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| Siberia Struggles To Weed Out Cannabis |
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Posted by FoM on July 23, 2001 at 13:51:30 PT Siberian horseback police track drug growers Source: BBC News 
Police in the Republic of Tyva, Siberia, are fighting a losing battle against the cultivation of cannabis across wide swathes of derelict former collective farms. Russian TV says deliberate cultivation on old state farmland and natural self-seeding has spread the drug cash crop far beyond police control. The growing season is now in full swing on plantations across the area and it is growing everywhere, even on wasteland. The TV says the republic, adjoining the Mongolian border, is often referred to as Russia's Colombia. When the authorities launch another crackdown the locals scoff. They say that trying to stamp out the crop is "as pointless as trying to melt all the ice in Antarctica". It grows wild on land abandoned by collective farms - on about 70% of all previously arable land. Local farmers say that some hemp fields do have owners but are not being actively cultivated. Arrests Because police do not have enough funds to catch drug-traffickers, they spread weedkillers or use conscripts to pull the plants out of the ground. Locals say they grow hemp to earn enough to buy basic foodstuffs to last the hard Siberian winter. Young people gather hemp to pay for their university education. The police, often on horseback, arrest at least five or six people every day, but the punishment is only a suspended prison sentence of three-years - no one takes it seriously, the TV said. Police have tried to plough the crop back into fields but they do not have enough resources or funds to sow a replacement crop. Hemp seeds are blown back onto fallow fields on the wind. And so the short growing cycle starts all over again. BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. Note: Police are fighting a losing battle against the rapidly growing plant. Source: BBC News (UK Web) CannabisNews - Cannabis Archives Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #6 posted by Doug on July 24, 2001 at 09:22:30 PT |
| but I'm guessing that there's an American influence here. As others have asked, why are the Siberians wasting their little money fighting something that grows like. well, a weed. I'd guess that the Americans are putting presssure on them: if you want some help, aid, from us, you'll cooperate on ridding your country of this drug menace. Perhaps we're even giving them some money to help in their drug war. There appears to be no country too small or poor that America does not have it's fingers in their pie. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on July 24, 2001 at 07:42:44 PT:
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| Hemp on the Russian steppes, huh? Should surprise nobody, as the earliest Western references were from the Greeks writing about the Scythians - ancestral Russians - and the little parties they'd have in tents with burning hemp. But you'd think they'd be glad of anything growing north of the taiga. Especially something of some actual value, which could be made into all manner of goods. But instead, just like their svoloch buddies in the West, they have an almost instinctive reaction to rip it up. Just goes to show that a culture, any culture, has only the degree of insanity that it can afford. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by dddd on July 24, 2001 at 02:34:30 PT |
| ...In 1976,,I went to the Soviet Union...Moscow,Kharkov,Kiev,Odessa, and Leningrad,(now St Petersburg)....anyway,,our tourguide was this girl named Masha.We became good friends,and while in the port city of Odessa,she invited me to go along on a visit to her boyfriends flat, where he lived with his parents.He worked down at the docks,and had a collection of ads from western magazines all over the walls of his room,and a collection of American cigarettes,which he was very proud of.I asked him about weed.He said that there was alot of weed that grew wild on the steppes,(probably all hemp),but he offered to take me somewhere to smoke some weed,,,to which I politley declined. Evidently there were actual buds availiable. ...Later on,we went for a walk through this big park,and I became Hard to believe,,,,but true....... I'll bet you our comrades in Russia have I can only imagine how things are over there nowdays ddddasvidanyah [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by freedom fighter on July 23, 2001 at 21:49:50 PT |
| north and south east and west.. As long theree is sun and water.. Only place that do not have hemp is north pole and south pole. \/ [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by digi on July 23, 2001 at 20:47:12 PT |
| I think its good the way they are dealing with it over in Russia! Their economy and everything is poor and they dont have the money to support eradication. They have higher priorities just as we do in Canada/US to worry about cannabis. Let them go and don't waste our money! [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by Pontifex on July 23, 2001 at 15:53:49 PT:
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| I knew C. Sativa was a survivor, but not at arctic latitudes...! The only Siberian exports I'm aware of are oil and gas. Hemp, on the other hand, can be grown by anybody for But the real mystery -- why does Siberian law Any ideas? [ Post Comment ] |
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