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substance. The effects of either stage are largely influenced by racial and by
individual idiosyncracy, and are in a complementary manner equally power-
fully modified by temperament. One of the most marked and by far the most
important of its effects is diminished power of interpreting the relationship of
the subject to the environment,—a perverted sense of relativity.
Latent sensory, intellectual or emotional capacities, and accidental external
relationship, thus influence and determine the symptoms of the intoxication,
while strong feeling, deliberate volition and timeous suggestion modify its
effects still more markedly.
At present hemp is employed as a food-accessory (the common practice) by
smoking gánjá, as a stimulant in the form of bhang, as an intoxicant both in the
form of bhang and of gánjá, and as a deliriant usually in the form of bhang.
When employed as a food-accessory its use is beneficial; as a stimulant it is
h a r m l e s s ; a s a n i n t o x i c a n t i t i s a p t t o i m p a i r d i g e s t i o n , e s p e c i a l l y i f t a k e n a s
bhang ; as a deliriant it is rarely employed. This last use is deliberate in the
majority of cases where it occurs, though it may occasionally result from
casual over-indulgence. In either case it is apt to cause nervous and mental
symptoms or to exaggerate acquired or inherited mental defects.
It is employed also as an aphrodisiac, which it is not, by the depraved
; rarely, however, without the addition of pernicious substances to which the
evil effects that follow this use of hemp are probably mainly due. A common
form, besides bhang and gánjá, in which hemp is employed for this purpose, is as
a sweetmeat, majun, heavily medicated with nux vomica or cantharides.
It is used also as an objective aid to crime, but again, rarely, if ever, without
the aid of other substances, the chief adjunct in this case being dhatura.
Like any other stimulant or sedative narcotic, gánjá may, therefore, either
be used or abused. As in the case of other similar substances, the use here is
widespread and innocuous; the abuse, though dangerous, is very limited; the
harm that results from its abuse has been not only greatly exaggerated, but
much misunderstood. Many authors who have described its effects appear to
have only come in contact with instances of this abuse, and to have conceived
that these, which are not only exceptional, but very rare results of its employ-
ment, are the usual if not invariable ones. The reasons for this error are very
simple. As hemp is generally taken, it produces no visible effect. The man
who uses gánjá legitimately takes a few whiffs of its smoke when exhausted
by his work, is refreshed thereby, and resumes his occupation. This is all that is
to be seen in the general (so general that other cases are trifling by comparison)
use of gánjá. No wonder, therefore, that the real object in taking the substance
has escaped notice. The common use as a food-accessory is by smoking. It is
practically impossible, therefore, that this should lead to abuse, since, like the
smoking habit in connection with tobacco, it is under control and is self-
regulating. Sometimes, it is true, when the idle or the vicious employ the habit,
they smoke gánjá in the way that opium, rather than tobacco is smoked to induce
intoxication. But this abuse is rare, and is never a development from the
use as a food-accessory; precisely like the corresponding use of opium, it is
deliberately indulged in from the commencement.
The use of the substance as a pure stimulant is in itself harmless, but
it has the disadvantage, as compared with the first use, of sometimes leading
to habits of over-indulgence. This arises from the fact that the substance
has to be drunk, and therefore is not so self-regulating, and from this use
prevailing, not among the labouring poor but among the idle poor, and among the
leisured classes. But this, though the original use of hemp, is now a rare one
among the leisured, and though still represented by interesting ceremonial
survivals, can hardly be said to exist as a custom in contemporary Indian
society. The chief reason for the disappearance of the habit has been the
peculiar character of disrepute that attaches to hemp. This character evidently
did not attach to the narcotic when it was first known and used, and it seems
that the origin of the feeling is rather to be looked for in an initial contempt for
the class that cultivates and prepares the hemp-fibre than in connection with
the narcotic effects of the plant. The feeling against hemp has been intensified
among the higher classes of Indian society by the fact that one of the most
marked physiological effects of the narcotic is that blunting of the sense of
relativity which has been mentioned. The lower classes, while affected by the
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