The Crossroads of Cannabis
The Crossroads of Cannabis
From illicit crop to billion-dollar industry
The impacts of antinarcotic policies on food systems across the globe are often overlooked. This is part three of our series The War on Drugs. In our previous newsletter, we explored the history and current impacts of opium farming in Myanmar and the Golden Triangle. In today’s instalment, pulling from the Transnational Institute’s research on cannabis farming and other incredible sources, we explore different case studies from around the world to understand the plant’s journey from illicit crop to billion-dollar industry in the Minority World*.
We’ll start with South Africa, a country that set the basis for the international cannabis prosecution and the different crop eradication tactics that would later be replicated in the Americas. We’ll then look at Lebanon, Morocco, and Portugal and the ways in which legalisation has not been the one-size-fits-all solution it has promised. In unpacking legalisation, we will also ask deeper questions about the medicinal cannabis industry and the parallel growth of indoor cultivation models — questions like, What are the implications of legal markets that make land and farmers irrelevant? Does “less land” mean “more sustainable”? What are the environmental impacts of indoor and greenhouse cannabis? Lastly, we’ll turn to the present realities of outdoor, illicit crops in Mexico and the intricate connections between the drug war and extractivism. What happens when the war on drugs also turns into a fight against land and environmental defence?
We hope today’s piece sparks curiosity and brings new frames to the way we see and understand the ever-changing landscapes of cannabis across the globe. If you’ve found value in this series and/or wish to share thoughts, resources, and musings our way, please reach out to info@agrowingculture.org.
*Minority World refers to the countries commonly labelled as “developed,” and emphasises that while these countries tend to impose their will on the rest of the world, they are, in fact, the minority. Majority World refers to the countries commonly labelled as “developing,” who in fact make up the majority of the world’s population.
It is believed that cannabis use originated in East Asia around 4,000 BCE. Medicinal uses can be traced back to China, where the plant began its migration across the Silk Road. In the Middle Ages, cannabis was present in Europe, Morocco, Egypt, the Eastern Mediterranean Levant, and the east coast of Africa. Between 2,000 and 1,000 BCE, the plant reached the Indian Subcontinent. There, communities deeply explored the medicinal and recreational use of “ganja” — from Ayurvedic remedies to edible pastes mixed in food and drinks (bhang) to cannabis resin (hashish).
A 2019 study published in the journal Science Advances, noted psychoactive compounds preserved in 2,500-year-old funerary incense burners from the Jirzankal Cemetery in the eastern Pamirs, China. Besides examining how cannabis burning was essential for mortuary rituals, the study also shows the ways in which communities meticulously selected plants for their high concentrations of THC, cannabis’ main psychoactive ingredient.
Cannabis’ many uses have been documented throughout history. The Cannuse database is an incredible source to explore them by country, region, or part of the plant used for different purposes. Over 2,300 medicinal, dietary, fibre and psychoactive uses have been recorded to date. But despite its myriad of purposes, the recreational use of cannabis has been historically marked by stigma and criminalisation.
Cannabis and criminalisation in South Africa
Cannabis Sativa has been a central part of different African traditions, cultures, and economies since long before colonialism, with seed and cultivation practices passed down through generations. Arab traders brought the plant to the continent’s east coast to trade centres like Zanzibar and Mozambique Island. Communities named the plant “dagga” and its seeds rapidly spread through the Zambezi and Congo River basins to reach southern Africa.
In the 1800s, British and Dutch colonisation brought a wave of cannabis stigmatisation. Worried that cannabis use would negatively affect white elites, colonists condemned it as “savage” and “uncivilised”. The weaponisation of these narratives fed into prohibition efforts.
Between the late 1800s and 1920, several states were critical of the effectiveness of prohibition, recognising that moderate dagga smoking had historically had insignificant impacts on public order and welfare. Nevertheless, in September 1922 the cultivation, sale, possession, and use of cannabis was prohibited under the Union of South Africa’s Customs and Excise Duties Amendment Act. This set a precedent for drug policy worldwide, as the South African government pushed for dagga to be put on the list of habit-forming drugs in countries that adhered to the International Opium Convention. Three years later, the Convention accepted South Africa’s request, making way for prohibition-oriented policies worldwide.
South Africa’s Weed Act of 1937 ordered the forced eradication of cannabis and the arrests of farmers and users. It’s estimated that between 1924 and 1945 annual prosecution for cannabis-related offenses rose from 1,000 to 16,170 people. Still, rural cannabis markets grew steadily, especially in the Mpondoland region, a former British colony that became a self-governing homeland where Black minorities settled under the apartheid administration. Its remoteness and detachment from governmental control made Mpondoland a cannabis-growing hotspot. Income from cannabis paid for the community’s infrastructure and even education.
The 1950s, an era of rampant repression and criminalisation, came with even harder measures for outdoor cultivation. Forced eradication also shifted from burning and uprooting plants to the aerial spraying of cannabis plots with the carcinogenic, glyphosate-based herbicide Kilo Max, which destroyed food crops and polluted water, killing livestock. This story would repeat itself 28 years later across the ocean as part of the cannabis and coca eradication programmes pushed by the U.S..
With the new millennium came an appetite for countries around the world to review cannabis regulations. Countries like Uruguay legalised cannabis consumption in 2013. By 2018, the South African Constitutional Court decriminalised cannabis cultivation, and private possession and use (for adults). But what seemed like a progressive, beneficial measure ended up harming the livelihoods of legacy cannabis farmers, as more people were able to start growing their own. Tjimen Grooten writes, “Despite the (South African) government’s promises regarding the economic potential of cannabis, current market conditions have led to the sharp drop in incomes, pressing food insecurity, growing hunger, additional burdens for lone female farmers, increasing school dropouts, and persisting child labour. Essentially, these issues reveal a process of ‘reversed rural development’ against the backdrop of the emerging legal cannabis industry.”
Another effect of legalised, yet unsustainable, markets is the disappearance of landrace cannabis* seeds and ancestral cultivation practices, stewarded by Indigenous communities over generations. As Grooten puts it, “Smallholders are essentially the custodians of the valuable landrace genetics, with the seeds representing their cultural heritage.” Legal cannabis cultivation has led a flood of new growers to seek out seeds with the highest THC content — usually, hybrid seeds from abroad. This has gradually changed the preferences of local users to buy more potent flowers, outcompeting landrace strains and ultimately, driving their extinction, slowly eroding the diversity of entire cultures.
*Landrace cannabis refers to a group of relatively stable cannabis strains that have been naturally selected and adapted to their climatic environment over centuries.
Legalisation is not a silver bullet
We tend to think of regulating and/or legalising cannabis as the right step forward, but examples like those above prove that this is only effective in as much as governments allow for Indigenous and peasant communities to actively shape the systems meant to support their transitions into legal economies and dignified livelihoods, instead of letting corporations lead the way.
The commodification of cannabis’ medicinal properties is a common entry point into legality. At first, this sounds like a new market opportunity for farmers. It also seems to provide a baseline for regulations, backed by the long-studied health benefits of non-psychoactive adult use. But in reality, medicinal markets the world over present a pattern of profiting private foreign investors, expensive licensing costs, and a lack of product accessibility for local communities.
In Portugal, the legalisation of medicinal cannabis use in 2019 drove a rush of European investment. In 2023, despite the country producing up to 11 tonnes of cannabis, only 17 kg reached local users, with just one product legally sold — a box of 15g cannabis flowers for €150. As Euro News reports, “Patients still resort to the black market although the plant is legal in the country.”
In Morocco, cannabis was traditionally grown alongside other crops and food trees, but the expansion of its cultivation in the mid-1960s to meet Europe and North America’s demand has led to several, for-export monocultures that require the extensive use of agrochemicals and synthetic inputs. The decimation of local biodiversity, deforestation, and water scarcity are major contributors to the disappearance of local seeds and traditional practices like agroforestry.
In 2020, Lebanon regulated cannabis cultivation for industrial and medicinal purposes, yet Narcotics Law 673/98 prohibits domestic use, including medicinal use, rendering all products legal for export only. Essentially, cannabis can be grown within Lebanese borders but not consumed by Lebanese people. In addition, regulations exclude “anyone with a criminal record from obtaining a cannabis licence”, which would effectively rule out most of the current traditional growers who were criminalised in times of prohibition. According to the report, Lebanese farmers weren’t consulted about the law, and cannabis traders are the ones set to profit from the exports. Additionally, legalisation applies to a specific variety of cannabis that requires imported seeds to grow, undermining local knowledge and heritage.
Cannabis legalisation has fallen into a pattern of oppressing farmers for the benefit of private investors the world over. In Sub-Saharan Africa, countries like Rwanda have legalised cannabis export, yet a ban on domestic consumption persists. Even if traditional farmers wanted to produce for export, licensing fees are too expensive for the majority of citizens. Ultimately, corporations are buying and fencing their way into the global cannabis market, extracting and accumulating knowledge and wealth from the people and territories they once targeted.
“Our people feel betrayed, because all of the licences are being issued to companies from elsewhere, while we who have been growing this plant here for generations, who have the skills, who have the knowledge, who have the land, are still being criminalised”. —Anonymous farmer, based in South Africa
Like Morocco and Lebanon, cannabis farmers in the U.S. also need to meet a series of criteria and regulations that only complicate their ability to profit from legal cultivation. Licensing regimes set fees according to the size of the cultivation area, and demand that crops and retail sites be close to each other, requirements that have driven the shift towards growing cannabis indoors. Aside from disproportionally criminalising farmers and people of colour, the expansion of medicinal markets is not only filling the pockets of corporations in the Minority World, but it is also pushing for new models of cultivation that envision a future of cannabis farming without land or farmers.
The environmental impacts of indoor cultivation
Some of the world’s top-profiting corporations rely on greenhouses and indoor facilities to grow cannabis. The latter provides custom environments that allow for higher concentrations of THC, an advantage for players looking to sell more potent flowers for recreational use. Indoor cultivation also carries the narrative of being a greener, more sustainable model of growing cannabis. But as a Transnational Institute report shows, in California, the U.S.’ top-producing state, annual emissions from indoor facilities “equal to those from 1 million average cars, and energy expenditures of $3 billion per year.” This should be of great concern considering the projected growth of the cannabis market, which is expected to rise from US$57.18 billion in 2023 to US$444.34 billion by 2030.
Ultimately, lab-grown and corporate-controlled cannabis is increasingly becoming a significant contributor to the climate crisis. In Colorado, indoor cannabis growing ranks as one of the top-polluting industries, with emissions greater than those from coal mining. As the same Transnational Institute report indicates, the main factors behind indoor cultivation’s brutal energy use include:
High-intensity grow lights, which can be 50-200 times higher in intensity compared to a standard office setting. These are run for 12, 18 or 24 hours a day depending on the life cycle of the plants
Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems needed to maintain the required indoor temperature and humidity levels
Supplemental CO2 supplies to increase the rate of photosynthesis to allow for quicker and more frequent harvests, accounting for between 11-25 per cent of total emissions across the indoor cannabis industry in the U.S.
Issues like THC quality and product safety are often used to argue that indoor facilities are advantageous and overall sustainable. But outdoor cannabis farming has proven to be not only less polluting but also more likely to directly benefit small-holder farmers. Still, the balance tips in favour of those who can afford to privately centralise cannabis cultivation, consolidating the industry in the hands of large-scale industrial operators.
Drug trafficking and ecocide in Mexico
It’s clear that indoor cultivation can result in devastating levels of carbon emissions in areas where cannabis production is regulated, but what happens in illicit hot spots where outdoor crops spread across acres? What are the direct and indirect environmental impacts of cannabis trafficking?
Today, Mexico serves as a microcosm of the war on drugs, an open wound of the contradictions that come alive within a country that has implemented program after program designed to “end” narcotraffic. In the 1970s, Mexico put in place anti-narcotic measures at the same time as it was facing an economic crisis driven by a significant decrease in oil prices, the depreciation of the Mexican peso, unequal land reform, and the shift from domestic-focused food production towards an agro-export model. NAFTA drove the price of many crops down, making cannabis and poppy cultivation a profitable alternative for many small-scale farmers.
The states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango make up what is commonly referred to as Mexico's “Golden Triangle” (referencing the region historically tied to opium and cannabis cultivation). Since the early days of Mexico’s war on drugs, counternarcotics campaigns propelled by the U.S., like Operation Condor, have ruthlessly targeted Mexican peasants and civilians through illegal detentions, executions, forced disappearances, torture, rape, pillage, and extortion. The Mexican military destroyed the homes of cannabis farmers and carried out large-scale aerial spraying of herbicides, like Paraquat, as part of a strategy to eradicate illicit crops.
It’s not clear exactly how much Paraquat was used for this goal, but researchers have since connected the spraying to the health crisis that unfolded among cannabis consumers in the U.S and found that up to a quarter of Mexican-grown plants entered the country heavily coated with the herbicide. While an often unrecognised element of the war on drugs, it’s clear that herbicides have represented a deadly threat, silently killing all life in the soil and waterways of Mexico’s Golden Triangle.
The U.S. remained the number one market for Mexican cannabis and opium for decades until adult use started to become legalised across different U.S. states, beginning with California in 1996. Soon after, Mexican cannabis trafficking significantly dropped and illegal prices plummeted as U.S. production started to meet domestic demand, a market pattern that only grew over time. In the following years, many Mexican farmers who sustained their families by growing cannabis turned their plots and even communal lands, or “ejidos”, into avocado plantations, a crop that has also carried violence and dispossession.
Farmers who continued to rely on the shrinking profits from cannabis are now facing a new challenge: the rise of synthetic drugs. In an article for the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2021, a Mexican farmer named María shared that, for the first time, her cannabis harvest remained unsold. Synthetic drug production, which needs no land, farm labour, or agricultural inputs is leaving her and her community with bountiful food plots (significantly underpriced), and nearly no source of income from cannabis, all while facing the constant terror of cartel and organised crime violence.
In efforts to provide production opportunities to farmers in remote areas and build climate resilience by reforesting lands, the Mexican government launched the Sembrando Vida program in 2019. While many farmers have joined and have begun their transition towards agroforestry models, producing various food crops and planting trees, some still have to plant poppy or cannabis to save from the already scarce earnings to meet basic needs like clothing, cell phones, and education.
In Sinaloa, many struggling farm families have abandoned their land and fled to other states and urban areas to escape violence and seek opportunities outside of farm labour. Big agribusinesses have taken their place, turning Sinaloa into one of Mexico’s leading export states at the expense of labour exploitation. Underpaid peasants now pick tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, chillies and many other food crops to fill U.S. supermarket shelves. Many labourers have become addicted to fentanyl or meth in an effort to deprive themselves of sleep and endure harsh working conditions.
Legalisation and the rise of synthetics are a dangerous combination that has turned Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango into targets for the exploitation of its lands and peoples. According to an investigation by Insight Crime, crashing drug trafficking markets have led to cartels resorting to the intimidation of peasants, Indigenous, and environmental leaders to clear out lands and make way for other sources of profit.
Illegal mining has also become a source of capital for organised crime. In the state of Michoacán, the explicit ties between mining giant Ternium and narcotraffic are well known. Across the state, cartels control mining operations and, locals claim the resources mined are shipped to China and exchanged for chemicals to produce synthetic drugs. And here, the militarisation in illicit-crop-growing territories proposed to stop narcotraffic and bring “security” and “order” is only furthering the extraction. In her book ‘Drug War Capitalism’, journalist Dawn Paley quotes Abel Barrera, the director of Tlachinollan, a human rights group based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero:
“What we’ve seen up until now is that the militarisation is not only a way to enter into the territories, but that it serves to impose megaprojects. [The police and army] are the offensive front that goes and enters into territories in order to guarantee that transnational capital can be established there, and install itself via mines, megaprojects, dams, and ecotourism projects. Regardless of the fact that they are in their own lands, a village cannot go against a mine or a multinational company.”
Illegal mining, fueled by narcotraffic, is vanishing entire communities in the Golden Triangle and across Mexico.
In a region where it’s increasingly hard to attribute attacks against environmental leaders to one specific perpetrator, the latest Global Witness report notes that between 2012 and 2023 at least 314 land defenders were killed in Central America. In Mexico, over 70% of the assassinations in 2023 were against Indigenous leaders and nearly half of the total killings were against activists who opposed mining operations.
Historically, the war on drugs has been shaped by criminalisation, militarisation, and market control. For communities at the heart of illicit crop cultivation, their fight for life, for water, for sustenance and culture needs to be actively supported by drug policies centred in human and environmental rights. Drug trafficking does not happen in a vacuum. It is a complex web of violence that reaches from state agents, to corporations, to organised crime. An extractive economy that relies on and profits from the dispossession of the rural world.
Overall, we need to radically reimage the way we think of our relationship with drugs. As cannabis legalisation continues to spread across the globe, there’s immense potential to not only shape policies for other plants like poppy and coca, but to set a precedent on how to effectively support the rights and dignified livelihoods of farmers and Indigenous peoples looking to transition out of illicit crops. Rights-centred policies can provide space for a shift away from criminalisation and towards harm reduction, and advocate for justice between producers, users, and markets, breaking away from the top-down, neocolonial business models that are driving the cannabis industry’s corporate consolidation.
Year after year, a growing number of countries begin their own journeys towards legalisation, taking from the examples of other corners of the world as potential roadmaps. Can drug policies truly foster social development if they continue to prioritise exports and private investment? Will farmers have the right to use their own seed or will legal markets continue favouring imported, hybrid seeds only? Consequently, will the requirements of legality drive the cultural erasure of landrace seeds? And if the expansion of medicinal cannabis continues to open up doors for regulations, will indoor cultivation models grow as well, despite its well-documented climate impacts?
We hope that, in the exercise of unpacking the war on drugs, we can also reflect on the role of land, farmers, and culture. Are cannabis business giants envisioning a future without them? What would this mean for the communities that have relied on this crop for their sustenance?
This is part three of our series on the war on drugs, (read part two here). In our next newsletter we will explore the cultural and socioeconomic impacts of U.S.-backed policies to eradicate coca plantations on peasant and Indigenous territories in South America.
If this topic has sparked something in you, or if any questions have come to mind, please share them with us in the comments. What is it that particularly makes you feel curious about the war on drugs and its links to food systems? Are there any stories, podcasts, films or sources we should look into?
Cannabis drug policy research by the Transnational Institute
The End of Illegal Marijuana in Mexico, a series by Insight Crime
The book Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley
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