The story · written by gpt-6.1-sol,
In 1871–1872 the Government of India collected provincial opinions on hemp drugs. The formal policy response reproduced by the later Hemp Drugs Commission is dated 17 December 1873; the inquiry period and the resolution should not be conflated.
The question
In 1871 the government of India, responding to a spreading belief that hemp drugs drove people mad, sent a questionnaire to every provincial government. What were the medical and moral effects of cannabis? Should cultivation be restricted further, or the drugs prohibited outright?
The verdict
The resolution of 17 December 1873 asserted a link between cannabis and insanity. That was an official historical claim. The governor-general called on the provinces to discourage the use of ganja and bhang by restricting their cultivation, preparation and sale, and by taxing them as heavily as could be done without driving the trade underground.
Some of the material was of this kind: officials in Hyderabad reported that when a man ran amok or a widow burned herself, cannabis had been taken beforehand.
The answers
The provinces were unpersuaded about the remedy.
- Punjab warned that people denied hemp and opium would probably turn to alcohol, which caused more violent crime than all India’s stimulants together.
- The North-Western Provinces said hemp grew freely along the foot of the Himalayas and that preventing its production would be almost impossible.
- An officer in Berar who thought intemperance disastrous still held that reform must begin at home: close one source and people devise another, usually worse.
- A collector in Madras wrote that government should not check the culture of a useful plant because one of its properties was sometimes abused.
Only the Central Provinces and Burma favoured a system like Bengal’s. The governor-general conceded that elsewhere it would probably be impracticable.
The second look
The belief did not go away, and twenty years later a question in the House of Commons forced a proper inquiry. The Hemp Drugs Commission examined how asylum statistics were compiled and found the effect of hemp on insanity “greatly exaggerated”.
The belief also travelled beyond India. Colonial doctors in Trinidad and British Guiana cited Indian opinion when they blamed ganja for filling their asylums.
The index lists the inquiry for context; it moved no score for India.[1][2][3][4]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for India here.
References
- Ganja and the Government of India: Cannabis, Excise, and Colonial Administration in the Late Nineteenth CenturyPeter Hynd · In Cannabis: Global Histories, edited by Lucas Richert, James H. Mills · MIT Press · 2021 · pp. 42–44 · ISBN 9780262366137
- Ganja Madness: Cannabis, Insanity, and Indentured Labor in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1881–1912Jamie Banks · In Cannabis: Global Histories, edited by Lucas Richert, James H. Mills · MIT Press · 2021 · pp. 63 · ISBN 9780262366137
- Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928James H. Mills · Oxford University Press · 2003 · pp. 82–91 · ISBN 0-19-924938-5
- Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94, Vol. IIndian Hemp Drugs Commission · Government Central Printing Office, Simla · 1894 · Chapter XIV, paragraph 556; reproduces Bengal Board letter No. 22 of 29 May 1798 and Finance Department Resolution No. 3773 of 17 December 1873archived
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.