The United Provinces raise the duty on charas and cut hemp shops

In 1939 the United Provinces raised the duty on charas by 20 rupees a seer and reduced the number of opium and hemp-drug shops by about a fifth.^[1] The province also took the shops into state management in selected areas of eleven districts.^[1] The Government of India included these steps in its report to the League of Nations, dated at New Delhi on 12 December 1940.^[1]

The duty and the shops

The duty increase is stated on its own: 20 rupees more on each seer of charas.^[1] The shop cut is stated for opium shops and hemp-drug shops together, at about 20 per cent. The return gives one figure for both and does not split the share. A seer is given in the same provincial paragraph as about 935 grams, on the opium issue price, which rose from 90 to 110 rupees a seer on 1 April 1939.^[1] That April date belongs to the opium price. The charas duty is listed among the year’s changes without a day of its own.

The 1896 excise act already applied in the United Provinces, then the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and treated charas as an intoxicating drug. The 1939 increase is a further duty on charas, on top of that licensed trade. The 1930 Act left the shops and the duty to the province.

Districts taken into state management

State management, already used for some opium shops, was extended to the opium shops of Benares city and to all opium and hemp-drug shops in selected areas of Garhwal, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Bulandshahr, Cawnpore, Moradabad, Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Gorakhpur and Basti.^[1] Benares is named for its opium shops. The hemp-drug shops in the list are the ones in those selected areas. The cut of about a fifth is a separate change from this takeover: one reduces the number of shops, the other moves the remaining selected shops into the hands of the province. The League circulated the return from Geneva on 9 May 1942.^[1]

The same year’s return

The 1930 Act had left hemp possession and sale to the provinces. Bombay prohibited charas in the city and in Ahmedabad from 1 August. Bihar prohibited ganja and bhang where it extended prohibition, and raised the duty on both. A central notification of 28 October covered preparations of Indian hemp extract. The current account of the law is on India’s profile.