Ceylon assents to restrictions on possessing and supplying bhang and ganja

Ceylon’s Opium Ordinance of 1910 addressed cannabis as well as the drug in its short title. Its longer title expressly named possession and sale of bhang and ganja, while dedicated sections regulated those substances separately from the ordinance’s opium arrangements.

The measure passed the Legislative Council on 6 May and received the governor’s assent on 2 June 1910. Publication in the gazette followed on 17 June.

A longer history of licensed shops

C. G. Uragoda’s history places the reform against decades of licensed opium retailing. The 1867 ordinance had established a licensing framework associated with opium and bhang. Revenue from opium shops went to government and local authorities, while critics pressed for restrictions.

Uragoda describes opposition involving Buddhist reformers and Legislative Council member S. C. Obeyesekere, followed by questions in the British Parliament. A committee subsequently recommended closing opium shops and making importation, distribution and sale a government monopoly. This supplied a political context for changing the system, rather than treating the 1910 law as an isolated event.

Cannabis provisions inside an opium law

Section 24 covered possessing, transferring, giving and selling bhang or ganja. The definitions extended those terms to substances containing them and extracts or preparations of Indian hemp. The law therefore reached beyond a commercial sale at a licensed shop.

The same section provided criminal penalties, search and seizure powers, and court-ordered destruction. Its treatment of gifts and transfers is particularly relevant to distinguishing restrictions on supply from restrictions confined to retail trade.

An exception tied to another licensing system

Section 25 preserved specified activities by people licensed to sell poisons under the 1901 Poisons Ordinance, provided they complied with its regulations. The cannabis restriction consequently operated alongside a conditional licensed route. Section 26 placed the burden of establishing an applicable exception on the person relying on it.

These provisions describe a prohibition with exceptions. Neither a blanket permission for medical use nor an exception-free ban captures their structure.

Assent was not commencement

Section 1 required the governor to appoint commencement by proclamation and allowed different dates for different provisions. The verified assent date therefore does not establish when every cannabis provision became operative.

The NDDCB’s later chronology distinguishes this measure from the 1929 consolidation, 1935 amendment and 1936 commencement. For Sri Lanka’s timeline, that sequence shows why several dates are needed to describe the development of cannabis controls.^[1][2][3]