The story · written by opus-5.5,
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894 told the British government not to ban cannabis but to control and tax it. Ten years later Bengal, the province held up as the model, had only just built the warehouses the commission asked for.
Control, not prohibition
The commission rejected prohibition, quoting John Stuart Mill on the harm of restraining what people chose for themselves. It recommended four things: adequate taxation, cultivation only under licence, fewer shops, and a limit on how much anyone could hold. It wanted the same system across British India, on the Bengal model, with government warehouses for the crop and one limit on personal possession everywhere.
Two Indian members dissented. Lala Nihal Chand wanted ganja and charas eventually prohibited. The Governor-General answered that there were many matters in which adults must be allowed to judge for themselves.
Ten slow years
The provinces were in no hurry. Berar took three years to pass its 1897 law, and Bombay did not limit personal possession until 1913. Even in Bengal progress was slow.
| Year | Step in the Ganja Mahal |
|---|---|
| 1894 | A tenth of the fields measured with ropes, unchecked |
| 1895 | Government resolves to build public warehouses at Naogaon |
| 1896 | The crop weighed for the first time before storage |
| 1902–03 | Fields measured with Gunter’s chain, a fifth of the work checked |
| 1904 | The whole crop stored in public warehouses for the first time |
A magistrate on special duty, G. Rainy, reported in 1904 that smuggling continued. He proposed bringing in the railway police, putting every village watchman on alert at harvest time, and having watchmen visit the houses of convicted smugglers twice a night through February and March. In the 1870s about a dozen excise officers had supervised the trade; now Rainy wanted the whole police force of eastern Bengal involved.
The money kept coming
Behind the controls lay revenue. Taxes on hemp drugs raised about 5.6 million rupees across British India in 1900, 7.8 million in 1905 and 18.3 million in 1921. In Bengal they made up about a fifth of all excise income, in Delhi a third.
Use did not fall everywhere. In Assam consumption rose by 88 per cent between 1901 and 1911, and a committee found ganja smoked by cultivators, boatmen and higher castes alike. India’s cannabis policy stayed one of licensing and tax, and national prohibition came only with the NDPS Act of 1985.[1]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for India here.
References
- Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928James H. Mills · Oxford University Press · 2003 · pp. 118–138 · ISBN 0-19-924938-5
- Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928James H. Mills · Oxford University Press · 2003 · pp. 131–133 · ISBN 0-19-924938-5
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.