Morocco / Maroc | www.geopium.org

Hashish Revival in Morocco

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy and Kenza Afsahi / 2014 / International Journal of Drug Policy.

In the past decade cannabis cultivation underwent radical changes that could explain the discrepancy between official Moroccan cultivation and production data on the one hand, and international seizures on the other hand. The “traditional” kif cannabis variety is being rapidly replaced by hybrids with much larger resin yields and much higher potency. This unnoticed phenomenon, which slowly started in the early 2000s, explains how a two-third decline in cannabis cultivation was at least partially compensated for by three to fivefold yield increases.

A Typology of the Unintended Consequences of Drug Crop Reduction

Piere-Arnaud Chouvy / 2013 /
Journal of Drug Issues.

Drug control policies and interventions, like any other policies and interventions, generate many unintended consequences. Most often, such consequences are mentioned without being defined or presented in a typology, and they are rarely explained in terms of causality. This article will stress how the existing work on the unintended consequences of drug control policies and interventions suffers from little or no definition and will then provide such a definition and a typology applied to three major interventions meant to achieve drug crop reduction—forced eradication, alternative development, and opium bans. In the end, it will explain how a typology of unintended consequences can help to better understand the failure and even the counterproductivity of some interventions. Differentiating between direct and collateral unintended consequences allows us to better attribute the occurring of unintended consequences to a specific intervention and/or to the intended consequence of the interventions.

Agricultural Drug Economies: Cause or Alternative to Intra-State Conflicts?

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2007 / Crime, Law and Social Change.

Through case studies selected among the world’s main drug-producer countries and regions (Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Morocco, Peru, and West Africa) this paper depicts the global scene in order to improve understanding of how agricultural illicit drug economies may foster the emergence of intra-state conflicts, help prolong intra-state conflicts or, conversely, prevent some crises. The paper thereby examines the complex connections between agricultural illicit drug production and intra-state conflict in the all-important context of underdevelopment and globalisation.

Morocco said to produce nearly half of the world’s hashish supply

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2005 / Jane's Intelligence Review.

In the first of two reports on hashish production and trafficking in the Rif area of Morocco, Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy examines the cultural, political and economic factors that have engendered cannabis cultivation in the area.

Opium. Uncovering the politics of the poppy

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2010 /Harvard University Press.

The book sets out to expose the politics of opium. In particular it explores the world’s two major regions for illicit production of opium and heroin – the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand and the Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These remote mountainous regions of Southeast and Southwest Asia produce more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium. The book reveals how, when and why illicit opium production emerged and what sustains it. The text exposes the real drivers of the modern day trade in opium and shows why a century of international effort, and forty years of a US-led war on drugs, have failed to eradicate it.

Détours d’horizons

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2009 / EchoGéo.

A la différence du photographe, le géographe ne peut à l’évidence pas se contenter de traiter son sujet par la photographie. Mais rien ne l’oblige non plus à recourir à la photographie uniquement pour illustrer, voire soutenir, son discours scientifique. La photographie peut en effet aussi offrir au chercheur le luxe de pouvoir aborder le sujet et le terrain qui sont les siens différemment, à varier les sujets et même, pourquoi pas, à faire sujet du hors sujet.