CH. VIII.] REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. 147
Individual allowance of ganja.
391. Mr. Almon, Assistant Collector of Abkari in Bombay, maintains that
the moderate consumer of ganja spends two annas
a day on his indulgence, and consumes one tola
of the drug. This represents an annual consumption of over four sérs and
an expenditure of Rs. 45, and only admits of ten consumers being supplied
by each maund of the drug. The average sale of 258 maunds, with allowance
for waste, only suffices therefore for 2,000 or 2,500 consumers. Some wit-
nesses, but they are few, state that the daily allowance of a moderate consumer
is above one tola. The majority of witnesses put it at less. The lowest limit is
reached by the Collector of Ratnagiri, who gives one-sixteenth of a tola as the
average daily allowance, and reports 8,000 consumers in the district, of which the
average retailsales amount to 74 maunds—i.e., more than 100 consumers per maund.
The Collector of Ahmednagar has arrived at a mean of the above extremes. He
caused "a hasty census to be taken throughout the district," with the result that
the number of consumers in a population of 888,755 was found to be 6,134, or .69
per cent. The Ratnagiri inquiries gave a percentage not very much higher than
the above, but by means of a much lower individual allowance. In Ahmednagar
the allowance of 6,134 consumers on a total retail sale of 154 maunds comes to
about 40 consumers to the maund, or one sér per head per annum, or somewhat
less than a quarter of a tola per diem. The weight of evidence would fix the
daily allowance nearer to one-half than one-quarter tola. Mr. Ebden's enumera-
tion probably therefore included occasional consumers, and possibly counted the
same people more than once. The price of ganja outside Bombay ranges from
three annas a pound in Satara to one anna a tola in Khandesh. One sér of
ganja can never therefore cost more than Rs. 5, and the average price will be
within the reach of all classes of consumers.
Number of regular consumers
estimated.
392. Making allowance for a considerable share of the drug being used in
the making of drinks, sweetmeats, and other pre-
parations, which are for the most part consumed
only occasionally, and for waste, the number of regular consumers in British
territory alone cannot be less than 2,500 x 30, or 75,000, giving a per-
centage on the population of .46. Besides these, there are the small body of re-
gular drinkers of the hemp drugs and the occasional consumers of other prepara-
tions of the drug whose numbers cannot be estimated. The number of regular
consumers in the Bombay City can hardly be less than 6,000.
Figures of retail sale not gen-
erally reliable as index of consump-
tion.
393. Little reliance can be placed on the figures of retail sale, and in the
present discussion they have only been utilised to
range the districts in the order of their relative rate
of consumption, and relied upon in the case of
Ahmednagar because they were in fair accordance with the Collector's census of
consumers and the experience gained in other provinces. The figures of retail
sale in the Dharwar district are extraordinary. They show steady increase for
years past, and have now reached a point which by the reasonable standard of
individual consumption above adopted gives a percentage of over four of
regular consumers on the population. This is impossible; there is no such con-
sumption as this in any rural tract in the whole of India. The witnesses who
speak with special knowledge of the district do not give anything like this
percentage, and they do not confirm the evidence of the figures that there has
been a remarkable increase of consumption in the last fourteen years. The