Afghanistan's king urges farmers to grow more hashish

According to historian James Bradford, Afghanistan’s king issued an edict in 1969 encouraging farmers to use fertiliser to increase hashish production. A further order followed in 1970.

An old export

Hashish and opium were established Afghan exports by the 1920s. The penal code of 1924–25 forbade producing and using them at home, with lashes for smokers, while cannabis grown for export was exempt and taxed. The state disapproved of the habit and lived off the trade.

The travellers

In the 1960s a new kind of buyer arrived. Western travellers on the overland route to India found Afghan hashish cheap and plentiful, and some started carrying it home. In 1971 alone almost sixty thousand tourists came to Kabul, many of them for the hash.

They widened the markets available to Afghan producers. The older regional trade included opium exports to Iran; buyers from Europe and America now created further demand for hashish, increasingly in large quantities.

The edicts

By the end of the decade demand was large enough that King Zahir Shah issued an official edict, in 1969 and again in 1970, encouraging farmers to use fertilisers to increase hashish production.

Plantations spread around Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif, and cannabis lined the main roads out of Kabul. For rural families it was more than extra income: the trade gave many farmers their first access to tractors and other machinery.

The professionals

Organised smugglers followed the tourists. One American group bought so much between 1970 and 1973 that farmers had to change their methods to supply it, and asked for hash oil, which was stronger and easier to hide. An American narcotics agent estimated their return at 80,000 dollars for every 50 kilos sold in New York or Montreal.

The reversal

The United States posted a narcotics agent to Kabul in late 1970. The 1972 enforcement drive included new anti-smuggling units, while a late-year government promised stronger measures. Reported smuggler arrests rose from 72 in 1971 to 584 in 1973. The 1973 cultivation ban marked a further restriction.

The index lists the edicts for context, with no score change. Bradford traces a conflict between income from the trade and international pressure to suppress it. The chapter cites Robert Connell Clarke for the edicts; the original orders remain a source to examine, rather than documents newly inspected here.^[1]