202 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. X.
sumption of these drugs indicates and intensifies mental and moral weakness,
and must also be attended in all but exceptional constitutions with some visible
physical injury. In regard to the moderate use, on the other hand, it would be
quite wrong to accept without clear evidence the view that physical, mental, and
moral injury resulted.
In the absence of all physiological evidence of tissue
changes being produced by these drugs, as they are produced by alcohol, it must
be presumed, until the contrary appear, that the moderate use does not cause
injury in any but the most exceptional cases. General experience warrants the
admission that even the moderate use of such drugs may cause injury in excep-
tional cases owing to idiosyncracy or peculiar diathesis. But as a rule, practi-
cally without exception, the presumption must be against injury from the moder-
ate use. It is necessary then to weigh the evidence carefully so as to ascertain
both whether there is any ground for believing that the moderate use is attended
by evil results at all, and also what the particular results are which under any
circumstances follow the use of the drugs.
Limitation of the issues raised.
498. Leaving out of account for the present the question of the connection of
the drugs with insanity, there is no evidence of any
weight regarding mental and moral injury from the
moderate use of the drugs. Vague statements are made by a small minority of
the witnesses regarding the stupidity or moral weakness of consumers whom they
have met. But after making allowance for the fact that these observations have
often been of excessive consumers, and for the lower mental and moral tone
found generally among the lower orders to which the consumers, or at all events
the smokers of hemp drugs, almost exclusively belong, there is little left in the
evidence on which to base any opinion. The statements, too, are of results of an
indefinite character and difficult to gauge or account for even with careful observa-
tion of the whole history of a case which is never possible in the instances adduced.
Similarly, in regard to physical injury, there are a considerable number of vague
statements made regarding "impairment of constitution," debility, emaciation,
and other physical results of an indefinite character. These are largely accounted
for by the mere fact that it is the poorer classes who ordinarily use these drugs.
The poor cultivator or day labourer, who works hard and has nothing but
a bare sufficiency of the necessaries of life, cannot be expected to be sleek.
Witnesses who have spoken of the use of hemp as making men thin and ill-
nourished looking have admitted that their experience is based only on what they
have seen of the poor, and that among the poor there is no specially marked
appearance of this kind among the consumers of hemp. A similar fallacy is
noticed by several witnesses. They point out that the drugs, which are more
used in malarious and unhealthy tracts than elsewhere, are credited with the
evil effects which result from the malarious and unhealthy conditions. As a
matter of fact, the moderate consumer in such localities cannot, they say, be
distinguished from the non-consumer. Then, again, a great deal of the vague
evidence regarding the general injury to the constitution alleged to result from
the use of hemp drugs is based on what the witnesses know of fakirs and wander-
ing mendicants who consume the drugs. It is surprising to find witnesses who
have had years of experience, whose work has brought them into close contact
with the ordinary life of the people, testifying that they have never seen the
drugs used except by religious mendicants, or known any of the effects of the