152 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. VIII.
gradually meeting with more competition from ganja. A moderate use of charas
will be found all over the States which are within easy reach of the Punjab and the
North-Western Provinces. The extent of use of ganja in Hyderabad will be fairly
well indicated by the estimates of Berar, the Bombay Presidency, and Madras
as regards the parts of the State contiguous to those provinces, and a similar
process of examination will give the consumption of Mysore. In these two
States bhang as a separate form of the raw drug has practically disappeared, but
charas finds a few consumers in Hyderabad. Baroda consumption is the same
as that of the northern part of Bombay Presidency.
Kashmir and Nepal.
408. In Kashmir and Nepal the wild plant furnishes the whole, or a very large
share, of the consumption—a fact which renders
useless for present purposes the figure of produc-
tion given in the Kashmir evidence, and of import from Bengal into Nepal which
can be derived from the Bengal statistics.
Real extent of the use of the
hemp drugs not ascertained.
409. The inquiries made in the army have elicited replies from 274
Army.
regiments, batteries of artillery, and special corps
in the service of the British Government and
Natives States. If commanding officers had found it possible to take an
accurate and complete census of the consumers of the hemp drugs among the
sepoys and other natives attached to their corps, the result would have been
of the greatest service in determining the extent to which the hemp drugs are
used among the various races and castes and the population generally. But
the cases are few in which the inquiry has elicited information on the point which
has the appearance of being complete. It would therefore be misleading to
compile and tabulate the results in statistical form. Several enquiring officers
report that their men will not admit the use of the hemp drugs, though it is cer-
tain that they are taken to some extent. And in many cases there are special
reasons for this reticence in addition to the disrepute attaching to the habit in
native society generally. In some regiments the use of the drugs is directly
prohibited, and in others the commanding officers, though they may not have
gone this length, regard the consumers with distrust. It must be the case also
that in some regiments the consumers are held in greater disrepute among their
comrades than in others. In many it is apparent that the inquiry was distasteful
to the men, and in some that the commanding officers were not very insistent
in pressing it. Keeping in view these reasons for distrusting the figures, it will
not be prudent to do more than indicate a few general features of the hemp
drug habit as it prevails in the native armies.
Extent of use reported.
410. There are regiments in all three presidencies and in the Native States
in which the hemp drugs in one form or other are
shown to be used by 5 per cent. of the men and fol-
lowers. Forty-nine out of the 274 corps come under this category, and the
number evidently falls far short of the truth. In some corps the number of
consumers is far higher than 5 per cent. In some corps the use, if the reports
are to be taken literally, does not exist, or is quite infinitesimal, or is practically
confined to the followers. The consumption in these corps is no doubt trifling
in most cases, but it is difficult to accept it as fact as regards any regiment that
the drugs are not used at all, especially in regiments of Sikhs, who are extremely
partial to bhang.