Tightening 5 November 1863 🇹🇷 Türkiye

The Ottoman government bans the sale of hashish in coffeehouses and herb shops

As the use of drugs sold through coffeehouses and herbalists (aktar) spread, a government decision forbade both to sell esrar. The 1858 penal code had already punished its sale by pharmacies.^[1]

Shops and sales

In the cultural atlas

Language · Turkish, from Arabic asrār, "secrets"EsrarThe everyday Turkish word for cannabis means "secrets". A medieval dervish poet was already using it for the drug, and it named the hashish dens that Ottoman and Republican police spent a century trying to close.

Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Türkiye here.

References

Atatürk Dergisi — Kızılkaya and Özkan, Osmanlı'dan Cumhuriyet'e İstanbul'da Esrar Tekkeleri (2024)archived

Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.