Burma requires a licence to make hemp extract or to import it

From 1 February 1931 an extract or tincture of hemp could be made only under a licence, and hemp could be brought in or sent out only under a licence.^[1] Either breach could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both.^[1] The drug covered by those rules included bhang, siddhi, ganja and charas.^[1]

A ban already in force

British India had prohibited hemp drugs in Burma in the 1870s, after an inquiry that treated habitual use as a cause of insanity. Cultivation and use were forbidden there while India went on licensing the same drugs. Import by sea was prohibited in 1874. This Act added a central penalty for making the extract and for moving the drug across the frontier.

The Act is the one passed for the 1925 Geneva convention. The countries there had agreed further measures against smuggling and abuse of drugs made from opium, Indian hemp and coca.^[2] The Indian text received assent on 1 March 1930. The Burma code prints the same Act as India Act II of 1930 and dates it 1 February 1931.^[1]

Extract, resin and the frontier

Hemp meant the leaves, small stalks and flowering or fruiting tops of Cannabis sativa, including bhang, siddhi and ganja, and charas, the resin, and a mixture or a drink made from them.^[1] An extract or tincture was medicinal hemp, and that counted as a manufactured drug.^[2][1] No one could manufacture such a drug, other than prepared opium, except under rules and a licence. The exception for some opium and cocaine preparations did not cover hemp extract. The penalty was up to two years, a fine, or both.^[1] Import, export and transhipment of hemp, as of other dangerous drugs apart from prepared opium, carried the same penalty.^[1]

The Act’s rules on cultivation name the poppy and the coca plant.^[1] Hemp appears in the list of drugs whose extract, import and export are licensed.

Sales to Indians came later

In 1939 Burma permitted licensed ganja sales to Indians only. A 1946 report said those rules were still in force, that the government made no sales that year, and that it issued no cultivation licences for the trade. The 1931 licence for extract and for the frontier sits between that older prohibition and the limited shop rule. In 1974 Burma banned cannabis again. The current law is on the Myanmar page.