say that moderate indulgence in any one of these
three preparations is injurious.
40. "Desi bhang" is said to be given to cattle
in the cold weather to get them into good condi--
tion.
41 and 42. I am sure that the chief reason why
labourers smoke ganja is that it helps them to
undergo exertion and exposure, and also alleviates
fatigue at the end of the day's work. I have
questioned many, and they all described the effect
of the drug consumed in this way to be as above.
Bhang is commonly said to sharpen the ap--
petite, and ganja seems to produce a similar effect
in a less marked degree.
43.Moderate consumers are quite inoffensive.
44.Ganja smoking produces at once an intoxi
-cation which lasts about two hours.
Bhang used merely as a refresher has very
little intoxicating power. Neither ganja nor
bhang, allays hunger, but bo
t h , a n d p a r t i c u l a r l y t h e f o r m e r , s h a r p e n t h e a p p e t i t e .
So far as I have been able to ascertain, the
consumer's condition, after intoxication has passed
off, is perfectly normal, and there is no craving
like that experienced by opium eaters or opium
smokers.
45 to 48. These are questions to which I am
unable to give satisfactory or useful answers.
49. If an aphrodisiac is, as I take it to be, a
medicine which supplies sexual power or increases
it when it is feeble, I do not believe that any
preparation of hemp is regarded as an aphrodisiac.
Kuchla or strychnos mix vomica is so regarded,
and used accordingly.
50 to 54. I am not in a position to give any
useful answers to these questions.
55 and 56. I understand that to induce stupe--
faction admixture of dhatura is necessary. I
have met with no cases of such admixture, and
my office files do not contain any special inform-
- a t i o n i n r e g a r d t o i t .
57. Ganja proper is never eaten. The prepar-
ation of majum has been briefly described above
(in answer to question 19), and the intoxication
induced by it is said to last longer than that
caused by smoking ganja.
58 to 60. The system of control appears to me
to be complete, and neither from personal experi--
ence nor from my office records can I bring for-
- w a r d a n y s o u n d o b j e c t i o n s t o i t . C u l t i v a t i o n i s
only permitted under license, and that in a very
limited area; harvesting is supervised by a
special establishment entertained every year; the
entire crop is stored in a Government godown,
and the manufactured article is thence distributed
to district storehouses, access to which is impossi--
ble in the absence of a tahsildar or naib-tahsil--
dar. Payment of the direct duty of Rs. 2 per
seer is ensured by only permitting the wholesale
vendor to obtain a fresh supply after he has paid
duty on the amount sold by him to retail vendors
since the last previous issue. It is true that in
1887 Mr. L. K. Laurie, the then Commissioner
of Excise, suggested the substitution of Govern--
ment agents for wholesale vendors on the ground
that all the wholesale vendor had to do was (1)
to buy at the Central stores as much ganja as was
from time to time required in the district for
which he was appointed, and (2) to employ an
agent at each tahsili to sell the drug to retail
vendors. All Deputy Commissioners, except four
approved of this suggestion, but Mr. Laurie on
re-consideration concluded that Government
agency was unsuited for purchasing and for sell-
ing to retail vendors, and the Chief Commissioner
accepted this view.
The right to sell by retail is always sold by
auction, shops in towns being sold in a lump,
and those in rural areas separately. Objection
may perhaps be taken to auctioning such monopo-
-lies on the ground that bids made at auctions are
often merely speculative or induced by other than
purely business-like considerations. The obvious
alternative is to fix the fee payable either separate-
ly for each shop or generally for each district or
tahsil ; and from paragraph 49 of the Excise
Manual it will be seen that this may be done with
the sanction of the Chief Commissioner. A sys-
tem of monthly licenses at fixed rates was tried in
1880-81, but by 1882-83 was almost entirely
abandoned: the objections to this form of tax
were pointed out in paragraph 43 of the Pro--
vincial Excise Report for 1880-81. If yearly
licenses were issued at fixed rates, thos rates
would in practice be settled with reference to
the bids at recent auctions, for vendors are as
a rule too illiterate to keep accounts, and it is
practically impossible in most districts to gauge
actual consumption owing to the state of the law
which permits possession of 5 tolas of the drug
no matter whence obtained. In this connection
I would invite perusal of the remarks in para-
graph 15 of the Chief Commissioner's Resolution
on the Provincial Excise Report for 1880-81.
61 and 62. Neither charas nor bhang is culti-
-vated or manufactured in the Central Provinces.
63, I have nothing to add to the answer given
to questions 58 to 60.
64. If we are to protect ourselves completely
by means of penalties against import of ganja,
even in the quantity possession of which is legal
(5 tolas), the Excise Act of 1881 must be
amended. In 1879 the Chief Commissioner
submitted to the Government of India a draft
Bill on the lines of the Opium Act, 1878, one
section of which permitted the import of intoxi-
- c a t i n g d r u g s p r e p a r e d f r o m h e m p o n l y w h e n
effected in accordance with rules to be issued by
the Local Administration. But the Government
of India appear to have considered that reduction
of the quantity of ganja which a private person
may have in his possession from 20 to 5 tolas was
a sufficient safeguard against unlawful importa--
tion, for the Act of 1881 contains no direct pro-
hibition of the import of ganja.
65 to 67. The incidences of total demand per
head of total population in respect of country
liquor, hemp drugs and opium, were respectively
as under for the year 1892-93:—
R a. p.
R a. p.
R a . p .
0 2 10 005 010
10
2
. 0 0 5 . . 0 1 0
0
No satisfactory comparison of these figures
seems to me possible, because there are, besides
non-consumers of either liquor or ganja, many who
use one and not the other. If we could ascertain
the exact number of consumers of each intoxicant,
the incidences on them might be usefully com-
-pared. In my answer to question 26 the pro-
bable number of ganja smokers is estimated at
800,000; on this the incidence per head is 5
annas for 1892-93.
For country liquor I can only rely upon the
estimate in paragraph 23 of the Provincial Excise
Report for 1884-85, which gives the total number
in drinking castes as 6,431,809; allowing for
increase in population since the census of 1881,
this may be increased to 7,000,000. If half this
number are consumers, as they probably are, the