CH. X.] REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. 181
consider the popular use and its effects apart from the medicinal use. A drug may
be a useful medicine, but a bad thing to allow into the market freely for general
consumption. The evidence regarding the popular use has now to be considered.
There are only about fifty witnesses who assert that no benefit whatever can be
derived by consumers from the moderate use of any form of these drugs. The
vast majority assert that in some one or other of their forms they may produce
at least temporarily beneficial effects. Many even of those who regard the use of
the drugs as on the whole baneful admit such temporary benefits. It is to be
noted, however, that, with the very rarest exceptions, the evidence points to the
use of the drugs by males only. Women would therefore appear either not to
require or to be denied the benefits ascribed to the drugs.
Food accessory or digestive.
469. Among the beneficial effects attributed to the drugs is their effect as
a food accessory or digestive. This effect is more
generally attributed to bhang than to the other two
forms. But there are a large number of witnesses
who attribute it also to the smoking of ganja. The "cooling and refreshing"
cup of bhang taken by the well-to-do, especially in the hot weather, to stimulate
their energies and to create an appetite for food is frequently in evidence. There
would seem to be a very general use of bhang in moderation as a stimulant and
digestive by the middle classes, especially in advancing years. Some of the most
intelligent and enterprising classes of the community are among those who thus
use bhang. This use is generally spoken of without any marked condemnation,
and often even with approval; for it is the practice of the respectable classes.
But after all there seems quite equally good ground for believing that the chil-
lum of ganja taken by the labouring man after his food with the object of allay-
ing weariness and assisting digestion is no more harmful; and there are many
witnesses whose evidence is in this sense. The use of bhang in the one case is
sometimes compared to the glass of wine taken at meals by a moderate
consumer of alcohol, and the use of ganja in the other case to the labour-
ing man's glass of beer or even to his pipe of tobacco. It is possible
also that the effects of hemp drugs in this respect may be to a certain
extent comparable with those of tea. In connection with the most recent
experiments on the subject, the action of tea is thus described by Dr.
Edward Smith: "It increases the assimilation of food both of the flesh and heat
forming kind, and with abundance of food must promote nutrition, whilst in the
absence of sufficient food it increases the waste of the body." If there is any-
thing in this comparison, Dr. Smith's remarks regarding tea may throw some
light on the statements frequently found in the evidence regarding the necessity
for sufficient or nourishing food to prevent injury to the constitution from the
prolonged use of hemp drugs.
To give staying-power.
470. The use of these drugs to give staying-power under severe exertion or
exposure or to alleviate fatigue is very largely in evid-
ence. Here it is ganja especially which is credit-
ed with these beneficial effects. For ganja is far more extensively used than
bhang by the labouring classes. The latter is mainly used by persons like the
Chaubes of Mathra, who are very frequently referred to, and professional
wrestlers. Gymnasts, wrestlers and musicians, palki-bearers and porters, divers
and postal runners, are examples of the classes who use the hemp drugs on occa-
sions of especially severe exertion. Fishermen and boatmen, singhara cultivators
46