310
citement. They may, therefore, be sometimes
employed to excite the passions. But habitual
moderate ganja-smokers generally shun women.
Prostitutes are not known to use the drugs as
aphrodisiacs. The drug has no special power to
produce impotence. When impotence follows
the use of the drugs as aphrodisiacs, it would
be difficult to determine how much of it is due to
the influence of the drugs, and how much to ex-
cessive indulgence of the appetite under artificial
stimuli.
50. Excessive use of the drugs may produce
similar effects in an exaggerated degree.
51. Habitual moderate consumers of the drugs
are not known to be specially addicted to crime,
but bad characters may use these drugs equally
with other narcotics.
52. The excessive use of the drugs is common
among badmashes.
53. People indulging in excessive use of ganja
may become violent and commit crimes. They are
sometimes affected with homicidal frenzy and run
amuck.
54. Yes. They sometimes do it.
55. Ganja and charas cannot be easily admin-
istered to others without their knowledge. Cri-
minals sometimes induce their intended victims
to take siddhi so as to make them insensible to
facilitate commission of crime. In large doses
siddhi alone may produce profound sleep.
56. Moderate consumers of the drugs usually
take them in an unmixed state, or mixed with
comparatively harmless substances only, such as
tobacco with ganja and charas, and spices with
siddhi. Veteran ganja-smokers are occasionally
known to take dhatura seeds with ganja to
heighten its effects; but more commonly dhatura
seeds are mixed with ganja to be administered to
others for criminal purposes.
57. I do not know that ganja or charas is ever
eaten or drunk.
117. Evidence of RAI BAHADUR KANNY LOLL DEY, C.I.E., late Chemical
Examiner to the Government of Bengal, Calcutta.
2. Dr. Prain's definition of the drugs may be
taken as correct. The drugs are known in and
about Calcutta as ganja, charas and siddhi or bhang.
16. Yes. Bhang is usually prepared by the
people in their own houses. When the plant is
unusually leafy, the leaves do not adhere to the
flowers on the stems so as to become clotted, but
remain detached. These leaves are gathered and
dried and sold as siddhi, subji or bhang.
18. All these drugs do not keep well after six
months, unless they are preserved in a stoppered
bottle and exposed to the sun from time to time.
19. There is but one form in which ganja and
charas can be used, which is by burning like to-
bacco in a chillum and inhaling the smoke through
a pipe.
20. Ganja is a favourite with the up-country
people, quite as much as tobacco is with a Bengali.
I do not intend to say that its use is confined to
the higher provinces alone; it is also in demand
in Lower Bengal, but here it is not so universally
adopted as a stimulating drug. Labourers, night-
watchmen, ascetics and other people following
occupations involving hard manual labour or ex-
posure to the influences of the weather are given
to ganja-smoking because it enables its votaries
to undergo exposure or great manual labour at a
minimum cost of tissue. Charas is expensive, so
it is seldom used by low class men.
22. The ordinary charas sold in the bazars is the
charas of Kabul, as gathered in Central India.
The most valuable drug is that grown in Nepal
and sold at double the price of the ordinary charas.
The charas of Herat is said to be the most power-
ful variety of the drug, but it is scarcely known
in this country.
23. I am not aware of bhang being used for
smoking.
24. Bhang is a favourite with the up-country
people. In Lower Bengal darwans, ascetics and
up-country rich men use it.
25. The use of charas is diminishing. But it is
very difficult to say whether the use of ganja and
bhang is decreasing. Ganja and bhang are some-
times used as substitutes for spirituous liquors as
being cheap and less injurious.
30. It is a remarkable fact that in this country
at least the votaries of ganja, as a rule, always
smoke the drug in company and seldom singly.
People sit in a ring and pass the huka round,
nobody taking more than one or two long-sustained
puffs. Women and children seldom smoke ganja
and charas in Lower Bengal. Women suffering
from bowel complaints have recourse to bhang,
other remedies failing.
31. Ganja-smoking and charas-smoking are at
first very repulsive; but when the habit is once
formed, it is difficult to break it off; not so diffi-
cult, however, as to break off the habit of drink-
ing spirituous liquors or opium. The habit of
drinking or eating bhang can be easily formed and
given up. A moderate habit of smoking ganja or
charas and drinking bhang seldom grows into
excess.
32. Ganja votaries before beginning to smoke
always take the name of Mahadev, with whom it is
a favourite drug. The use of bhang affects our
social custom on the Bijaya day after the goddess
Durga has been thrown into the water. The
custom is quite harmless and never leads to the
formation of a habit. It is generally believed to
be essential on that day. Siddhi forms an essen-
tial element in all religious and social performances.
33. I believe the indulgence in charas seldom or
never grows into a passion.
34. Daily labourers ascetics, persons who expose
themselves to the inclemency of the weather, who
keep up at night, who are suffering from bowel
complaints or want of appetite, would be deprived
of a necessity of life and valuable remedy if they
are prevented from, ganja-smoking.
35. A compulsory prohibition of the use of these
drugs would cause great misery and create discon-
tent, as they are absolute necessity with the people
who use them. Yes, if the consumers are deprived
of the short spells of enjoyment amid the labour
and cares of life. Prohibition may stimulate men
to have recourse to alcohol and other drugs, who
now shun them on religious and social grounds.
36. Hemp is generally substituted for alcohol
as being cheaper and less disastrous to society.
37. A ganja-smoker may often be made out
by his appearance, which is always dry and rick-
etty, eyes sunken and cheeks flattened. Ganja
fumes are believed to possess the property of dry-
ing up the humours of the body and giving the
persons who inhale them a faded look. A ganja-
smoker can never be slim, and if the habit of
excessive indulgence be long persevered in, it
brings on dysentery and diarrhœa. The evils are
in a great measure counteracted by a wholesome