CH. XI.] REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. 223
Summary of the evidence.
510. The medical evidence which has thus been analysed very clearly indi-
cates in the opinion of the Commission that when the
basis of the opinions as to the alleged evil effects of
the moderate use of the drugs is subjected to careful examination, the grounds
on which the allegations are founded prove to be in the highest degree
defective. A large number of medical witnesses of all classes ascribe dysentery,
bronchitis, and asthma to the moderate use of the drugs. An equally representa-
tive number give a diametrically opposite opinion. The most striking feature of
the medical evidence is perhaps the large number of practitioners of long experience
who have seen no evidence of any connection between hemp drugs and disease,
and when witnesses who speak to these ill effects from the moderate use are
cross-examined, it is found that (a) their opinions are based on popular
ideas on the subject; (b) they have not discriminated between the effects of
moderate and excessive use of the drugs; (c) they have accepted the diseases
as being induced by hemp drugs because the patients confessed to the
habit; and (d) the fact has been overlooked that the smoking of hemp drugs
is recognized as a remedial agent in asthma and bronchitis. A few witnesses
incidentally refer to personal idiosyncrasy as perhaps being a factor in render-
ing some consumers of the drugs less tolerant and more liable to be affected by
them even when used in moderate quantity. This view the Commission are pre-
pared to accept; but for the vast majority of consumers, the Commission consider
that the evidence shows the moderate use of ganja or charas not to be appreciably
harmful, while in the case of moderate bhang drinking the evidence shows the habit
to be quite harmless. As in long-continued and excessive cigarette smoking
considerable bronchial irritation and chronic catarrhal laryngitis may be induced,
so, too, may a similar condition be caused by excessive ganja or charas smoking;
and to the œtiology of bronchial catarrh and asthma in ganja smokers the Commis-
sion have already referred. The direct connection alleged between dysentery and
the use of hemp drugs the Commission consider to be wholly without any founda-
tion. In the case of bhang there is nothing in the physiological action of the drug
which could in any way set up an acute inflammation of the large intestine
resulting in ulceration. On the contrary, it is well known that hemp resin is a
valuable remedial agent in dysentery. As regards ganja or charas smoking
inducing dysentery, even assuming that the products of the destructive distillation
of the drugs directly reached the intestines, there is evidence that those products,
when condensed and injected into a cat's stomach, failed to induce any inflammatory
process. The connection, therefore, between hemp drug smoking and dysentery
appears even remoter than in the case of bhang drinking and that disease, and
cannot be accepted by any stretch of the imagination as even a possible direct
cause of dysentery.
General effects of excessive use.
511. Hitherto the Commission have only considered the direct action of hemp
drugs when used in moderation in inducing certain
marked conditions, but their indirect action when
taken in excess must also be briefly considered. First, as regards the indirect
action of bhang in inducing bronchitis, Dr. Prain may be quoted. He writes:
"Here as in so much else associated with hemp some misunderstanding has
arisen among Natives and Europeans alike, and it has been supposed that the
use of hemp causes the bronchitis.
As a matter of fact, cases of this
'bronchitis' cold weather cough would seem to be rather less common among