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gánjá consumers are either people who are utterly dissipated, or people who
use the drug in the legitimate fashion as a food-accessory.
The last point to be referred to in connection with the abuse of gánjá is what
may be called the objectively criminal employment of the drug. As has been
said, there seems reason to believe that the effect of gánjá or bhang never is
directly to incite to crime, though there is no reason to doubt that these drugs
are sometimes taken to enable a criminal to carry through his enterprise. This
is, then, the subjective criminal use of the drug.
The objective usage has, as it happens, this same indirect connection with
the deed. We now know enough about the action of the drug to be assured that
the cases where gánjá has been reported to have been employed to induce a
state of prostrate intoxication in, or to poison, a victim are probably all mistakes.
The doses necessary to accomplish either of these intentions are too large for
their administration to be practicable. But we also know that the use of hemp
and its preparations is very general, and that these preparations form very
convenient vehicles for substances, dhatura being the chief one, that will
produce the desired effect.
CHAPTER IX.—GENERAL RESUMÉ.
The hemp-plant, a native of Southern Siberia, carried as a fibre-plant into
India, under its changed conditions of growth, has developed a narcotic pro-
perty owing to the elaboration of a substance utilized in the formation of the
seeds. Taken again into adjacent more temperate countries the substance is
still elaborated, but not being functionally necessary, is exuded by the plant.
The discovery has been made that if in India itself the formation of seeds be
prevented, the substance there also exudes. The plant, besides being cultivated,
has escaped from cultivation, and is now so extensively distributed as a ‘wild'
species throughout India and the Himalaya that the opinion, which has some-
times been seriously expressed, that the plant could be extirpated may be
at once dismissed as chimerical.
The discovery of the narcotic property was made prior to the discovery of
the fact that the narcotic substance could be obtained in a more or less pure state,
and the original mode of using hemp was therefore as an emulsion or a decoc-
tion of the leaves, the original purpose being to produce intoxication. This
method of taking and this reason for using hemp leaves still exist. With the
acquisition of the smoking habit a new use was made of the leaves and an
extended use of the resin. The practice of smoking leaves did not, however, last
long, and is now exceptional ; the custom of smoking the resin, whether as
crude resin (charas) or as resin on flowering-tops (gánjá), has, on the other hand,
become widely extended.
These two forms of the drug, when finally prepared for smoking, are the
same in kind,—as much of the resin with as little of the vegetable tissue as it is
possible to obtain,—and differ only in degree ; the first, being but one part resin
to three parts vegetable tissue, is less powerful than the last, which is three parts
resin to one part vegetable tissue. The effects of gánjá drunk are about twice
those of gánjá smoked, but as gánjá is about five times as powerful as bhang is,
the effects of smoking gánjá, which is practically the only way in which gánjá is
used, will necessarily be from twice to thrice the effects of drinking bhang, which
in turn is practically only consumed in this way. Besides being more powerful
in its effects, the mode of presentation of gánjá causes these to be more rapidly
manifested, and also to pass off more quickly. The fact that it is more power-
ful does not necessarily imply that gánjá produces greater effect in its common
use ; it is so much more easy to regulate the dose and therefore the effect of gánjá
than of bhang. Charas and gánjá being simply more and less concentrated forms
of the same thing, used in the same way, produce exactly the same effects,
because the dose is regulated according to their natural strength. Charas, like
gánjá, is not, as an intoxicant, taken internally.
When the full physiological action of the drug is induced, the narcotic it
contains is seen to have two distinct effects—an initial, stimulating and exhilarant,
and a subsequent, sedative and depressant. Though by no means proved,
it is possible that the former effect is in some way connected with the
presence of an essential oil, while the latter is certainly connected with a resinous