Document Myanmar's 1939 ganja scheme and 1974 ban

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+# Myanmar: closing the 1874–1974 history gap, 25 October 2026
+
+Myanmar's timeline jumped from the 1874 prohibition to a 1939 entry that scored the colony at 49,
+close to a fully licensed market, on the strength of a Wikipedia sentence. The 1946 enforcement
+entry was unchecked, and the 1974 ban cited Wikipedia and a UNODC article for a law whose text had
+not been read. This pass recovered the 1939 scheme's limits, checked the 1946 report, replaced the
+1974 summary with the law itself, and wrote an article on the 1939 rules.
+
+## Sources actually read
+
+- **United Nations, E/CN.7/W.43, Summary of annual reports of governments for 1947** (15 April
+  1949), printed pp. 67–68 and 99. The Burma narrative says hemp cultivation, formerly prohibited
+  throughout the country, was permitted from 1939 under licence as part of a scheme for the sale of
+  ganja to Indians in Burma, with the crop supplied to the government under contract. The 1946
+  country paragraph (p. 99) says the Intoxicating Drugs (Ganja) Rules, 1939, were issued "to
+  legalize the sale of ganja to Indians only"; that they remained in force; that the government
+  made no sales in 1946 and issued no cultivation licences; that illicit cultivation in the hills
+  of the Pegu Yomas was the main supply for Indian users; and that 216 hemp-drug prosecutions were
+  brought, 208 successfully. The PDF was downloaded from the UN Digital Library and read as text.
+- **Joel Fort, "Giver of delight or Liberator of sin: Drug use and 'addiction' in Asia"**,
+  *Bulletin on Narcotics*, 1965, issue 3, pp. 1–11, Burma section. It records government shops in
+  at least Rangoon and Mandalay selling cannabis (ganja) primarily to the Indian population before
+  the Japanese occupation. This corroborates the commercial form of the 1939 scheme.
+- **Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Law, 1974 (Law No. 5 of 1974)**, communicated by Burma to the
+  United Nations as E/NL.1974/17 on 17 June 1974, five printed pages. The law is dated Rangoon,
+  20 February 1974, and says it came into force at once. It defines narcotic and dangerous drugs to
+  include cannabis products; prohibits cultivation, production, manufacture, possession, transport,
+  import, export, external dealing, transfer and sale; sets five to ten years and a 10,000 kyat fine
+  for cultivation, production, possession, transport and transfer; and sets ten years to an
+  unlimited term, a 50,000 kyat fine or death for manufacture, import, export and sale. Addicts
+  had to register, and breach of the government's treatment directions carried six months to three
+  years.
+- **Library of Congress, "The Narcotics Control Laws of Burma"**, prepared by Mya Saw Shin,
+  November 1994. Read for the amended law's definitions, penalties and treatment provisions. It
+  describes the law as amended in 1983 and 1988. It is not cited in the revised 1974 entry because
+  the original text is now the source, but it was used to check that the later version kept the
+  same structure.
+
+## Database changes
+
+- Revised `myanmar-licensed-1939`. The entry now says the rules legalised sale to Indians only,
+  that cultivation was licensed to supply the government under contract, that government shops in
+  at least Rangoon and Mandalay sold mainly to Indians, and that the rules survived the war but
+  produced no sales or cultivation licences in 1946. It is `checked: true`, links the 1874, 1931,
+  1946 and 1974 entries, and cites E/CN.7/W.43 and the 1965 Bulletin.
+- Revised `burma-ganja-sales-prosecutions-1946`. The verified description is kept, inline
+  citations added, and the entry is `checked: true` with the locator "Printed p. 99, Burma (1946)
+  paragraph". It remains an unscored `enforcement` entry.
+- Revised `myanmar-narcotics-law-1974`. The date is tightened from `1974-02` to `1974-02-20`, the
+  day the law is dated and came into force. The description now gives the original law's offences,
+  penalties and treatment registration, and cites E/NL.1974/17 and the 1985 UNODC article. The
+  Wikipedia and 1985-only source list is replaced.
+- The earlier reading note warned that the death penalty should not be attributed to the original
+  1974 law because the Library of Congress summary covers the law as amended in 1983 and 1988.
+  The primary text settles the point: section 5(b), 8(b) and 10(b) of the 1974 law already provide
+  death for manufacture, import or export, and sale. The entry now attributes those penalties to
+  the original law. The 1983 and 1988 amendments are no longer needed to explain them.
+
+## The score correction
+
+The old 1939 entry had no explicit after-vector. The next entry's `before` supplied one:
+`{possession 6, cultivation 3, enforcement 6, sharing 3, consumption 5, access 6}`, a total of 49.
+That is the vector used elsewhere for a general licensed market, and it badly overstates the 1939
+rules. Burma did not legalise personal growing, did not open sale to the general population, and
+kept the criminal prohibition for everyone the rules did not classify as Indian. The shops were a
+government monopoly, not a licensed private market.
+
+The corrected after-vector is `{possession 2, cultivation 1, enforcement 2, sharing 1, consumption
+2, access 2}`, a total of 17:
+
+- **Possession 1 → 2.** An Indian consumer could buy lawfully, but possession stayed a crime for
+  everyone else, and the lawful route was tied to government sale.
+- **Consumption 1 → 2.** Use through the lawful channel was no longer treated as an offence;
+  outside it, the old prohibition remained.
+- **Access 0 → 2.** A lawful source existed, but only for one community and only through
+  government shops.
+- **Cultivation, enforcement and sharing unchanged.** Personal growing remained illegal;
+  cultivation licences were commercial contracts to supply the state. Enforcement still relied on
+  prosecution, and the 1946 figures show it. Sharing was not legalised.
+
+The 1974 entry was re-based to the same vector, so the chain reads 1874 `100 → 11`, 1939 `11 → 17`
+and 1974-02-20 `17 → 4`. The 1974 drop is large because the new law criminalised possession and
+cultivation for the whole population and added long prison terms and death for supply offences.
+
+## Articles
+
+- `articles/myanmar-licensed-1939.md` covers the racial limit of the scheme, the licensed growing
+  system, the government shops, the wartime break, the 1946 prosecutions, and the 1974 ban. It
+  links the 1874, 1931, 1946 and 1974 entries and the Myanmar profile.
+- `articles/myanmar-narcotics-law-1974.md` covers the heroin epidemic behind the law, its
+  definition of narcotic drugs, the offences and penalties, the treatment registration system, and
+  the 1983 and 1988 amendments. It links the 1993 entry and the country profile.
+
+## Remaining gaps and blocked leads
+
+- The text of the Intoxicating Drugs (Ganja) Rules, 1939, was not read. The Myanmar Law Information
+  System page (`https://www.mlis.gov.mm/mLsView.do?lawordSn=11364`) timed out repeatedly from this
+  environment, and no archived copy was found. Search-engine snippets show a chapter numbered
+  XXX with rules 196–220, rule 198 allowing an Indian consumer to possess up to five tolas bought
+  from a Government Ganja Shop with a ticket under rule 208, rule 203 limiting the number of shops,
+  rule 206 allowing a Resident Excise Officer or licensed retail vendor to sell to an Indian
+  consumer, and rule 220 governing retail licences. These details are not used in the entry or
+  article because the page was not opened and read. They are a strong lead for a future pass.
+- The 1939 rules' exact date, and whether they were made under the Excise Act or another
+  instrument, remain unverified. The UN report supplies the year and the purpose, not the gazette
+  date.
+- The 1946 report gives no figures for the number of shops, the quantity sold before the war, or
+  the size of the illicit crop. The Pegu Yomas reference is qualitative.
+- The 1983 and 1988 amendments to the 1974 law were not read. The Library of Congress summary
+  describes the amended text but does not say which amendment introduced which change. The 1993
+  narcotics law was not re-read in this pass.
+- The 1931 Dangerous Drugs Act entry remains a context entry and was not changed.
+
+## Validation
+
+`node scripts/data-status.cjs chain mm` gives 1874 `100 → 11`, 1939 `11 → 17` and 1974-02-20
+`17 → 4`, with no flagged steps. `npm run history:test` passed 38 tests, `npm run answers:test`
+passed 16, and `npm run build` built 4,142 pages. The three history pages and the new 1974 article
+were checked in the built output: every citation mark resolves to a reference on the same page,
+every listed source is cited, and all internal links point to pages that exist.