history: restore Nigeria 1966 article, merge Klantschnig details

Soon after soldiers seized power in In 1966, Nigeria's military government issued the Indian Hemp Decree: death for cultivating made growing cannabis, twenty-one years for importing it, and tough penalties for use and possession punishable by death.[@1,2] It was the country's first drugThe law focused oncame from soldiers who had held power for a single substancefew months, and it tried had more to end a complex social problem by eliminating supply and criminalsdo with their fear of disorder than with the drug.[@1] ## A boom discovered Police reporting onproblem the colony ignored Under British rule cannabis expanded sharply inwas covered by the early 1960s,Dangerous Drugs Ordinances of [1927](/history/nigeria-dangerous-drugs-ordinance-1927/) and [1935](/history/nigeria-dangerous-drugs-1935/), written to satisfy the press sensationalised Geneva conventions. The colonial government did not treat it as a local problem. Its reports to international bodies said Indian hemp boomwas not grown in Lagos.Nigeria, even after a [@1police squad] Seizures tell(/history/nigeria-police-narcotics-squad-1953/) formed in 1953 found otherwise. After independence in 1960 the story: trade grew quickly. Seizures rose from 823 kilograms nationwide in 1961, then to [7.2 tons the year after, with twenty](/history/nigeria-eight farms identified in cannabis-seizures-jump-1962/) the next year. [@1] Police arrestedwere arresting three to five hundred Nigerians a year for possession or cultivation in the first half of the decade, mostly in Lagos — far more than the narcotics squad's handful of cases in the early 1950s.[@1] Part of the increase was vigilance rather than growth, but use had been rising steadily since the war.[@1] ## Cocoa and soldiers A downturn in cocoa mattered: as prices fell,pushed farmers in the fertile forest belt turned totoward a crop that was cheap and easy to produce, and Nigeria'sthe cannabis centre sits in the cocoa belt to this day.[@1] Smoking spread from ex-soldiers and port workers, who used it as an aid to physical labour, to far wider classes, helped by aLagos retail priceprices that waswere a fraction of prices elsewhere.[@1] ## The coup In 1966 a military government took over after political violence, in a year of coups and counter-coups. Newspapers tied the spreadhad been linking cannabis to urban deviancethuggery and to political violence the unrest in the Western Region before the civil war, casting cannabisand even traditionally moderate papers such as a danger to youth.[@1] ## Doctors sidelined Psychiatrists around Adeoye Lambo had put cannabis on the national agenda and urged a mixstate-owned Daily Times ran lurid coverage of medicalthe Lagos hemp boom, educational, legal and socioeconomic measuresmostly based on arrest reports rather than evidence.[@1] The decree shared almost nothing with their views.[@1] The military governors framed hemp smoking, even among schoolchildren, as proof ofnew rulers took up the theme: indiscipline rottingamong the country young, and used the decree to demonstrate determination and reassert controlamong soldiers — including over their own cannabis-using rank and fileone military governor cited widespread schoolchild smoking as proof that discipline had gone lax.[@1] Police officials monopolised drug control from 1966 on.[@1] ## The harsh line held, looselydecree The civil war that began in 1967 interruptedIndian Hemp Decree was the new policy and spread cannabis use further, including among the soldiers behind the decreefirst Nigerian drug law about a single substance.[@1] - **Cultivation:** death. - **Importation:** twenty-one years in prison. - **Use and cultivation kept growing despite the harsh laws, so the decree was amended in 1975 with reducedpossession:** tough penalties as well.[@1] Yet It set aside the 1966 decree, the colonial ordinance and the military approach to social reform stayed the base of Nigeria's punitive, supply-oriented controlone medical voice available.[@1] The timeline runs through the psychiatrist [1984 Decree 20Thomas Adeoye Lambo](/history/nigeria-decreelambo-20addiction-1984study-1965/) had published a study the year before treating cannabis use as a matter for medicine, education and long-term social policy. The decree shared very little with it. Drug control became, and stayed, a police matter. ## What happened next The civil war that began in 1967 interrupted enforcement and, by one account, made cannabis more popular among the soldiers themselves. In [1989 NDLEA law1975](/history/nigeria-ndleadeath-decreepenalty-1989removed-1975/); the penalties were reduced. In the index the decree took [Nigeria profile's](/country/ng/) followsenforcement score to the later historybottom of the scale. [@1]

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Wikipedia — Cannabis in Nigeria 1 unchanged