tea, coffee, cocoa, kola and the other similar substances used in this way in
different parts of the world. It is, in its common every-day use, a valuable food-
accessory; compared with its employment in this manner, its other uses are
trivial. Yet we are unable to express in a statistical form the extent of its use.
The only rational attempt to estimate the number of people using hemp has been
that made by Mr. Kerr,1 w h o h a s e m p l o y e d a s t h e b a s i s o f h i s c a l c u l a t i o n t h e
quantity of drug exported and sold, and the results are so vague that it is evident
that no reliable judgment can be thus formed.
Short of obtaining an accurate census of gánjá consumers, it is impossible
to arrive at the truth. At the same time an accurate census is probably an
impossibility. For we have seen that a cloud hangs over hemp and the trade
in its products; the growth, handling and use of them are disreputable and
low ; the user of gánjá will not admit that he does use it, at all events to any
one whose motive for asking is merely a wish to pry into his habits and affairs.
It is immaterial whether the feeling of disfavour towards the plant be or be not
older than the knowledge or the use of its narcotic properties; the point is that
such a feeling is directed against them now. Moreover, the very fact that the
plant and its products are excisable, increases the difficulty of arriving at a
conclusion. Even if it be true that people in the plains rarely, if ever, have an
opportunity of using contraband hemp, the most elaborate fiscal arrangements
will scarcely prevent this from sometimes happening in the hills.
This particular use of hemp is confined to those who indulge in the smoking
habit; charas therefore and gánjá, the two forms of the narcotic that arc smoked,
are alone employed in this way. The habit once formed becomes part of the
man's life; he has his three whiffs of smoke as occasion calls for it precisely as he
would, could he afford it or had he acquired the taste, take tea or kola or cocoa.
Under ordinary circumstances he takes it daily, when his day's labour is over and
during the interval when he cooks his evening meal; under extraordinary
circumstances he takes it to sustain him in the midst of severe or of prolonged
exertion. The habit does not affect his appetite; on the contrary, it enables the
poorest of our fellow-subjects to partake with a heartier appetite of their some-
what uninviting fare ; it does not affect digestion or interfere in the slightest
degree with bodily or mental health. Finally, and most important circumstance
of all, it is a habit which does not grow upon its votary. In this it is exactly
like the narcotics just mentioned, and this is one of its greatest and most striking
advantages. It is true that among certain classes in Europe, people as a rule on
the border-line between the lower-middle and the lower classes, a pernicious
state of mal-nutrition and anæmia, due to tea-poisoning, is of not infrequent
occurrence, and it may well be that sometimes such a state may occur with
gánjá-smokers. But I have not met with any instances of it, and it is highly
improbable that it is common—for the tea-poisoning is more the effect of the
substance swallowed on the digestive than of the narcotic on the nervous system,
and as the gánjá and charas are smoked, they have all the advantages that
tobacco judiciously used has over tea. And just as in people leading sedentary
lives, tea and coffee often induce grave neurotic disturbance, so in the
gánjá-smokers of bazars the nervous system sometimes gets affected. But the use of
gánjá by the idler of the bazar is not the use that the labouring man makes of
it. The bazar-loafer does not work more than he can avoid, and it is not to
relieve fatigue, but to induce intoxication that he employs the drug.
The honest peaceable labourer, sane, if not brilliant, in mind and sound in
body, finds the greatest comfort and relief from its use, and while certainly
soothed and. comforted, is probably physically benefited by smoking gánjá .
His body, though sound enough, as the work he accomplishes shows, is often
sadly ill-nourished, and not infrequently this is put down to the use of this
drug. No statement could be more misleading ; the man's body is ill-nourished
because it is not possible for him to get food enough to nourish it better;
there is little doubt that but for the use of this very drug his condition would
be worse than it is. The erroneous nature of the observation that couples
this mal-nutrition with the use of gánjá as gánjá , is amply demonstrated by the
appearance of the well-conditioned mendicants to be met with at every holy
place, who are not merely gánjá smokers, but who live day after day and all day
long under the physiological influence of the drug.
1
H . C . K e r r ,
R e p o r t ,
p .
4 5 .