The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report
Indian Hemp and the Dope Fiends of Old England
A sociopolitical history of cannabis and the British Empire 1840-1928
Sean Blanchard & Matthew J. Atha MSc
When
the report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (IHDC) reached 1890's England it
met official and public apathy. There was no political debate. It went into the
'forget about this' file on arrival and has stayed there ever since. There was
no publicity; The news that "Ganja is not appreciably harmful" was of
no concern to the majority of users, who took cannabis products for their medical
benefits. The non-medical users were mostly artists who didn't mind a little
harm. Prohibitionist sentiment was concentrated on the opium trade between India
and China and on alcohol at home. Cannabis use in England was considered negligible,
and the authorities were content to have no laws at all controlling it for
another thirty years.
When
laws were later proposed, the Government paid no attention to the evidence in
their possession from the IHDC. In India, the recommendations of the IHDC report
for control by taxes rather than prohibition went into force quietly, standardising
laws and tariffs on cannabis in all the provinces. In March 1895, the Indian Government
passed a resolution after reviewing the report. It said that for the last twenty
years their policy had been of "restraining use and improving the revenue
by the imposition of suitable taxation" and "imposing as high a rate
of duty as can be levied without inducing illicit practices" on the grounds
that "the best way to restrict the consumption of drugs is to tax them..."
So, "to that policy the Governor-General... has decided steadily to adhere."[1]
There
was never any suggestion that the same rules might be applied in the UK; the Empire
didn't work like that. The Governor-General (also known as Viceroy), Lord Landsdowne,
was appointed by the UK Government. When they instructed him to commission a report,
he did so, then accepted or rejected it, passed any regulations needed, and told
the UK what he'd done. His job was to 'keep natives in their place' and help the
British get on with de, not to give advice on home affairs.
From
Mother's Friend to Opium Wars
Cannabis
was virtually irrelevant to 19th century England. The drug of the century was
opium, freely available to the British population and so popular that the government
went to war to prevent the prohibitionist Chinese disrupting the trade. The opium
wars still write their history in the 1990s, as Britain is soon due to hand back
Hong Kong, the territory it won from China and those territories leased for 150
years, in 1997.
Thomas
De Quincy, in his 'Confessions of and English Opium Eater' gave the first popular
account of the '...marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or pain'.
He may have been the first glamouriser of the psychotropic effects of the drug,
but, for most people opium was a friend and medicine as indispensable as aspirin
or Valium in the 20th century. Godfrey's cordial, or chemists' home-brewed versions
of popular patent medicines, were used to quiet children, while no home would
be without laudanum (alcoholic tincture of opium). Opium was first used in the
treatment of cholera in the epidemics of the early 19th century, and continued
to be used for the treatment of diarrhoea and sickness, common complaints in the
less than hygienic environment of the day. It was during the Crimean war
that the analgesic effects were fully exploited, and it is certain that the widespread
use of laudanum, Collis Browne's mixture or other opium-based medicines, available
to the poor for a penny a bottle, enabled ordinary people to cope with the harsh
realities of life in Dickensian England. From the government's point of view,
it was no doubt preferable to have the poor in a state of comfortable stupor than
rioting on the streets.
India
was not the main source of opium for the domestic market. Most of this was grown
in Turkey or Persia (Iran), as this opium was of generally high qualify, and trade
flourished in the period following the end of the Napoleonic wars, particularly
after the treaty of Balta Limon (1838) granting the Ottoman Empire 'most favoured
nation' trading status[2]. Indian opium, however, was responsible for one of the
British Government in India becoming the largest drug-trafficking syndicate in
the world during the latter part of the century.
Opium and tea were the mainstays of the British East India Company, who had a monopoly on the opium produced in Bengal. In 1772 Warren Hastings, then chief executive of the company, realised the potential for foreign revenue in exporting Indian opium to China. Opium had been known in China for centuries, but
imports
bad been banned in 1729 by decree of the Emperor. An foreign trade was funneled
through Canton, opium being smuggled with legitimate consignments in British ships,
and sold through corrupt officials to an eager market Other traders smuggled opium
to China overland, and the consumption spread to all levels of society, even to
the personal retinue of the Emperor. Exports to China rose from 10,000 chests
ill 1820 to 40,000 chests in 1840. By 1836, a Chinese official in Canton, Hsu
Nal-chi, petitioned the emperor to legalise the trade after witnessing the failure
of prohibition... "the severer the interdicts against (opium) became, the
more widely do the evils therefrom spread." He was summarily dismissed from
his post and replaced with a committed "war on drugs"-minded individual,
Lin Tse-hsu.
Lin
was determined to wipe out the opium trade by threatening the British merchants
with the loss of the tea trade, and in 1839 forced them to surrender 20,000 chests
of the drug. Captain Charles Elliot the British Chief Superintended, retaliated
by ordering all British ships out of the Canton estuary, transferring the tea
trade to American ships who would transport their cargoes to Hong Kong, an inconvenience,
but not an obstacle, to the trade. Instead of using Canton, smugglers would take
opium consignments ashore up and down the coast in sinall boats, fast enough
to evade the Customs craft. Meanwhile Elliot had ordered an expeditionary force
of naval steamships which arrived in 1840 and put direct pressure on Peking. Lin
was dismissed and the trade continued uninterrupted following the Chinese capitulation
and the end of the first opium war in 1842. To the domestic audience in the UK,
Palmerston, the Prime Minister, bad portrayed the war as an attempt to force the
Chinese to accept free trade. In reality, the only commodity directly involved
was -opium, tax revenue from which was becoming increasingly important to the
Indian Government [3].
In
Britain, the Conservative opposition was not satisfied with Palmerston's explanations
and they opposed the opium trade in the 1840 Commons debate. By the time they
took power in 1841 their tune had changed, and the trade continued to expand.
The Chinese government was effectively warned that no British ships should be
searched. Although fresh edicts against the drug were issued by the Chinese, they
were powerless to stop the trade following the treaty of Nanking, which ceded
Hong Kong to Britain, allowing a bridgehead for further opium supplies. In 1856,
following growing and-British sentiment, the Chinese gave the British government
a further excuse for war by seizing the Arrow, a British vessel with a
crew of Chinese criminals anchored off Canton. The fact that the Arrow's registration
had expired, technically justifying the Chinese action, was overlooked by Palmerston,
once again the Liberal Prime Minister after fighting an election forced by government
defeat on an opposition motion condemning the war, and winning on a wave of patriotic
fervour.
Lord
Elgin was dispatched with an expeditionary force which burned down the Summer
Palace in Peking to impress upon the Emperor the need to keep agreements. The
main consequence of the Second Opium War was that China was forced to legalise
the trade in opium, and were only permitted to tax the product at a level acceptable
to the British. Consumption increased from 60,000 chests in 1860 to 105,000 by
1880. The trade generated taxes to the British Indian Government equivalent to
over half their total revenue, enough to cover the entire civil service and armed
forces budgets. In this climate, financial expediency, as so often is the case,
took precedence over the growing moral arguments against the drug trade.
Following
increased public pressure to end the trade, and in response to a Parliamentary
motion, the Government called a Royal Commission on the production and consumption
of opium, which was only to consider prohibition among other options, after full
investigation. It was during these manoevres that the IHDC was also established.
The Indian Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne was against anything that might disrupt business.
Prime Minister Gladstone was much more pro trade than he was anti drug. They packed
the opium commission with pragmatists from the Indian Civil Service, with some
of the more economically literate abolitionists, and ensured that it would concentrate
a good deal on money. It first met in September 1893 and saw 2,500 witnesses by
February '94.
When
the report was published in '95, it said that opium was "generally used in
moderation", and "led to no evident ill-effects". Even some senior
anti-opiumists had been convinced. The fact that Chinese missionaries were overwhelmingly
critical of the effects of opium, in contrast to the Indian witnesses who were
predominantly favourable towards the drug, was put down to the fact that in India
the drug is normally taken orally, whereas in China it was generally smoked [3].
There was only one dissent; Joseph Rowntree, one of the committee members, was
later to denounce the Commission's report as a whitewash. By that time there was
another election under way. Prohibition had no chance under the Conservatives,
and there would be no Liberal government until 1905.(4). The government, despite
public opinion, was determined to continue the opium
"The
Lunatic asylums are filled with Ganja Smokers."
The
question of cannabis occasionally cropped up as an incidental issue in skirmishes
during the long legislative battle against the opium business. As early as 1840
the pro-opium banker William Bingham Baring MP told the Commons that if the opium
trade were suppressed then there would be a danger of users turning to drugs "infinitely
more prejudicial to physical health and energy than opium". Baring, one of
10 MPs of both parties from the same pro-free trade family, was particularly concerned
about "an exhalation of the Hemp plant, easily collected at certain seasons,
which is in every way more injurious than the use of the poppy." [3] This
was another justification for the lucrative opium trade which flourished in a
climate of official and unofficial governmental encouragement. However, attitudes
were slowly changing and in 1875 Mark Steward MP had proposed that the Indian
Governor General be instructed to investigate the opium trade "with a view
to gradual withdrawal," and lost by 37 votes. Similar moves were regularly
defeated for the next twenty years. By April '91, a spokesman for the Society
for Suppression of the Opium Trade (SSOT) had obtained a 30-vote majority for
a motion that the Governments' revenue from opium was "Morally indefensible".
On
16 July 1891 Stewart asked a three part question about ganja [5]:
"i Whether the Secretary of State for India has seen a report in the Allahabad Pioneer of 10 May that ganja, which is grown sold and excised in much the same way as opium, is far more harmful, and that "the lunatic asylum of Bengal are filled with ganja smokers."
ii Is he aware that ganja has been made illegal in Lower Burma and that excise reports say this has been 'of enormous benefit to the people.'
iii
Will he call to the attention of the Governor General the desirability of extending
theprohibition to other provinces?"
The
answers to which were yes, yes, and that he would "Enquire whether further
steps should be taken to limit consumption..." On 7 August 1892 those enquiries
were answered at some length. The Viceroy's office told London that the whole
question had been extensively discussed with provincial administrations in 1871-73.
They sent 174 pages of old dispatches from Indian provincial governments to the
centre, and from there to London. After considering these, "The Governor
General is of the opinion that while ganja may be among the most noxious of all
intoxicants commonly used in India... even if absolute prohibition could be enforced,
the result might be to induce the use of more noxious drugs" (e.g. datura).
Apart from which it would be impossible to enforce a prohibition. It was "Our
duty to restrict consumption, but unnecessary to do more than persevere in the
policy established In 1873." These papers languished unread in London, perhaps
because there was a general election going on.
The
1873 dispatches showed the pragmatism of imperial administrators which was to
be repeated by the IHDC, in very similar words. The then Viceroy had said that
while the Government should endeavour to restrict the use of ganja, it would be
impossible to enforce general prohibition, especially because of religious feelings
in some groups and because the plants grew freely some areas. It would be inexpedient
to order what could not be enforced... "It does not appear to the Governor-General
to be specifically proved that hump incites to crime more than other drugs or
spirits." There was also some evidence that hump, "usually so noxious",
might usefully be taken for medical reasons. There was no doubt that habitual
use tended to cause insanity but not in very many cases relative to the numbers
of the insane.(6]. "General opinion seems to be that the evil effects of
Ganja have been exaggerated."
The
dispatches from regional governments were more forthright. The Lt.-Governor of
the Punjab wrote that considering the practicalities, they should not restrict
hemp drug use unless there was proof of connection with crime. Civil, police and
medical officers disagreed on the details but: "His Honour is of the opinion
that if people were prohibited from using preparations of hemp or opium, they
would, in all probability, have recourse to some other stimulant, such as alcohol,
the crime resulting from the use of which would be much greater than that resulting
from the abuse of these drugs .... It seems that the amount of crime, violent
or other, incited by ganja, is exceedingly small... If, therefore, these preparations
have no effect on crime and only injure the persons who use them, it is difficult
to see in what manner the law can restrict their use in a country where opium
is a monopoly of the Government, the effects of which are perhaps as injurious
when taken in excess as those of hemp."
The
local governments of Mysore, Hyderbad, Oudh, and Burma said that as hump drugs
were little used locally, not necessary. Central Provinces sent plenty of data
but no opinions. The Northwest Provinces (later Pakistan), one of the main cannabis
growing areas, said the evidence on crime was confused, where if the situation
was bad as supposed there would surely be a consensus. To stop production would
be almost impossible, so they could not recommend attempts to limit or stop consumption.
Bombay, Madras, and Bengal said that restrictions and taxes already in place should
be preserved. All agreed excessive use to be somehow connected with physical harm
and perhaps insanity, but the numbers harmed were very small. Bengal sent the
most information. Asked if a particularly popular type of local ganja was more
deleterious than others, they submitted a long report on cultivation, uses and
profit margins on all hemp products by Dr Watt, State Reporter on Economic Products.
Their local product was popular due to the quality of plants and traditional production
skills, rather than sheer strength. A table of samples analysed for "Resinous
extracts or Cannabin" ranged from 1.4% (NW Province) to 12% (Madras), mostly
about 4% [7]. All of the legal trade was inside India. The state of Bengal had
been making an average 1 million rupees per year through the 1860's in tax on
ganja shops and duty at government auctions, about £100,000 - tens of millions
in today's money.
When
these papers were taken from the files, twenty years after they were written,
the August 1892 elections were under way. The Conservatives went out and the Liberals
came in. Drug control was not high on their agenda; however, the new Home Secretary,
Foreign Secretary, and Secretary of State for India were all known to be anti-opium,
and the Prime Minister had spoken out against it in the past. The prohibitionists
knew they might get some sort of opium control agreed if it didn't oppose the
Liberals' central Free Trade policy. Believing their moment had come, they began
to quarrel among themselves.
Criminalise
it!
Before
the development of the hypodermic syringe by Alexander Wood, the main concern
about opium was not the threat of addiction, but the danger of poisoning. Only
after the 1860s did the risk of dependency start to cause concern among the medical
profession. Certainly, people would have been habituated to the drug, but the
stereotype of the drug addict had yet to gain acceptance within the UK. Even where
individuals wrote of their habit, such as a chemists wife who had been using morphia
for 30 years, described her experience in a matter of fact way, free from any
sense of stigma her major concern being the perceived tendency of the drug to
cause her to put on weight. Although the dependency syndrome had been described
two centuries earlier by Thomas Sydenham, the risk was not taken seriously by
most medical practitioners. Following increasing reports of dependency symptoms
after 1860, culminating in a series of articles in The Practitioner in 1870, the debate on the wisdom of permitting free access to opium accelerated.
In 1878 Edward Levinstein in Germany started the 'moral' argument about the effect
of opium on the character of the user, and was one of the first to promote abstinence
as a cure for the addict [2].
From
the 1840s on, there were several anti-opium organisations, all small and mostly
broke. Their memberships overlapped, but the leaders didn't get on well. None
of them had ever tried to gain mass support. The first organisation to come out
against the trade were the Birmingham Quakers. In 1869, Lord Shaftesbury urged
the Indian government to withdraw from its monopoly position in the trade. By
1884 the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, founded by Sir Norman Kerr,
aimed "to educate the professional and the public mind to the dangers of
intemperance". At that time, alcohol was the main target for the temperance
movement, whereas other, more exotic drugs were not seen as much of a threat to
respectable Britons. These drugs were not expected to be a threat to the well-adjusted
British gentleman, and habituation among the Chinese and others was regarded as
the kind of 'filthy foreign habit' that should be stopped for the foreigners'
own good. Kerr recognised the dangers of opium with a crusading zeal, and railed
against its use, denying any possibility that some persons could be able to restrict
their use to a moderate level. The Society for Suppression of the Opium Trade
(SSOT), founded in 1874, became the best-known anti-opium organisation, but had
always been elitist, controlled by Quaker businessmen with knighthoods, funded
by one family. Their best argument combined economic and humanitarian interest;
other exports to China had been damaged by the sleaziness of the opium business.
Trade with China had been stagnant between 1860-80 while business with Japan had
tripled. The SSOT moved for ending the India-China opium trade, and an enquiry
into alternate ways of making up the money. They took too long agreeing a proposal
with other lobbyists, but did manage to force the government to concede the 1893
Royal Commission on Opium [8].
Meanwhile,
in February '93, William Caine, MP (Bradford East), had the papers on ganja collected
the previous year placed in the House of Commons Library. 0u the 2nd March 1893
he put a public question to the Under-secretary of State for India. "If he
will instruct the Government of India to create a commission of experts to enquire
into and report on the cultivation of and trade in all preparations of hemp drugs
in Bengal, the effects of theft consumption on society, and on the moral condition
of the people, and the desirability of prohibiting its growth and sale."
Would he also invite written reports on the same matters from all other provinces,
and include in the commission non-official natives of India. The Secretary of
State would ask the Viceroy to do just that, "and he will be glad if the
result of this inquiry is to show that further restriction can be placed upon
the sale and consumption of these drugs."(7) Since the Government seemed
so amenable, a secondary question by the Right Hon. Sir Charles E. Schwann, Bart,
was then dropped.
The members of the commission were named on 3rd July, and held their first meeting on 2nd August - a mouth before the Opium commission began to meet. They continued until April, seeing over 800 witnesses, assembling over 3000 pages into seven volumes, and a confidential extra volume on hemp drug use in the Army; then the Finance and Commerce department of the Government of India considered the report, and another British election crept closer. It is unclear what Caine and Schwann thought they were up to. Both were Liberals, Temperance campaigners, and probably anti-opium. Schwann had a safe scat, a comfortable merchants' fortune and radical opinions. Caine wrote books, including 'Young India', 'Picturesque India' and 'A Trip Around the World.' He had quit the Liberal Party six years earlier over the Irish question, and been re-admitted in a new scat after losing as an Independent; he was to lose it again in 1895. The timing, and the request for the commission to include non-official Indians, suggest that they were part of a faction among the anti-opiumists, perhaps trying to stir them into holder demands or quicker action. Perhaps they were simply trying to get in on what looked like a winning side. Neither is recorded as ever mentioning hemp drugs in public again.
The
Dope Fiends of Old England
The
international drugs trade was quite a different thing from home consumption; for
example although the British Empire produced a great deal of the worlds' opiates,
over 80% of the opium used in the UK was from Turkey and Persia [2]. The economic
pressure for international prohibition came from traders and nations with rival
products. In the UK drug control was at first pan of an increase in medical involvement
in social policy. Prescription by professionals had to take over from self-medication
before complete prohibition became possible.
There
was not much openly recreational drug use in Victorian England, other than alcohol.
A few serf consciously unconventional young artists and mystics searched for inner
experience, rejecting vulgar materialism, but the majority of drug abusers, then
as now, considered themselves to be taking medicines, to help them work or relax.
This was an age which demanded refinement, in every sense of the term. They took
extracts, tinctures, distillations or the 'active ingredients' of traditional
medicinal plants like Indian hemp or poppies, in amounts that would kill modern
addicts. This was all for the good of their health, so morally impeccable. They
didn't do dope to get wasted, or didn't admit to it
Vulgar
materialism provided ever more purified forms of relief from the stresses of righteous
life, as opium was dissolved into laudanum, concentrated into morphine, re-concentrated
into heroin. Some condemned booze while chewing opium, just as well-known modern
anti-drug campaigners have been tranquilliser addicts. In this atmosphere Cannabis
Indica was just another potentially useful plant, which could be perhaps refined
into some sort of medicine but was quite unsuitable in natural form. The distinction
between drug use and abuse had hardly been invented. Doctors were expensive and
not well trusted, so the poor dosed themselves with whatever remedies they could
afford. Pseudo-medical opiate use was decreasing, but still respectable; Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and Florence Nightingale had used it, and William Wilberforce,
saint of the anti-slavery movement, had eaten twelve grains a day for thirty years.
Self-medication bluffed into non-medical use. Boozing was low class and unfeminine,
so respectable ladies took "tonics." Patent medicines were a huge business,
often including alcohol, opium, or cannabis.
Sales
of pure morphine, cocaine, and barbiturates were supposedly controlled by the
1868 Poisons and Pharmacy Act, but quack nostrums and patent medicines were not,
and an attempt to extend the law in 1884 had failed. The Act only affected shops,
not users. One especially dangerous popular remedy was Collis Brownes' Chlorodyne,
containing chloroform and morphine, which the British Medical Association campaigned
through the 90's to have banned.
"One
of the most valuable medicines we possess"
There
had been increasing medical interest in cannabis since William O'Shaughnessy described
the use of indian hemp as medicine and intoxicant [9], relying on accounts of
hashish use from ancient Persian and Arabic sources, as well as on his own observations
in India. He described the use of hemp in the treatment of rheumatism, hydrophobia,
cholera, tetanus and infantile convulsions, as well as describing the delirium
induced by continued use. O'Shaughnessy had written in 1839 that, with a couple
of exceptions, "I have been unable to trace any notice of the employment
of this drug in Europe." However, despite citing western works by Ainslie
and von Estebeck he managed to overlook one classic account.
The
noted medieval herbalist, Nicholas Culpepper (1616-1654), listed a variety of
medical uses of the common european hemp (Cannabis sativa), including anti-inflammatory,
analgesic, and antiparasitic activity [10]. Culpepper made no mention of the psychotropic
activity, although the temperate hemp he described would normally be of low drug
content and be grown for fibre. Culpepper's work would have owed much to the folk
herbalism used by British witches, or wise women, who until the christian persecutions
had provided most primary health care to the rural population, as well as to the
monastic healers who replaced them. By the Victorian "age of reason"
most traditional use had been suppressed, as the pioneer pharmacologists began
to analyse folk medicines to refine and extract the active compounds therein.
An unsuccessful attempt had been made in the 1840's to grow hemp for medicine
in the London suburb of Mitcham. Experimenters used it for athsma and other chest
problems, sleeplessness especially in cases of opiate or alcohol withdrawal, and
with opium and bromide of potassium in treating insanity.
One
reason why cannabis was not as widely used as opium products, or the newer chemical
remedies, was the difficulty found refining an "active ingredient."
There were problems getting supplies of reliable strength, confusion about apparently
different products from the same plant, and uncertainty about its effects in the
body. However, it was used to treat many disorders. In 1889, Dr E.A.Birch described
in the Lancet the successful use of cannabis indica in the treatment of chloral
hydrate and opium withdrawal, drawing attention to the abolition of craving and
the antiemetic (vomit suppressing) effects and the stimulation of appetite in
patients who would not normally eat, or keep down, their food [111. Queen Victoria's
personal physician, J.R. Reynolds described it in 1890 as "One of the most
valuable medicines we possess." In another Lancet article published in 1890,
he described the use of cannabis indica for treating insomnia in the senile, alcoholic
delirium, neuralgia, migraine, spastic paralysis, and convulsions [12]..He allegedly
prescribed tincture of cannabis to Queen Victoria herself for the treatment of
menstrual cramps. Cannabis tincture and an extract made from resin were available
from Peter Squire of Oxford St in 1864, and wholesale through the Society of Apothecaries
by 1871. Chemists extracted stuff they called cannabene, cannabin tannin, cannabinnene
etc. but had no idea which, if any, was the "active ingredient" until
cannabinol was isolated in 1895.
At
the same time some thought of drug-taking as a form of poisoning, and some researchers
proposed that it either caused, or was, a type of insanity. W.W. Ireland compared
the mental state of cannabis users to delirium, with its alteration of time and
space and visual illusions. British doctors' reports from Cairo Asylum in 1894
linked violent insanity with "Hashism"(13,14) Some of the medical studies
would have been recreational use in any other context. Walter Dixon must have
tried it on himself as well as small furry animals when he showed in 1899 that
the effects vary according to type of preparation as well as method of ingestion.
He recommended smoking for immediate effect and wrote in the British Medical Journal,
"Hemp taken as an inhalation may be placed in the same category as coffee,
tea and kola. It is not dangerous and its effects are never alarming, and I have
come to regard it in this form as a useful and refreshing stimulant and food accessory,
and one whose use does not lead to a habit which grows upon its votary."
He was to be a member of the Rolleston Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction
in the 1920's, who opposed criminalising narcotics policy.
At
the end of the century cannabis tincture became popular again as a cure for cramps,
migraine, opium addiction, withdrawal and insomnia, but the fashion faded. In
the early 1900's a British Medical Association campaign against 'Secret Remedies'
got most of the opiates, cocaine and cannabis out of tonics and non-prescription
medicines. Doctors became responsible for most drug distribution as the consumer
beverage trade withdrew. As drag dispensing was professionalised, substances used
for self-medication were replaced by more refined, more medically controllable
drags. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report made no apparent difference to
this at all, and it's quite possible that nobody in the medical establishment
read it. It held quite a lot of scientific data but its purpose had been political
rather than medical. The political and economic interests of the British Medical
Association were quite different from those of the Government of India.
The
Cosmopolitan Dope Fiends
It
is worth noting that most publications from the time refer to "Hashish,"
the Arabic term, Indian Hemp, or Cannabis, rather than Charas, Ganja or Bhang,
the Hindi names. The French empire in North Africa had at least as much effect
on European cannabis use as the British empire in India. A certain style of drug
use, the Wasted Artist role, as established by the laudanum swigging Coleridge
and De Quincey early in the century, was revived by Dr Jean Moreau in Paris after
1845. The doctor, who experimented with hashish to treat insanity, founded the
Club des Hashishins with the writer Theophile Gautier, for non-medical experiments.
Some of the members were quite keen on a little delirium. Gautier was a hack with
brilliant friends, an 'art for arts sake' romantic with a taste for macabre fantasy
who encouraged the Symbolist poets. Rimbaud and Verlaine shared his drugs. Baudelaire
dedicated "Fleur du Mal" to him, and wrote an essay that explained their
attitudes: "On Hashish and Wine as a means of expanding individuality."
They created strange, sensuous art, struck foreign poses based on their beliefs
about the romantic East, scandalised bourgeois society [15].
By
the 90's the club had imitators in London. If there was no recreational drug use
"subculture" in the 1890's, one network came close. This was
the circle of poets, psychics, writers and would-be magicians around the Rhymers
Club and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They didn't define their connection
by shared drug use, but they certainly included drug experiments in their self-definition.
Occult studies, drugs, hypnotism, proto-psychiatry and new styles of arts were
all 1890's fashions mingled in overlapping cliques in central London. The Golden
Dawn was established in 1888 by some occultist Freemasons, as a society of "Christian
practiced magic. In 1890 Yeats and two others formed the Rhymers Club as a sort
of literary wing, drawing inspiration from the French Symbolists. None of the
Rhymers Club apart from Yeats ever achieved as much recognition as their French
heroes, but they had the style. They were melancholy, self-dramatising, they hoped
Byronic. They had doomed love lives and nervous breakdowns, and mostly died young.
Their defiance of conventional society included such un-English deviance as drinking
black coffee and speaking comprehensible French, as well as attempted magic, sexual
permutations not discussed in polite company, and hefty drug use.
Yeats
and his lover Maude Gonne tried using hashish to improve their telepathic powers.
Others had a more relaxed, recreational approach. Arthur Symons was one Rhymer
who survived to he described as "highly strong, over-sensitive" in the
1930's, best known for "Confessions - A study in Pathology" which described
his two years in an Italian lunatic asylum and cure by near-fatal pneumonia in
1909. He was the author of 'The Opium Smoker; "I am engulfed, and drown deliciously/soft
music like a perfume, and sweet light/Golden with audible odours exquisite/ swathe
me in cerements for eternity.../". In a biography of fellow Rhymer Ernest
Dowson he described one afternoon; a couple of ballet dancers and a poet visiting,
the host issuing tea, cakes, cigarettes and then hashish. "That slow intoxication,
that elaborate experiment in visionary sensations... he sat awaiting the magic,
half shy in the midst of that bright company of young people." Dowson wrote
poems with Latin titles about doomed love affairs, and consorted with the
"most degraded" women in dockside dives. He experimented with mescal
in 1896, with the sexuality researcher Havelock Ellis. He died of TB in 1900,
aged 32. The other poet present at the hash and tea party and the mescal experiment
was John Addington Symonds, a historian who studied the criminal mentality - he
was part blinded after several breakdowns and TB. One of their associates, Count
Eric Stenbock, who wrote The Shadow of Death and Studies of Death, was known for
wearing a live snake around his neck; he died aged 35, of either alcohol or opium.(13)
The
Wasted Artists were picturesque and dramatic, and their style became a popular
image of drug abusers. Ethereal and rather unhealthy, possibly creative but definitely
pasty-faced. The perception of a difference between drugs suitable for legitimate
use, under medical control, and drugs which can only be abused, was extended by
their example; anything they took was obviously not doing any good for their health.
Still there was no anti-drug panic in the UK. Drugs were still seen as foreign
stuff, only used by those who wanted to act like foreigners. The artists were
added to an existing mythology of the opium addict and the opium den, spread by
popular fiction from Wilkie Collins to Oscar Wilde, the addict over-sensitive,
hollow-cheeked with torment, the dens glided in rococo brothel style, populated
by vicious Chinese and degenerate aristocrats.
The
Respectable Fear begins
The
first demon dope stories came over from the USA in the mid 1890's. There were,
apparently, ever-increasing numbers of Black men with cocaine, Chinese with opium,
and Mexicans with both, plus marijuana. These coloured men were allegedly using
their fiendish substances to gain the flesh of white women, and many of them would
go crazy with big knives if frustrated in any way. The British media only retold
a few of these tales at first. The pathological imagination of the US Press
kept it up for the next forty years, changing the drug and the villains' colour
now and again. Heroin was refined in 1898 but for the first few years it was considered
a miracle painkiller and cure for morphine addiction. The subject of the grossest
stories was cocaine, also considered a miracle cure a few years earlier. The medical
enthusiasts didn't think it suitable for recreational use. The recreational users
disagreed. The alcohol prohibitionists built a mass following and inflicted a
huge social disaster on the USA. When the alcohol ban was repealed, drug control
was not. The myths were retired for a few years, but similar stories can be found,
only slightly less racist, in the mass media today.
Before,
during and after Prohibition, the USA lobbied for international drugs laws, mixing
economic self-interest with moralism. The Hague Conference in 1912 agreed to the
principle of certain drugs being strictly for "legitimate medical purposes."
It was never effective internationally because of obstruction by the British opiate
and German cocaine businesses. The conference suggested an investigation of hemp,
but it wasn't followed up. The Assam Opium & Ganja Committee of 1913(16) showed
that the IHDC had been forgotten or ignored in that province of India, for instance
accepting that ganja causes insanity without calling any evidence. It did say
that when ganja prices rose users turned to opium, when opium prices rose they
turned to alcohol or, alarmingly, morphine. The number of licensed shops in Assam
had fallen from 1116 in 1878 to 347 in 1911, and the committee thought it couldn't
be reduced further without provoking unrest.
Recreational
drug use in British literary circles in the '90s spread through the next two decades
into a wider worlds. Cocaine use had spread well into the upper class by the First
World War. Officialdom grew concerned about officers on leave, who often weren't
afraid to wreck their health since their chances of survival were slim. Morale
would not be improved, it was felt, by the sight of the upper ranks behaving like
beasts, and it would be worse yet if the common soldiers imitated them. There
was a press scare about the Germans using drugs and prostitutes, collecting blackmail
material. This unlikely tale and other stories of moral degeneracy caught the
imagination of the Army Council, who banned the sale of all intoxicants to troops
in mid 1916. In July the first U K law against possession of drags was sneaked
through, section 40B of the Defense of the Realm Act. It covered cocaine and opiates;
cannabis was not included, although it had been considered. Section 40B also banned
"Malththusian appliances" (contraception) and quack medicines. The same
Act established legal closing times for pubs, which caused a lot more fuss.
The
post war scandal boom
Immediately
after the Great War the British press got their first US-style dope story. Actress
Billie Carelton, age 21, died supposedly from cocaine taken at an alcohol-free
Victory Ball. Her supplier was tried for manslaughter but could not be convicted.
It was just as likely the sleeping drug Veronal that killed her, but that didn't
bother the Daily Express. They included hashish eating in the habits of a circle
of degenerates who, they said, had mined a sweet and innocent girl. In September
1920 a Dangerous Drugs Act was passed, clarifying the wartime possession law and
effectively dividing the drug trade into medical vs criminal. It was greeted with
such apathy by Parliament that it was hard to make up a quorum in some
of the committees. Cannabis was still not banned.
Internationally,
the UK government stopped blocking drug controls after several scandals at home
and reports that morphine and cocaine addiction were spreading in the colonies.
There were more sex drugs and foreigner stories to keep up the postwar drug scare.
In 1922 the death of dancer Freda Kempton gained unwanted publicity for Brilliant
Chang, Chinese restaurant owner and alleged dope king since 1917, handling morphine,
opium and hashish as well as cocaine. After many raids and mentions in the press
he was sentenced to 14 months - not much for such an alleged villain - then departed
in 1924. Eddie Manning, Jamaican jazz drummer and alleged dope king, was convicted
of dealing opium and cocaine in '23. Both, it was strongly implied, had used their
dealing to get close to English girls. In 1922 three sisters were found half dressed
and unconscious in the company of a dead Chinese man, Yee Sing a.k.a. Johnny Hop,
in a sealed room full of opium smoke above a Cardiff laundry. The girls never
told quite what had happened, so the press made it up, including a Chinese love
potion made from hashish used especially to subdue white women, with an antidote
made from geraniums.(17) Pulp fiction by the likes of Sax Rohmer helped spread
the corrupt aristocrat and Chinese dope plot themes.
Despite
all this advertisement, there was still no working class drug subculture. The
upmarket drug users of the 20's continued to be found where the overlap between
high society and the arts copied what were seen as American fashions for jazz
and cocaine. Aleister Crowleys' 1922 novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, thinly disguised
a real West End scene where cocaine was dealt in the Cafe Royal on Regent Sweet.
Crowley was a former Golden Dawn member who publicised himself as "The Wickedest
Man in the World," and ran a black magic cult largely based on sex. He occasionally
kicked his morphine habit cold turkey in front of acolytes, to show the power
of his will; he did quite a lot to establish a link in the public mind between
heavy drug use and being a dangerous but pretentious creep. Chloroform and morphine
were popular with Lady Diana Cooper and Katherine Asquith, models for several
wild aristos in fiction. Morphine might be risky and maybe immoral, but boozing
was common, which was much worse. Compared to these types cannabis users were
sweethearts. Having previously tried smoking it to no effect, the painter Augustus
John tried a hashish compote or jam after sardines and wine with friends in Hampstead;
"...catching the eye of Iris, we were both simultaneously seized with uncontrollable
laughter, about nothing at all..." Despite the publicity, and penalties increasing
in 1922, prosecutions under the Dangerous Drugs Act averaged a steady 60 a year
for cocaine, 65 for opium.
Cannabis
lust became illegal in the UK after the country agreed the 1925 Geneva International
Convention on Narcotics Control. It was included in the '25 Convention with the
opiates and cocaine, because Egypt and Turkey proposed it. An Egyptian delegate
stirringly denounced "Chronic Hashism" which he said caused most of
the insanity in his country. It also, he said, weakened users, gave them heart
and digestive troubles and made them look wild-eyed and stupid. India opposed
including cannabis in the Convention, as their delegate said it had been used
there since time immemorial, grew wild, and they doubted that a prohibition could
enforced. The British delegate abstained from the vote but signed in the end.
There was hardly any parliamentary debate before it came into law as amendments
to the Dangerous Drugs Act on 281h September 1928. Despite this cannabis offences,
and 206 for opium. In 1950 for the first time there were more prosecutions for
cannabis than for opium and manufactured drugs together - 86 against 41 opium
and 42 others. That year a series of police raids on jazz clubs produced a new
crop of stories about black men with drugs and white women, this time involving
marijuana and benzedrine. Cannabis had finally got into the shock horror league.
Epilogue
The
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission finally had its moment in Parliament in July 1967,
after the Government had established an Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence.
J.J.S. Driberg, Chief of Police and Inspector of Prisons for Assam, had given
gave evidence to the IHDC. His son Tom was a Labour MP. According to his autobiography
[18], the poet Alan Ginsberg asked Tom to "look up for him the report...
in the House library I found that my father had given evidence before this commission,
putting forward strongly the view that people living in a damp, cold climate needed the traditional consolation of ganja... The climate referred to was
that of Assam, rather than England; but I felt it was almost an act of filial
piety to sign a full page advertisement in the Times calling for a liberalisation
of the laws on pot..." When it became obvious that there would be no liberalisation,
be attacked the government, his own party, in the parliamentary debate. He said
his father had told the IHDC that when insane people were arrested a form had
to be filled saying why they were insane, and the safest thing to say was ganja
as the police knew that no further enquiry would be made. When the government
spokeswoman asked rhetorically "What sort of society will we create if everyone
wants to escape from reality 7" Driberg answered that "They want to
escape from this horrible society we have created." The 1968 Wooton Committee
on Cannabis was "in agreement with the conclusions reached by the IHDC...
that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects."
Given wide publicity, the government couldn't completely to ignore this new study;
instead they did exactly the opposite of what it recommended, and increased penalties
for all cannabis offences in a new 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Cannabis use continued
to increase dramatically. By 1990 there were 40,194 convictions and cautions for
cannabis in the UK, well over 90% of all recorded drugs crimes.
References:
1. Resolution 1369, Finance and Commerce Dept. (Separate Revenue), Government of India, 21/3/1895. 23 pp. 2. T.M. Parssinen, Secret Passions, Secret Remedies - Narcotic Drugs in British Society, 1820-1930. Manchester University Press 1980
3. B. Inglis (1975) The Forbidden Game London Hodder & Stoughton
4. Report of the Royal Commission on Opium. Parliamentary papers 1895
5. Hansand, Parliamentary Questions,
6. Resolution 3773, Finance and Commerce Dept., Government of India, 17/12/1873.
7. In full IHDC report. India (Ganja) 97 in House of Commons papers 1893-4 LXVI.79.
8. In (2) V. Berridge & J. Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People, Yale 1982.
9 0'Shaughnessy W.B. (1839) On the preparations of Indian Hemp, or Gunjah. Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bengal 1838-40 pp 421-461
10. Culpepper's Complete Herbal. London, W. Foulsham & Co.
11. Birch E.A. (1889) Indian hemp in the treatment of chronic choral & opium poisoning. Lancet 30-3-89 p625
12. Reynolds Sir J.R. (1890) Therapeutic Uses & Toxic Effects of Cannabis Indica Lancet, 22-3-90
13. V. Berridge, Origins of the English Drug "Scene" 1890-1930, Medical History 32, 1988. Also
14. Walsh J.T. Hemp Drugs and Insanity. Journal of Medical Science 40 1894
15. The Hashish Club, Ed P. Haining, Peter 0wen 1975,
16. Assam Opium & Crania Committee 1913.
17 Marek Kohn, Dope Girls, Lawrence & Wishart, London 1992.
18.
Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions, Cape 1977
About the Authors.
Sean Blanchard is a freelance journalist and researcher. From 1981 to 1983 he was coordinator of the Legalise Cannabis Campaign.
Matthew J. Atha B.Sc. MSc, was Legalise Cannabis Campaign Secretary from 1983 to 1989. His MSc psychology thesis "Quantitative Assessment of Illicit substance use" (Birmingham University 1987) included analyses of surveys of drug use at pop festivals. He divides his time between advocacy work and performing as a rock musician.