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The Indian Hemp CommissionIn 1893, the British government established the Indian Hemp Commission, to investigate the use of cannabis in India. It was set up in response to concerns about the safety and potential for abuse of the mysterious herb. The report the Commission finally produced was no less than 3,281 pages long, and inluded testimony from almost 1,200 "doctors, coolies, yogis, fakirs, heads of lunatic asylums, bhang peasants, tax gatherers, smugglers, army officers, hemp dealers, ganja palace operators and the clergy."The seven-volume report remains the most comprehensive and systematic study of cannabis use ever undertaken. It drew some enlightened and enlightening conclusions:
"On the whole, if moderation and excess in the use of drugs are
distinguished, which is a thing the witnesses examined have... found it
very hard to do, the weight of evidence is that the moderate use of hemp
drugs is not injurious...
"The question of the mental effects produced by hemp drugs has been
examined by the Commission with great care. The popular impression that
hemp drugs are a fruitful source of insanity is very strong, but nothing
can be more remarkable than the complete breakdown of the evidence on
which it is based. Popular prejudice has over and over again caused cases
of insanity to be ascribed to ganja which have no connection whatever with
it; and then statistics based on this premise are quoted as confirming or
establishing the prejudice itself...
"Absolute prohibition is, in the opinion of the Commission, entirely out
of the question...
"There is no evidence of any weight regarding mental and moral injuries
from the moderate use of these drugs...
"Large numbers of practitioners of long experience have seen no evidence
of any connection between the moderate use of hemp drugs and disease...
"Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any more than it does in
alcohol.
Regular, moderate use of ganja or bhang produces the same effects as
moderate and regular doses of whiskey. Excess is confined to the
idle...
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