Volume-II, Issue-II, November 2025
Novel Insights A Peer-Reviewed Quarterly Multidisciplinary Research Journal |
Volume-II, Issue-II, November 2025 |
Cannabis in Colonial India: Patterns of Consumption, Regulation, Trafficking, and the Path to Prohibition (1770–1947) Smt. Saptaparna Maitra, Assistant Professor, Dinabandhu Mahavidyalaya, Bongaon, Paikpara, Kolkata, West Bengal, India Email: smaitraofficial23@gmail.com |
Received: 08.10.2025 | Accepted: 21.11.2025 | Published Online: 30.11.2025 |
Page No: 111-116 | DOI: 10.69655/novelinsights.vol.2.issue.02W.045 | |
Abstract | ||
This paper examines how cannabis became a subject of British Indian political concern that the colonialists had to contest. Initially the East India Company regarded it as another local practice, but by mid nineteenth century it was taxed and this provided income as well as some health, morals and civil concerns. Even missionaries and doctors attributed it to madness but the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893-94 asserted that moderate use was not harmful. Subsequently, some international drug legislation and some local reformers urged the British to switch to prohibition rather than control. During the 1930s and 1940s cannabis was silently criminalised as a new international drug regime. I find that the conflict of earning money and the push to ban resulted in a long term effects on postcolonial India which culminated into The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. Keywords: Cannabis, Colonial India, Drug Policy, Prohibition, NDPS Act | ||