as Hisrak and Sherzad unpublished fieldwork, 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, b?

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.

For example, drawing on in-depth fieldwork over two years in four provinces — Balkh, Helmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar — Mansfield and Fishstein , p. 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. While yields of Indeed, Pakistan continued to hold significant influence for cannabis growers in the fall of , 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, However, in other years, prices may favour other regions.

For example, in prices in Kandahar were markedly higher than in Balkh, where the prices were twice that of Nangarhar Mansfield, , p. 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 crop and in Achin cannabis is grown in close proximity to both US and Afghan Special Forces. 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 20 th century cannabis was increasingly entangled with the growing and shifting markets for hashish.

During the s 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 there is a high probability of further increases in the amount of cannabis cultivation in ; but as in past years there will be little sense of the actual scale of the final crop. Bradford J. Charpentier C. The Use of Haschish and Opium in Afghanistan. Anthropos , no. Clarke R. Los Angeles , Red Eye Press, p. Fishstein P. Gregorian V. Honchell S. MA dissertation, University of Louisville, p.

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