Whatever Nepal decides on cannabis, it should first document its landraces

Nepal holds a distinctive and largely unstudied cannabis gene pool. Legalisation, if it comes, risks erasing it through hybridisation.

Cannabis has been part of Nepal’s flora and rural economy for centuries, cultivated and semi-managed across hills long before it was prohibited under the Narcotic Drugs (Control) Act of 1976. Nepal is home to indigenous, locally adapted cannabis populations, i.e., landraces that remain poorly documented, and the policy shift now underway could eliminate them before science has had a chance to study them.