 | NORML News: The History of Cannabis Prohibition Pt1: Indian Hemp Commission |
 By Stephen McIntyre. Norml News Summer 2002/3
Imagine living in an Aotearoa where cannabis is being used professionally by doctors, nurses, midwives and vets. Cannabis products are also widely available for purchase over the counter and are cheap. Sound like a dream? Well, 120 years ago it was reality. The decade was the 1880s, and cannabis was free of all stigma as a dangerous drug.
Indian hemp, as it was then known, was recommended in the New Zealand Family Herb Doctor in 1889 as a treatment for asthma, coughs, neuralgia and menstrual pains. Indian hemp was an ingredient in many home remedies, while the seed was considered an excellent feed for poultry. Furthermore, hemp could be grown as a commercial fibre crop.
Forty years later, the cannabis plant and all its derivatives were banned in accordance with international moves to have the trade in it and other “dangerous” drug plants prohibited and controlled. What happened in those four decades that transformed the image of cannabis from good friend to international foe? Read on.
The story of modern day cannabis prohibition starts in the early 19th century with the Opium Wars between Britain and China.
Since the fall of the Mogul empire the British, through the East India Company, took over the monopoly of the huge opium trade from India to China. In 1729 the Chinese Emperor decreed that opium must no longer be imported. This did nothing to stop the popularity of the drug and trade continued unabated.
Opium use became more and more widespread throughout China. When a House of Commons Committee was set up to investigate the affairs of the East India Company in 1830, the company argued that it must be allowed to continue its opium monopoly, because only in that way could production and consumption be restricted by keeping prices high.
No one dared question this false logic, for opium proved to be too lucrative a source of revenue to Britain. The value of opium sold to China amounted to over 2 million pounds - enough to pay for half the Crown and civil service budgets in Britain. The committee recommended that it would not be desirable “to abandon so important a source of revenue”. While the Company was stripped of its other privileges, the opium monopoly was retained.
With the British Government now directly responsible for the opium traffic, production increased markedly and new areas were opened up to smuggling. The Chinese took action in 1839. Knowing the British didn’t want to risk upsetting their enormous tea trade, they ordered the smugglers to hand over their opium stocks for burning or forfeit all trading rights.
In retaliation for the forced extortion and destruction of British property, i. e. opium, naval ships were sent to Peking. Thus started the first Opium War. Defeated in 1842, the Chinese accepted the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, which included the British taking Hong Kong as their own.
In the 10 years following the Treaty of Nanking, opium traffic to China doubled. The British hoped that this might lead to an acceptance by the Emperor of legalisation, but he remained determined to stamp it out.
The second Opium War started in 1856 when the Chinese arrested the crew of the smuggling ship Arrow. In retaliation, the British navy attacked Canton. This war was bitterly fought, and in 1860 the British got what they wanted: the legal importation of opium on payment of duty.
Until now, there had been few challenges in Britain to the generally accepted notion that opium was destructive and highly addictive. However, after the beginning of legalised opium importation into China, testimonials to the benefits of opium on health began to emerge. Such contradictions led to the British Royal Commission into opium in 1893.
The opium lobby immediately protested that one drug should not be singled out when others were in common use. Indian hemp, they contended, was far more injurous.
In Britain, Indian hemp - as cannabis was called then - had a sinister reputation fuelled through legend. The French etymologist Sylvestre de Sacy identified hashish with “hashishin” or assassins. The explorer Dr Livingston reported that hemp was used by African tribes to work themselves into a frenzy before going into battle. And it was understood from The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night that hashish was used to put husbands to sleep so that lovers could enjoy their wives.
In 1893 the Indian Hemp Commission was set up to examine the trade in cannabis, its effect on the social and moral condition of the people, and the desirability of prohibiting the plant. The commission found that cannabis was used extensively in India as a medicine, in tonics, at family gatherings, in religious observances and, most commonly, by workers to alleviate fatigue. In none of these capacities could the commission find any evidence of harm. As a rule cannabis use was found to be moderate and unproblematic, with cases of excessive use being rare.
The commission investigated the claim that cannabis use led to insanity. It concluded that while there was a link between mental illness and excessive cannabis use, over-indulgence could be regarded not as a cause, but as a symptom of some predisposition to insanity.
The commission also considered the charge that hemp use inexorably led to crime. Witness after witness described cases where addicted cannabis users had to steal to maintain their supply. Following up these reports, the commission could find absolutely no evidence to support any of them. “It is astonishing”, the commission noted, “to find how defective and misleading are the recollections which many witnesses retain”.
The Report of the Indian Hemp Commission concluded there was absolutely no need to ban cannabis in India. The drug was not a serious hazard and - as it grew so prolifically and was so widely used - prohibition would be unworkable. Furthermore, there was no evidence that hemp was habit-forming in the way that alcohol and opium were.
As the Chinese began producing their own opium for domestic use, imports from India dwindled. In 1905 the British government opened negotiations with the Chinese by offering to reduce opium exports, provided they reduce home production and did not import from other countries. The Chinese readily agreed.
In America, Chinese use of opium had been perceived as a problem for over 50 years, as was the abundance of opium found in many “snake-oil” medicines. The US government realised that if India and China managed to reduce their production there was a chance that American troubles could be solved too - providing other countries did not expand production.
Through prompting by the US State Department, an international conference was convened in Shanghai in 1909 to study the opium problem. This led to the Hague Convention of 1911, which agreed that production and distribution of opium should be carefully regulated, and its export permitted only through authorised channels.
Following the World War 1, the League of Nations - a forerunner of the United Nations - was established. One of its functions was to take over supervision of international agreements such as the Hague Convention. At the League’s first meeting, an advisory committee on opium and other drugs was set up to try to persuade member states to maintain the regulations laid down to control them.
By 1925, it was apparent that Britain was unwilling to limit or control the amount of opium it was supplying. Ire in the US - itself not even a League member - was raised and a fresh convention held to force greater restrictions on the international drugs trade. Under American pressure, coca and Indian hemp were added to opium and morphine on the list of restricted substances.
One year later Britain prohibited Indian hemp. Other Commonwealth countries followed suit; in 1927 New Zealand introduced the Dangerous Drugs Act, a carbon copy of the British law, to control the production and sale of cannabis.
One of the great values in studying the Indian Hemp Report is identifying where so many of our cannabis myths have come from. The lie that it causes frenzied behaviour and insanity, the nonsense that cannabis use alone leads to addiction, indolence and crime are all founded in the anecdotal “evidence” presented to the Indian Hemp Commission in the late 19th century. It is of great credit to the members of the commission that they made the effort necessary to discover that these claims were patently false.
Although debunked in the 1890s, such myths survived and were seized upon by American prohibitionists in the 1930s to enact federal cannabis prohibition. And incredible as it may seem, many of them continue to be heard from the mouths of rabid prohibitionists in the new millennium!
Next issue: “Reefer madness” and the marijuana conspiracy in the United States.
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