Opening Quotes
"Cannabis indica must be looked upon as one of the most important drugs of Indian Materia Medica."
- Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-95
"As to the evil sequelæ so unanimously dwelt on by all writers, these did not appear to us so numerous, so immediate, or so formidable as many which may be clearly traced to over-indulgence in other powerful stimulants or narcotics, viz., alcohol, opium, or tobacco."
- William O'Shaugnessey, Eminent 19th Century British Physician
"Hemp drugs, of which ganja is the principal, constitute one of the chief sources of excise revenue in Bengal.
The
importance of hemp-drugs in these provinces will be apparent from the
fact that out of a total excise revenue of 115 lakhs in 1892-93, ganja
and its congeners contributed 24 1/4 lakhs, or about 21 per cent., and
occupy the second place, being next only to country spirits.
It
is satisfactory to note that though the consumption of ganja has been
reduced in 20 years by nearly one-third, the total revenue has during
the same period been more than doubled."
- Bengal Memorandum, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1895
INTRODUCTION
I thought I will take a look at India's Narcotics and Psychotropic Drugs (NDPS) Act of 1985, which aims to control and regulate the production, distribution and sales of various drugs, classified as psychotropics and narcotics, in India. I wanted to get a better understanding of what this Act says specifically with regard to cannabis which is my current topic of interest.
In going through the exercise, I organized my thoughts and findings under the following sections:
Drug laws and how they relate to public health, medicine and intoxicants
The NDPS Act, IPC and CrPC
Definitions in the NDPS Act for narcotic and psychotropic substances, cannabis, THC, ganja, bhang and charas/hashish
Is ganja bhang or bhang ganja?
How parts of one plant became three drugs
NDPS laws and procedures with regard to cannabis
Cultivation, handling and use
Treatment for addicts
Summons and arrest
Property and person search
Punishments and bail under the NDPS Act for cannabis
NDPS and constitutional rights
Concluding remarks
TARGET AUDIENCE
The target audience for this document includes various sections of society such as policy makers, law makers, law enforcement agencies, economists, sociologists, scientists, the medical community, environmentalists, businesses, media and agriculturalists. Foremost among the target audience is every single member of Indian society who has, willingly or through the fact of being a part of Indian society, some involvement in the past and present of this illustrious plant, and who will hopefully play a significant role in the future of the plant, helping to restore it to its rightful place in nature and society.
DRUG LAWS AND HOW THEY RELATE TO PUBLIC HEALTH, MEDICINE AND INTOXICANTS
The interesting thing about drugs that are covered under drug laws is that the same drug, in many cases, is used by society as medicine or intoxicant, either legally or illegally. As long as human society has existed there have been various substances that have been used for medicine or intoxication. As time has passed, the relative freedom with which a person used a substance as medicine or intoxicant has been gradually decreasing, as the state has increasingly taken steps to curb the use of certain substances, and to promote others in the name of public health. While this may seem commendable on the face of it, the truth behind this is that the state has not always acted in the best interests of society and public health, but has worked to promote and support vested interests for profit. This is evident from the fact that traditional, natural medicines and intoxicants, used extensively and freely for thousands of years, are the ones that have been curbed, while newer, expensive and harmful man-made, synthetic, untested medicines and intoxicants have supplanted them. Due to this, many harmful substances are now promoted, and sold as legal medicine and intoxicants, while many safe substances have been made illegal, and measures have been taken to prevent access to these substances by society. The general trend has been to increasingly curb individual freedoms in this regard, and for the state to dictate what a person should or should not consume in the name of medicine or intoxicant. Such regressive trends and harmful actions by the state have culminated in repressive laws such as the NDPS Act, specifically with regard to cannabis.
DRUG LAWS AND PUBLIC HEALTH
First I had a look at the existing laws under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to see what was in place before the NDPS Act of 1985 to safeguard public health. I found sections 273. Sale of noxious food and drink, 274. Adulteration of Drugs, 275. Sale of adulterated drugs, 276. Sale of Drug as a different Drug Preparation, as the four sections that appeared to cover anything related to drugs in the whole IPC. This appeared under ChXIV On Offences Affecting the public health, safety, convenience, decency and morals.
To me it appears that these four sections are sufficient to cover all aspects of illegal drug offences and safeguard public health. These sections aim to protect the public from unscrupulous elements who wish to make a profit through the sale of harmful and noxious substances. The beauty of these sections is that not only do they not cover any specific drugs, they are general enough to cover any substance taken beyond safe limits, keeping these laws always relevant. Thus, these laws apply to all synthetic drugs whether manufactured by pharma companies or drug cartels. They are also general enough to cover anything considered harmful to the public such as poisons, toxins, adulterants, etc., which regulatory bodies such as the Food Safety and Standards Organization (FSSO) specify. These laws also do not typically apply to natural medicinal plants that have been used for thousands of years with proven safety and known safe limits, such as cannabis and opium. Manufacturers of synthesized forms of drugs such as heroin, morphine, amphetamine type substances, benzodiazepines, etc., can be covered by sec 274. Adulteration of Drugs where using extracts of opium to create heroin and morphine, or the extracts of the ephedra plant to create amphetamine and methamphetamine, can be termed as adulteration of natural drugs or plants unless under license. This would cover the entire set of synthetic drugs associated with these plants created both by legal and illegal pharmacies. What about the newly synthesized drugs that are not plant based such as novel psychotropic substances, synthetic cannabinoids, etc? These could be covered by the sec 273. Sale of noxious food and drink, sec 275. Sale of adulterated drugs and sec 276. Sale of Drug as a different Drug Preparation which currently deal only with sale but not manufacture. These sections tweaked to cover both manufacture and sale could be said to be applicable to all non-plant based drugs.
So we have four existing sections which are sufficiently broad to cover all aspects of drugs, both plant based and synthetic, in a clear fashion without specifying which drugs. That is left to public health, safety and regulatory bodies such as FSSO. This then forms the basis of control of their manufacture and sales. Notice that nowhere in the IPC does it attempt to define what is safe and what is not. This is left to the respective medical and regulatory bodies to determine. In this fashion, the laws provide a basis for regulation and punishment with regard to what is safe and harmful for society but the public health experts determine the actual substances deemed harmful. The law and public health are kept separate in this fashion, without either impinging on the other, but working in synergy.
DRUG LAWS AND MEDICINE
With regard to medicine, my understanding is that until quite recently what was considered noxious medicine was determined by the various Indian medical organizations and systems that dealt with the creation, use and sale of such substances. These organizations have existed to support different systems of medicine such as allopathy, ayurveda, homeopathy, unani, siddha, etc. There may have been seamless cooperation, or at least minimal conflict and healthy competition, as far as I understand, in terms of one system banning a substance which another system considered medicine. The wisdom of the principal that everything in the right amount constitutes medicine and in excess amounts to poison applied to all systems and each was free to determine what these amounts were based on the type of medicine being created and the illness being treated. The same substance in some cases may be considered a toxin by one system but medicinal by another but neither infringed on the other's usage. The state, especially, was expected to not show any bias towards one medical system over another. This left the patient as the ultimate decision maker on what medicine to take. So alcohol was considered medicine in western systems and a toxin in Indian natural medicine. Cannabis was considered a medicine in Indian natural medicine and possibly a toxin in more recent western medicine. Both systems existed together with neither trying to get prohibition passed on what the other system considered medicine.
All this changed as western medicine manufacturers and their systems became increasingly powerful and rich. They started to look at more and more unscrupulous ways to extend their markets and bring in more people under the influence of their system of medicine. With many of their medicines derived out of the same plants that natural medicine systems used, the promoters of western medical systems realized that to gain control over the market the natural plants, the sources of all systems up to that point, needed to be controlled by them or banned, otherwise the natural systems of medicine would continue to thrive, hampering the growth of western synthetic medicine.
Pharmaceutical companies in the west gained sufficient influence to get their governments to start controlling and banning the plants that were the sources of their synthetic medicine. These companies were given complete monopoly on the growth and distribution of these natural medicinal plants, and the use of these plant extracts to make their synthetic medicine. Smaller players, individuals and practitioners of natural medicine were prevented from accessing these natural plant medicines. This lopsided development of synthetic medicine and the adoption of western systems of medicine continued to grow at the cost of indigenous natural systems of medicine everywhere. It was pushed across nations world wide by powerful governments and the increasingly wealthy pharmaceutical companies that benefited from it.
At one stage the influence of the governments and industries became so great that a global medical body was formed and drug regulatory bodies were created entirely on the basis of these synthetic medicines. These regulatory bodies decided what was good medicine and what was bad. It made lists of what it considered essential medicine and what it considered as dangerous medicine purely based on the western systems of medicine, completely ignoring the traditional, natural medicine systems of many countries. All countries were forced to sign up to this list. The strange thing about these lists was that though they contained largely synthetic medicine they also contained some fundamental plant medicines that were key to many indigenous medical systems. Most of these plant medicines had been tried and tested over thousands of years and found to be totally safe for use in their natural form. They had essentially grown out of widespread usage and were home remedies and used for healthy recreational purposes as well. Clearly the intent of including these plant medicines in the controlled lists was to ensure monopoly over their cultivation, ensure that they were used by pharma companies to extract their synthetic medicines and to keep them out of the hands of the general public and competing medical systems so that they would be forced to depend on and pay the price for the synthetic medicines manufactured. Even though the synthetic medicines were found to be very harmful, they were promoted. It has been seen that in the decades since such steps were taken, the composition of the synthetic medicines that make up these lists of essential and controlled medicines have changed constantly. As and when the harms caused by a particular synthetic medicine have raised public outcry, they have been removed or slightly modified and marketed under another name or new substances created to replace them. All these actions can be tried under the sections 273, 274, 275 and 276 of the IPC. One thing that has remained constant through all this time however is that the plant medicines have remained on the lists with widespread opposition from powerful governments and pharma companies to any steps that are attempted to remove them from the lists.
In the backdrop of this evolving world scenario with regard to the domination of the field of medicine by synthetic drugs emerging from pharmacy labs, the changes to Indian drug laws were made. Up to this point medicine was kept separate from criminal laws and the decision of what constituted a harmful noxious substance was determined in India by a sort of unwritten consensus between the various medical systems. It was only when something was universally agreed to be noxious and harmful were the existing criminal laws brought into effect through IPC Sections 273, 274, 275 and 276. In India opium and cannabis, especially cannabis, were regarded as natural medicine and even if their use in natural form had reduced in recent times in this regard, they still were not considered noxious substances. Opium first gained the label of being noxious after it was found that it was addictive and that overdose or sudden withdrawal could lead to death. Even this was rare as the opium was used in its natural form and not in the concentrated, highly potent synthesized forms that we find today emerging from pharmacy labs. With cannabis, the gaining of the label of being noxious was even more strange. It was a plant widely revered for spiritual use, medicine and recreation. It was widely acknowledged by all experts from across all medicinal systems that it was lessdangerous than alcohol and opium. Its use was widespread across the country. The labeling of cannabis as noxious was a politically and economically driven effort that chose to systematically portray the plant as harmful, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, so as to promote and create the market for western alcohol, tobacco, opium based medicines, and the rapidly growing synthetic medicines emerging from western pharmacy labs. Revenues from these products were far greater, so cannabis was gradually made moreexpensive, its cultivation and sale curbed until the call came to finally ban it.
By 1985, cannabis was already regarded as a dangerous drug in Indian society with the population in general viewing the western synthetic medicine as wonderful, safe and effective. The reports of the adverse effects of these western synthetic medications that frequently came out in western media were hidden from the Indian population and all were made to believe that the western systems of medicine were far superior to traditional Indian systems that relied on cannabis for medicine and recreation.
DRUG LAWS AND INTOXICANTS
With regard to intoxicants, it is interesting how cannabis, which was considered the foremost intoxicant of India till recent times, made it into the NDPS Act created in 1985 with the specific aim of controlling certain substances classified as narcotic and psychotropic. It is also interesting how something as strong, harmful and widely used as alcohol never made it to this list. Before the NDPS Act, the Abkari or Excise Acts created during British colonial rule existed for more than a 100 years and served more or less the same purpose that NDPS aims to cover at least partly. The Abkari Acts dealt specifically with intoxicants and was often specific to various parts of the country, as I understand, with different versions in existence.
The Abkari and Excise Acts served to bring under government control those commodities which the government believed were lucrative enough to milk for revenue. This dealt squarely with the commonly used public intoxicants of the time, mainly country made liquor, opium and then the cannabis plant. The Act gradually tightened the government's hold over these commonly used commodities. With the advent of the drugs popular in the west, such as distilled liquor and tobacco, it was seen that these newer items and opium offered better revenue opportunities since they were way more expensive than country liquor or cannabis. With the view of increasing government revenue and promoting these industries that were highly favourable to government and influential western interests, country liquor and cannabis were increasingly restricted with the aim being complete prohibition at the earliest. This went completely against the scientific evidence and the advise of large numbers of experts that western alcohol, tobacco and opium were way more harmful to health and presented much greater dangers to society than traditional country liquor and cannabis that had been used widely across society for thousands of years. Even though the government and policy makers were well aware that the key classes that consumed country liquor and cannabis were the poorer sections of society, religious mendicants, indigenous tribes, etc. who together formed the vast majority of the country and who could rarely afford the expensive western alcohol and opium, these measures were pushed through gradually increasing the markets of western alcohol, opium and tobacco with complete disregard to public health and safety.
The NDPS Act took a plant which served as both medicine and intoxicant and placed it in a controlled substances list consisting mostly of harmful synthetic drugs, while other widely used intoxicants such as alcohol and tobacco remained in the Excise Acts. Cannabis is present in both Acts today.
No other rulers or governments till the advent of the European colonials had in the past imposed this level of curbs on the popular native intoxicants available to people. What was put in place in the European colonies has now been enforced as universal law by successive governments that were elected in independent India. Even though independence was meant to remove the harsh laws curbing individual freedom in society, it did nothing with regard to the popular and traditional Indian intoxicants other than to continue enforcing the restrictions imposed by the colonial rulers.
Chapter VII of Manusmriti, which enumerated the different sources of revenue that the sovereigns of the country taxed did not mention any intoxicants. Aurangzeb's grandson is said to have proposed tax on palm juice, presumably toddy, in Bengal to which Aurangzeb, considered by many as one of the most repressive rulers in Indian history, is said to have replied “Though the taxation of the palm may lead to the collection of revenue, yet it is impossible for me to sanction it. I cannot understand what dishonest mufti declared it legal to do so. You must know that such ill advisors are enemies of this and the next world. You should thank Almighty who has put you in possession of three provinces which are full in wealth, and which fill our coffers with so much revenue, and in which everything is so abundant and cheap. You should know as well that the good-will of the subjects is the only wealth for this world and the next.” (Letter No. 90 mentioned in the Note of Dissent at the end of Vol 1, Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report)
THE NDPS ACT, IPC AND CrPC
The long established Indian criminal justice system seems to rest on two pillars, i) the IPC which denotes various codes for various offenses, explanations for these offenses and the punishments related to each offense and ii) the CrPC which defines the procedures to be followed by the legal system to bring to book persons committing any offense defined in the IPC.
The NDPS Act on the other hand is called a special Act, and creates its own legal system with no links to the offenses defined in the IPC. Various new offenses are listed in the NDPS and the punishments for the same are defined independently in the NDPS. Also the procedures to be followed with reference to NDPS offences are also defined in the NDPS. Most of these procedures are duplicates of the procedures described in the CrPC but with some tweaks made in the NDPS that over ride the safeguards on the rights and freedoms of the individual in the CrPC. These tweaks give unfair and biased powers to the law enforcement agencies opening up the way for massive injustices on the individual and society. They omit crucial aspects of the CrPC and add new elements of their own. When there is a conflict between the NDPS and the CrPC, which set of procedures over ride and have more legal authority is mentioned in the NDPS section 51 and Sec 4 of the CrPC i.e. that in such cases of conflict the NDPS procedures are the ones to be followed.
Going through the NDPS Act, it is quite evident that it is a hastily thought out and poorly constructed Act. It appears to resemble the US Controlled Substances Act. It does not appear to have evolved over time like the rest of the Indian legal system consisting of the IPC and CrPC. The NDPS appears as synthetic and harmful as the synthetic drugs it aims to supposedly control. It has glaring errors, such as the inclusion of natural herbs like cannabis, showing the drawbacks of not following time tested and robust methods of creating laws and, instead, quickly putting into the market a law synthesized in the labs of politicians and pharma companies, to make quick profits and to suppress opposition from anyone and anything that stands in the way, such as natural cannabis and its users. Fundamental to software programming is the avoidance of hard coding values that are likely to change, that need translation and that need to be used in different functions based on varying conditions. This is to avoid duplication, ambiguity and re-programming. These values are kept in configuration files that are amended as needed. This is even more true for medicines that need to be controlled based on nature of harm and use. These medicine lists need to be stored in globally agreed lists with laws created at various regional, country or state levels according to relevance. In this regard, the idea of global laws on medicines as controlled substances is good. An operational issue is that even these global lists are not updated fast enough, considering the latest scientific knowledge and new substances constantly churned out of pharmacy labs. Worse, natural plants such as cannabis, peyote, psilocybin, etc proven over thousands of years to be much more safer in their natural form than the synthetic drugs created recently, continue to exist in these global lists. In this regard, the Indian NDPS Act is one of the worst cases of programming with a list of substances hard coded into it, and a bunch of rules copy pasted around it, existing over and above the IPC. 20kgs of hashish or 500g of THC will get you the death sentence. Fentanyls, the leading cause of global drug overdose deaths, cathinones, etc. are not even on the list.
DEFINITIONS IN THE NDPS ACT
To examine the processes of the NDPS specifically with regard to cannabis, we can start right at the beginning with the definitions.
The definition of an addict is given in Section 2[(i) “addict” means a person who has dependence on any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance;]
Its definition of cannabis, as specified in Chapter 1, sec 2 of the NDPS act is as follows:
(iii) “cannabis (hemp)” means— (a) charas, that is, the separated resin, in whatever form, whether crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant and also includes concentrated preparation and resin known as hashish oil or liquid hashish; (b) ganja, that is, the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops), by whatever name they may be known or designated; and (c) any mixture, with or without any neutral material, of any of the above forms of cannabis or any drink prepared therefrom; (iv) “cannabis plant” means any plant of the genus cannabis;
(viia) “commercial quantity”, in relation to narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, means any quantity greater than the quantity specified by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette;
(viid)] “controlled substance” means any substance which the Central Government may, having regard to the available information as to its possible use in the production or manufacture of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances or to the provisions of any International Convention, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare to be a controlled substance;
(ix) “International Convention” means— (a) the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 adopted by the United Nations Conference at New York in March, 1961; (b) the Protocol, amending the Convention mentioned in sub-clause (a), adopted by the United Nations Conference at Geneva in March, 1972; (c) the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971 adopted by the United Nations Conference at Vienna in February, 1971; and (d) any other international convention, or protocol or other instrument amending an international convention, relating to narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances which may be ratified or acceded to by India after the commencement of this Act;
(xiv) “narcotic drug” means coca leaf, cannabis (hemp), opium, popy straw and includes all manufactured drugs;
(xxiiia) “small quantity”, in relation to narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, means any quantity lesser than the quantity specified by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette
(xxiii) “Psychotropic substance” means any substance, natural or synthetic, or any natural material or any salt or preparation of such substance or material included in the list of psychotropic substances specified in the Schedule;
DEFINITION OF NARCOTIC AND PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES
First and foremost, let us look at the title of this Act - the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
What is the definition of a narcotic? What is the definition of a psychotropic? What properties should a substance possess to be termed as narcotic or psychotropic? To take a step back, is narcotic or psychotropic property itself even a bad thing? Who has decided this and what is the scientific basis for deciding that these properties are bad? Are there scientific units of measure for a substance's narcotic or psychotropic property? Are there reliable methods and devices to measure a substance's narcotic or psychotropic properties? Are there universally agreed scientific amounts of narcotic property or psychotropic property, based on which it can be objectively said that any substance whose values are higher than these amounts constitutes a narcotic substance or a psychotropic substance? Are there safe levels of narcotic and psychotropic properties that a substance may possess? Are there dangerous levels of narcotic or psychotropic properties that a substance should not possess?
If a law is created, based on which a set of substances are defined as narcotic or psychotropic, and an Act is itself named as such, then the most fundamental aspect of such an Act should be that the definition of what constitutes a narcotic or a psychotropic must be crystal clear. It is the undiluted essence of the Act, based on which everything else is constructed i.e. the punishments, procedures, enforcement organizations, etc, etc. Before embarking on a journey of creating an Act controlling narcotic and psychotropic substances, what is a narcotic or psychotropic must be clearly defined. It must be determined if these are really undesirable properties in substances, and if so, why and in what amounts. All this must be based on scientific facts and evidence. Once these things are clear and without dispute, then classifying a substance as narcotic or psychotropic should be based on clear scientific processes and evidence. There should be an objective scientific basis of studying a particular substance, rather any substance, and based on clear rules and scientific evidence, anyone should be able to conclude whether a substance is narcotic or psychotropic. In trying to answer any of the above questions, it becomes clear that there is no clear definition itself for what constitutes a narcotic substance or a psychotropic substance. There is no material basis for assuming that narcotic and psychotropic properties are undesirable in any substance. There are no universally agreed values of narcotic or psychotropic properties below which substances are safe and above which substances are dangerous.
The entire NDPS Act has been created on the basis of what the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971 considers narcotic and psychotropic substances that make up the Controlled Substances lists. The UN list itself does not answer the questions above and has no scientific universally agreed definitions, measures and ways of measuring any substance's narcotic or psychotropic properties. The list of substances that are contained in its lists are arbitrary and completely unscientific. Based on various vested interests who stand to gain from having a substance included in the list or excluded from it, and the amount of power and influence that they wield at the UN, the current Controlled Substances list exists. In fact, the absurdity of the whole situation is clearly highlighted by the fact that the UN states that if a substance is on its Controlled Substances list then it is a narcotic or a psychotropic, a circular reference! Have you ever heard of such a thing where the definition of something is a list of various things that the definition is supposed to define? The NDPS Act also extends this absurdity with its definition of narcotics and psychotropics - (xiv) “narcotic drug” means coca leaf, cannabis (hemp), opium, popy straw and includes all manufactured drugs; (xxiii) “Psychotropic substance” means any substance, natural or synthetic, or any natural material or any salt or preparation of such substance or material included in the list of psychotropic substances specified in the Schedule;
Given that the entire basis of globally deciding what constitutes a narcotic or psychotropic substance stands on extremely shaky foundations, then it is quite obvious that the entire list of controlled substances in the NDPS, by extension, stand on similar completely unscientific and arbitrary grounds. It blindly follows the UN convention which itself lacks any basis. Common definitions for narcotic properties include pain relief, sedation, relief from anxiety, stimulation, etc. Even tea or coffee would fit these definitions besides yoga, meditation and numerous other commonly available substances and activities. Given the widespread popularity of tea coffee alcohol tobacco and leading pharmaceutical drugs such as analgesics, sedatives, stimulants and anti-depressants, it is quite evident that narcotic properties in a substance is highly desirable by society. So an entire act has been created without a proper definition of what it is aimed at controlling, and no scientific basis for assessing if a substance qualifies to be on the Act as a controlled substance or not. Is it any wonder then that the NDPS could qualify as one of the greatest man made disasters in Indian history?
DEFINITION OF CANNABIS
The definition of cannabis, as specified in Chapter 1, sec 2 of the NDPS act is as follows:
(iii) “cannabis (hemp)” means— (a) charas, that is, the separated resin, in whatever form, whether crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant and also includes concentrated preparation and resin known as hashish oil or liquid hashish; (b) ganja, that is, the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops), by whatever name they may be known or designated; and (c) any mixture, with or without any neutral material, of any of the above forms of cannabis or any drink prepared therefrom; (iv) “cannabis plant” means any plant of the genus cannabis;
So cannabis, according to this definition, is the natural resin that the plant exudes, the flowering tops of the plant (excluding the leaves and seeds), any mixture or drink of the above parts (except the leaves and seeds or including them?) and finally after all this elaboration, inclusion and exclusion, any plant of the genus Cannabis. The definition classifies different parts of the plant giving significance to each. The leaves and seeds are considered one part, the flowers another part, and the resin that the plant secretes a third part. This categorization of the plant is in line with earlier classification along these lines by western medical practitioners, who agreed based on what they found in India, that the leaves are Bhang, the flowers Ganja and the resin Charas. Note here however that Bhang appears nowhere in the above definition. In fact it appears nowhere in the Act. The only places where the word 'Hashish' appears in the Act is here in the definition and finally in the Punishments Section 20 where it says that 20KGs of hashish will get you the death sentence. From this definition and further usage of the word, it appears to me that the lawmakers were oblivious of the fact that hashish and charas are one and the same thing, whether further concentrated or used as is. THC is not defined anywhere and it makes its appearance in the Act suddenly in the offenses warranting the death sentence for 500 grams of THC and in the Schedule listing Psychotropic Substances.
From the definition of cannabis in sec 2iii) it is very evident that the formulators of this Act had very little or no knowledge about the cannabis plant. In trying to separate the various parts of the plant into different drug types, and then formulate laws and punishments based on these types, the lawmakers have seriously erred. It has been common knowledge for a very long time now that there are no significant differences between the amounts of various chemical compounds present in the leaves, flowers and resin, specifically THC which seems to have attained the status of public enemy number one for some strange, inexplicable and unscientific reason. In defining the different parts of the plant as different drugs, demanding different severity of laws and punishment, the lawmakers appear to have made an incorrect analogy between cannabis and the opium plant and between ganja/charas/hashish and morphine/heroin.
The fundamental difference between the cannabis plant and the opium plant is this. Ganja and charas are part of the natural cycle of the cannabis plant as it reaches maturity and the chemical compounds found are more or less similar between the leaves, flowers and resin on reaching maturity. Thus treating these different parts of the mature cannabis plant as different drugs, and formulating different degrees of punishment for this, is wholly inaccurate and unscientific. In the case of the opium plant, morphine and heroin are synthesized in the pharmacy lab by extracting out specific compounds and purifying them to greatly increase their potency. So yes, morphine and heroin are completely different from the natural opium plant and there is a manufacturing process involved with their creation. Also given the greatly increased potency of morphine and heroin, very small doses of morphine and even smaller quantities of heroin can kill a person. Grading the severity of punishment between opium, morphine and heroin may make sense as the increasing purification through man-made synthetic processes increases the potency and likelihood of harm. But the same is absolutely not true for cannabis where it is nature that develops the compounds and even in the varieties of cannabis with the most amount of naturally found THC, be it in the leaves flowers or resin, this comes nowhere near the potency to cause harm that happens with synthesized drugs.
So the attempt to divide and define the different parts of the cannabis plant into multiple drugs is totally unscientific and clearly reveals the ignorance of these laws and the persons who formulated them.
DEFINITION OF THC
In keeping with western thought, delta-9 Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychotropic element, though this is not specifically stated but is later included as a separate item in the list of banned psychotropic substances in the Schedule. There is no definition for THC in the definitions section of the NDPS Act. It is widely known that there are numerous varieties of cannabis in the Indian subcontinent itself, let alone the world at large. Even to this day nobody knows what the compositions of various compounds are in each of these varieties of cannabis. It is not even scientifically proven that THC is a harmful substance, let alone up to what levels it is safe and beyond what levels it becomes harmful.
In the western classification of cannabis plants, they are classified into two categories, industrial hemp and psychoactive narcotic cannabis based on an arbitrarily set limit of 0.3% THC. So if a plant has THC levels below 0.3% it is considered industrial hemp and if it has THC above 0.3% it is considered a narcotic substance. Please note that this level of THC is set arbitrarily and I am speaking about the most widespread consensus. Individual US states and countries have different levels of THC which they use to make the classification, and the limit is purely decided by the people making the rules without any scientific basis whatsoever. Many countries now use this classification to license cannabis cultivation as industrial hemp to be used in a vast number of areas. Cannabis is cultivated worldwide by a number of countries, notably China and France, based on this classification. The United States through its 2018 Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp federally on this basis, and now every state in the US can cultivate cannabis provided it meets these norms. Any cannabis with THC more than 0.3% is considered illegal and narcotic in all these places and are promptly destroyed and persons found cultivating or possessing it face legal action, even it the % of THC is just a point percentage above this arbitrarily set limit.
In natural cannabis used for medicine and intoxication in the past, the levels have been found to be anywhere between 0.1% to say 8 or 9% , though nobody really spent too much time checking. In India, the same cannabis plant was grown for fiber and its flowers and resin used for recreation and medicine, with nobody showing any concern for what the levels of THC were. It is only in recent times that hybrid forms of cannabis have been created with THC levels rising beyond 20%, mostly in the west, and that too after reports emerged that THC was the sole psychotropic element, whatever that means. In a plant that contains hundreds of compounds, most of which have not been studied closely, to label only the compound THC as dangerous is absurd. The effect of THC has been reported to be that it causes euphoria and inebriation though this has itself not been completely validated. Interestingly the definition of what is a narcotic substance is that it sedates, causes sleep, relieves pain and relaxes. All these effects are more to be found in Cannabidiol (CBD), the only other cannabis compound to have been studied closely besides THC. This would make CBD more of a candidate for control on the basis of its narcotic effects than THC which seems to exhibit stimulant properties. CBD, however, has been ruled as not being a narcotic by a number of courts recently, including EU law courts. Increasingly studies are emerging on the benefits of THC to combat various medical conditions including depression. It has been even studied that rates of THC as high as 40% to 50% does not cause inebriation anywhere as close to alcohol, let alone have any toxic after effects. To top it all, the very basis of labeling a substance as harmful based on the fact that it is a narcotic or psychotropic is suspect because narcotic properties, such as those mentioned above, are highly desirable most of the time and one of the main reasons for the leading pharmaceutical drugs in the world being painkillers, relaxants, sedatives and anti-depressants.
Considering the above facts and the fact that CBD is getting increasingly deregulated, if it was a manufactured or synthesized substance from the cannabis plant that was included in the Act then it may have appeared a little more consistent and made a little more sense, rather than including an entire plant and its parts containing hundreds of natural compounds. Even narrowing down on THC does not make very much sense, because as stated above there are absolutely no measures or evidence to say what levels of THC constitute safe levels and harmful levels or more importantly, if THC is even harmful. The absurdity of the NDPA Act is that it does not even adopt this western criterion of 0.3% THC as a basis for legality. Neither does the Act speak about THC content in the plant, its safe and harmful limits, if any at all, nor does it recognize that the cannabis plant is one of the most diverse plants in the world. It blindly accepts western classification made in the 1950s when nobody had any idea of what the plant's composition was and what amounts of its compounds constituted real harm.
DEFINITION OF GANJA
I looked up the occurrence of the word 'ganja' in the act. I found three occurrences of it. One is in the definition under Sec 2)iii as stated above where it says that - (iii) “cannabis (hemp)” means— (b) ganja, that is, the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops), by whatever name they may be known or designated;
The second and third instances of the mention of the word 'ganja' are together in sec 8. Prohibition of certain operations, which states that the cannabis plant's cultivation is prohibited except for medical or scientific purposes. In this sec 8, with regard to ganja, it states that - "Provided that, and subject to the other provisions of this Act and the rules made thereunder, the prohibition against the cultivation of the cannabis plant for the production of ganja or the production, possession, use, consumption, purchase, sale, transport, warehousing, import inter-State and export inter-State of ganja for any purpose other than medical and scientific purpose shall take effect only from the date which the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify in this behalf'
It has been cited in newspaper reports that the leaves and the seeds of the cannabis plant are not prohibited. This seems to be supported by the point 2iii which defines ganja as the flowering tops of the cannabis plant, excluding its leaves and seeds. It is said that many ayurvedic companies are licensed to sell medicine extracted from the leaves and seeds and that they are legally covered as these parts of the plant are legal.
Considering that what the cannabis plant signifies most, and is maligned the most for, is essentially ganja i.e the flowering tops, and that this is the most widely used part of the plant as medicine or intoxicant, and that it is the part of the plant for which quantities and punishments are most often defined and served, I thought that this was a bit under fleshed in the document. Of course, the Act makes up for this by hiding behind the ambiguity of terms such as cannabis plant, leaves, etc that are used interchangeably and conveniently according to the situation.
It is my understanding that most people are clueless that the flowering tops constitute ganja and have mistaken the leaves of the cannabis plant for the same. The number of persons and plants that have suffered as a result of this mistaken identity is definitely very, very large.
What is the purpose behind specifying that ganja excludes the leaves and seeds? What are the legal implications of this? What is the basis for the specific discrimination against the flowering tops and the exclusion of the leaves and seeds?
DEFINITION OF CHARAS/HASHISH
2)iii) “cannabis (hemp)” means— (a) charas, that is, the separated resin, in whatever form, whether crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant and also includes concentrated preparation and resin known as hashish oil or liquid hashish;
The above definition does not state if
charas and hashish are one and the same thing nor does it state that
if they are different what the difference is. From the definition it
appears that the oil extracted is called Hashish oil or liquid
hashish, and that hashish does not exist in natural form. It is common
knowledge that hashish and charas are different names for the
cannabis resin given by people from different cultures. By not
clarifying this in the definition and by the further usage of both
terms in the rest of the Act it is quite clear that the formulators
of the Act were not aware or not clear about this. This is also the basis for all the erroneous reporting that we see during drug seizures involving cannabis. We will find charas and hashish appearing under different heads since they are treated as different drugs by law enforcement.
Bizarrely, I found only one other mention of the word 'charas' in the entire document after the initial definition in Sec 2iii. This was in Sec 10. Power of State Government to permit, control and regulate. This section states that —(1) Subject to the provisions of section 8, the State Government may, by rules— (a) permit and regulate— (iii) the cultivation of any cannabis plant, production, manufacture, possession, transport, import inter-State, export inter-State, sale, purchase, consumption or use of cannabis (excluding charas);
This section appears to say that the state government can permit, control and regulate all aspects related to the cannabis plant excluding charas. What does this mean? Does it mean that only the central government can permit, control and regulate charas? If not, then who can do so? The resin which is a natural stage in the cannabis plant's life is not permitted by human law? No further information is provided as to under what conditions charas can be produced (it is the plant that produces it, mind you) as this is the only other mention of the word 'charas' in the whole Act. Nothing else further specifies how to treat charas. To say that the state government has the right to regulate and control the cultivation of the plant except its resin, and then to further provide no mention of how the resin, a naturally occurring result of the plant's growth is to be handled is absurdity beyond all limits of reason. It shows complete ignorance of the nature of a plant's lifecycle. If a person gets the supposed permissions and grows a plant that flowers, he is in trouble if it produces resin, which it inevitably will, because he does not have the necessary permit. In fact it appears that no one, not even the central government can do so. No permission appears to exist for the resin part which enters a void not covered by the Act.
To top it all, in the section 31A for Offences that warrant a death sentence, hashish above 20kgs is listed as warranting a death sentence. Nowhere does the Act define what hashish is and explicitly state that it is the same as the charas defined in the definitions in 2iii. Why has the term 'hashish', like THC, not been defined in the definitions, given that both merit the harshest possible punishment of death? Is it that the resin has been associated with Muslim foreigners whose influence the name Hashish invokes but the name Charas doesn't? As stated earlier the difference in the distribution of compounds between the flower and resin is not to such a marked extent that the resin warrants such extreme treatment. It is similar to the difference in distribution of compounds between butter and ghee.
Any way you look at it this definition of charas/Hashish and its subsequent handling in the Act is beyond absurd and surreal, lacking any reason, logic or scientific basis.
DEFINITION OF BHANG
It is very interesting to note that there is not a single mention of the name 'Bhang' in the entire NDPS Act. What does this mean? More people in India, especially among the ruling and upper classes, recognize the plant as bhang than as ganja or cannabis or hemp. Why then has this most popular and widely recognized name for the plant not been included in the NDPS Act while going to great lengths to lay down punishments, procedures and organizational structures to ban the plant? Bhang is commonly interpreted as the leaves of the cannabis plant. In many places it is interpreted as the leaves and the smaller buds and fine powder that remains after ganja is cleaned and separated from the plant. Is bhang legal or illegal? What if any are punishments specific to bhang? Can a person be tried for possessing a cannabis plant with only leaves? The absurdity of the Act is such that it appears that it all depends on who you are, who the arresting parties are and who the members of judiciary are. The well to do openly consume bhang on religious occasions across the country and seem to have no problem accessing and procuring the plant. On the other hand, numerous people are in jail for cultivation where the plant has not even reached the flower stage. As mentioned earlier, leading newspapers have mentioned ayurvedic products on sale by registered companies that use the leaves and seeds which these newspapers claim are legal. Is the Act clear about this? Absolutely not and many are the ones who have paid dearly because of this ambiguity.
It appears to be based on the flawed thinking that potency of the plant increases from leaves to flowers to resin. There may also be many varieties of cannabis in which the leaves have more potency (read as THC content) than the flowers and resin of other varieties. With absolutely no study done, no scientific understanding of the nature of various cannabis varieties, the law is not based on sound legal grounds.
IS GANJA BHANG OR BHANG GANJA?
The ganja plant and the bhang plant are one and the same
The ganja plant is the female plant and the bhang plant is the male plant
The ganja plant is the male plant and the bhang plant is the female plant
The ganja plant is the cultivated plant and the bhang plant is the wild plant
The ganja plant has broad leaves and thicker foliage whereas the bhang plant has narrower leaves and less foliage
The ganja plant has narrower leaves and less foliage whereas the bhang plant has broad leaves and thicker foliage
The flowers of the male plant are used as ganja
The flowers of the female plant are used as ganja
The male plant is extirpated while the female is allowed to grow
The female plant is extirpated while the male is allowed to grow
HOW PARTS OF ONE PLANT BECAME THREE DRUGS
In trying the understand the rationale for the division of a single plant into three types of drugs based on the parts of the plant, i.e. bhang, ganja and charas, of which the legal status of bhang remains completely unknown, I have come to some conclusions as follows.
One thing we must remember is that in India the cannabis plant has not been viewed as a single plant for a long time. This is because the usage of its various parts was not uniform around the country and misinformation has clouded things to such an extent that all three parts of the same plant are now viewed as completely different drugs. In some places like the north and north west, the resin, or charas/hashish, was used more in the past. In the north and the east, the leaves, or bhang, were used more than in the rest of the country. In the east, central and southern parts of the country the flowers, or ganja, were used more. For most people in the past it was common knowledge that all three, bhang, ganja and charas came from the same plant. In fact, the words ganja and bhang were used interchangeably in many areas and could mean both flower and leaf. Some people preferred to use the leaves as bhang, others preferred to use the flowers as ganja and still others the resin as charas. With increasing control and prohibition of the cultivation of the plant, most people lost their connection with the growth cycle of the plant. They went to shops to buy the increasingly government controlled bhang, ganja and charas as independent products and rarely got to see the plant grow through the entire cycle to maturity. This ignorance of people with regard to the common source of all three products led to a division among the users. Misinformation and poor knowledge led to the creation and proliferation of ideas, such as that only bhang was healthy and safe, ganja was harmful, and charas even more harmful. In some places, where the upper classes consumed bhang for religious purposes and the more expensive charas for recreation, ganja was viewed as the drug of the lower classes. Bhang was probably the most widely used across India, with ganja lesser and charas even lesser. Soon the message was spread through ignorance and selfish interests that ganja users were a bad lot, lazy, criminals or beggars, ganja was harmful and caused insanity and that if anything needed to be curbed, it was ganja.
Given that most Indians did not have the patience to collect the resin or charas, it was largely imported from the north west or produced in the Himalayan regions by people who had the time and patience to do so. Since it was in short supply it was sold at a premium. This, and the fact that the sources of charas were largely foreign to India slowly led to the thinking that it was a harmful substance produced by foreigners. Associating charas/hashish with mainly Muslim populations was relatively easy and with the increasing Hindu-Muslim divide fanned by the British resulting in partition, it was easy to propagate the message that charas was a very harmful substance that non-Hindus were bringing into the country to corrupt the health of the Indian population. This misconception still remains in many parts of India.
With ganja, it was found that though many sections of upper class society consumed cannabis in this form, in the recent past these sections of society had slowly shifted to western alcohol, opium and its derivatives and tobacco. The association of ganja with these upper classes was increasingly weaker. Their close association with western systems and influences made them increasingly convinced that alcohol and opium were better options, especially with western doctors and leaders who they aspired to be like, vouching for the benefits of these drugs. Ganja was largely used across the country by the working classes, the labourers, farmers, fishermen, largely poorer sections of society besides sadhus of all religions. Ganja was cheap, widely available and provided the necessary benefits of intoxication, concentration, relaxation and relief from fatigue and pain that none of the other intoxicants such as alcohol or opium provided. Hence it was widely popular among the working classes who constituted a large part of society, spanning across all religions. Many grew their own cannabis and used its flowering tops. If they were not able to grow their own, they were still able to procure their ganja at very low prices, far lower than alcohol or opium. In making a move to ban ganja, the messaging essentially directed at the upper classes who helped forcethe decision, was that, after all, ganja was only used by the lower classes. They would be better off without it, and the move for prohibitionwould be a great boon to society. The decision was taken by a section of society largely ignorant of the plant, and who did not consider it important to consult the large sections of society impacted by it. It would have been surely opposed by large numbers of people across the country. What the British surreptitiously pushed through in collaboration with the Indian so-called upper classes reached its culmination after the British left India, as the Indian upper classes continued to tighten the noose. This entire move was largely influenced from the outset by western alcohol and pharmaceutical industries as they gained complete control over the Indian, so-called, upper class mindset.
With bhang, it was a different matter. Bhang was equally revered by Hindus and Sikhs. Bhang, on the other hand, was harmless and used by respected folks.Sikhs preferred bhang mostly and so did many of the so called upper classes of Hindus. Both these sections of society revered bhang, even if they vilified ganja. Bhang was intimately linked with the religious practices of both Sikhs and Hindus. Hence the banning of the leaves of the cannabis plant had more serious implications than banning of the resin or flowers. It could not be so easily associated with any undesirable minority section of society and banned outright. Recognizing this problem, the formulators of the NDPS Act may have chosen to insert the section 2iii in the definitions that specifies that ganja does not include the leaves and seeds. It also specifically does not use the term Bhang. There is not a single mention of the word bhang in the entire act. Does this effectively mean that the plant until its flowering stage is legal for all practical purposes, as up to this stage it is a bhang plant consisting only of leaves with no flowers or resin i.e. no ganja or charas? If this is so then after it flowers it gets more interesting because then the plant becomes partially legal and partially illegal. The flowering tops or ganja would be illegal but the leaves and the seeds that the flowering tops contain would be legal. So a person growing a cannabis plant, if he wants to stay completely legit as per the Act in that case, must figure out how to jump from the leaf stage to the seed stage without going through the flower stage or the resin stage, a feat that nature herself has not been able to accomplish in the billions of years of evolution.
So it appears that the banning of a cannabis plant was in one stroke many things, including:
the gaining of control and repression of various sections of society, specifically minorities, indigenous people, working classes and the largely uncontrollable and potentially dangerous sadhus of all religions;
the removal of a threat to alcohol, tobacco, opium, and western pharmaceutical drugs;
a cash cow for law enforcement to inflate performance figures and secure budgets without addressing real crime.
It played on popular fears such as the fear of foreigners, the fear of lower class liberation and the fear among alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies that their growth and control over the consumer market would be hampered by cannabis. It offered a means by which governments, upper classes and law enforcement could repress, harass and punish the classes of society that they feared were most likely to come in the way of their control. Through this muddled and unscientific classification of various parts of the same plant as different drugs, the state brought in a tyranny that is quite unparalleled in its scope, duration and impact on personal freedoms in the history of Indian society. Protests came from various quarters in 1985 against the Act, it is said, but what we saw in 1985 through the enactment of the NDPS was the last nail in the coffin after nearly 150 years of the gradual suppression of the cannabis plant and its users. The protests were from a minority of intellectuals who dared to speak in favour of cannabis in a society that now viewed the once revered plant as an evil drug. It was a handful and the protests were feeble. It is true, what the persons who testified before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in 1895 said - The majority of cannabis users are too poor and mean nothing in society, so their voices will not be heard. They are the sadhus, sanyasis, fakirs, mendicants, fishermen, dhobhis, labourers, poor farmers, artisans, stone-cutters, lower castes, homeless, tribals, forest dwellers, etc. What do their voices matter? Already by 1985 the persons who grew, sold or used the plant were reduced to such small numbers that they were but a fraction of the number of users in the country, say at the end of the 1800s when the East India Company was applying its stranglehold on the country along with its Indian allies. These token protests by the remaining few voices in 1985 was easily brushed aside by the government and a society that believed they were doing themselves a great good.
LAWS AND PROCEDURES WITH REGARD TO CANNABIS IN THE NDPS ACT
LAWS AND PROCEDURES REGARDING CANNABIS CULTIVATION, HANDLING AND USE
I looked up Section 8 and 10 of the NDPS which is as follows with regard to cannabis:
Section 8. Prohibition of certain operations.—No person shall— (b) cultivate the opium poppy or any cannabis plant;
except for medical or scientific purposes and in the manner and to the extent provided by the provisions of this Act or the rules or orders made thereunder and in a case where any such provision, imposes any requirement by way of licence, permit or authorisation also in accordance with the terms and conditions of such licence, permit or authorisation:
Section 10. Power of State Government to permit, control and regulate.—(1) Subject to the provisions of section 8, the State Government may, by rules— (a) permit and regulate—
(iii) the cultivation of any cannabis plant, production, manufacture, possession, transport, import inter-State, export inter-State, sale, purchase, consumption or use of cannabis (excluding charas)
Provided further that such drugs as are referred to in the preceding proviso shall not be sold or otherwise delivered to any person who, under the rules made by the State Government under the aforesaid sub-clauses, is not entitled to their possession; (b) prescribe any other matter requisite to render effective the control of the State Government over any of the matters specified in clause (a)
(2) In particular and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such rules may— (b) provide that the limits within which licences may be given for the cultivation of any cannabis plant shall be fixed from time to time by or under the orders of the State Government; (c) provide that only the cultivators licenced by the prescribed authority of the State Government shall be authorised to engage in cultivation of any cannabis plant; (d) require that all cannabis, the produce of land cultivated with cannabis plant, shall be delivered by the cultivators to the officers of the State Government authorised in this behalf; (e) empower the State Government to fix from time to time, the price to be paid to the cultivators for the cannabis delivered; (f) prescribe the forms and conditions of licences or permits for the purposes specified in sub-clauses (i) to (vi) of clause (a) of sub-section (1) and the authorities by which such licences or permits may be granted and the fees that may be charged therefor.
Looking at these two sections, 8 and 10, together, it reads to me as that a person can grow cannabis for medical and/or scientific purposes, in the manner and to the extent provided by the Act or any rules or orders made as a result of it. What is the manner and extent to which the Act provides for the cultivation of cannabis for scientific and/or medical purposes? If the provisions made require licenses, permits and authorization then such conditions must be met. So what are the provisions made by the Act and what are the rules made subsequently regarding the cultivation of the cannabis plant for scientific and/or medical purposes? Are licences, permits and authorizations available? What are the limits? How many licenses have been issued and to whom? What is the price or fees? What are the forms and conditions that have been prescribed by State government?
Absolutely no provisions are laid out in the Act and there seems to be no information to the public at central or state government levels regarding how individuals can procure licenses and permits according to which any person may cultivate cannabis for medical and/or scientific purposes. If there are no rules and guidelines to be followed when the plant can be cultivated for scientific and/or medical purposes then this effectively reads to me as ANYBODY CAN GROW CANNABIS FOR SCIENTIFIC AND/OR MEDICAL PURPOSES. There are no provisions to be met or followed because no provisions or rules have been laid down by either the Act or by central or state governments for licenses and permits in this regard. Given this, and given the fact that no limits have been set on the number of plants that can be cultivated by an individual for scientific or medical purposes, any individual can grow any number of cannabis plants. Studying the plant as it grows, growing different varieties of cannabis under different conditions and studying its effect on one's own mind and body are all part of scientific study. Using the plant under various conditions, using its various parts such as leaves, flowers, resin, seeds, etc in various concentrations and amounts under various disease states, to alleviate pain, to feel better, to improve concentration, for meditation, etc. are all part of medical study of the cannabis plant and its effect on one's own body and mind. The Act cannot prevent an individual from doing so since it has not further elaborated any provisions or rules that need to be met such as licenses or permits. This also effectively means that no individual can be arrested or tried or his cannabis plants confiscated as he or she is fully within his or her rights to grow any number of cannabis plants provided that he or she states that it is for medical and/or scientific purposes. It reads to me as an essentially unrestricted activity.
All quantities specified with regard to cannabis in terms of commercial quantities, intermediate quantities and small quantities and the associated punishments and fines with regard to each is null and void if the accused states that all this is for medical and/or scientific purposes. This is also the case with THC and charas for which large quantities are prescribed with life imprisonment and death sentences. THC has very high medicinal value and there is no evidence that it is harmful beyond any limits.
From Section 10, we also see that a state government has a lot of leeway when it comes to determining how cannabis laws are implemented within a state. Sadly, no state appears to have used, even a fraction, let alone the full potential of its law making abilities when it comes to cannabis.
LAWS AND PROCEDURES REGARDING TREATMENT FOR ADDICTS
With regard to cannabis and all other drugs in the NDPS, a person can avoid legal action and imprisonment with fines if he or she signs up for de-addiction treatment provided that the quantities of drugs seized are small and that the accused is an user.
The following sections in the NDPS deal with addiction, its treatment and other provisions related to it.
The definition of an addict is given in Section 2[(i) “addict” means a person who has dependence on any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance;]
Section 4 (2)(d) identification, treatment, education, after care, rehabilitation and social re-integration of addicts;
7A. National Fund for Control of Drug Abuse
(2) The Fund shall be applied by the Central Government to meet the expenditure incurred in connection with the measures taken for— (c) identifying, treating, rehabilitating addicts; (d) preventing drug abuse; (f) supplying drugs to addicts where such supply is a medical necessity
27. Punishment for consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance.—Whoever, consumes any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance shall be punishable,— (a) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is cocaine, morphine, diacetyl- morphine or any other narcotic drug or any psychotropic substance as may be specified in this behalf by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to twenty thousand rupees; or with both; and (b) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is other than those specified in or under clause (a), with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees, or with both.
39. Power of court to release certain offenders on probation.—(1) When any addict is found guilty of an offence punishable under section 27 or for offences relating to small quantity of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance] and if the court by which he is found guilty is of the opinion, regard being had to the age, character, antecedents or physical or mental condition of the offender, that it is expedient so to do, then, notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or any other law for the time being in force, the court may, instead of sentencing him at once to any imprisonment, with his consent, direct that he be released for undergoing medical treatment for de-toxification or de-addiction from a hospital or an institution maintained or recognised by Government and on his entering into a bond in the form prescribed by the Central Government, with or without sureties, to appear and furnish before the court within a period not exceeding one year, a report regarding the result of his medical treatment and, in the meantime, to abstain from the commission of any offence under Chapter IV. (2) If it appears to the court, having regard to the report regarding the result of the medical treatment furnished under sub-section (1), that it is expedient so to do, the court may direct the release of the offender after due admonition on his entering into a bond in the form prescribed by the Central Government, with or without sureties, for abstaining from the commission of any offence under Chapter IV during such period not exceeding three years as the court may deem fit to specify or on his failure so to abstain, to appear before the court and receive sentence when called upon during such period.
64A. Immunity from prosecution to addicts volunteering for treatment.— Any addict, who is charged with an offence punishable under section 27 or with offences involving small quantity of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances, who voluntarily seeks to undergo medical treatment for de-addiction from a hospital or an institution maintained or recognised by the Government or a local authority and undergoes such treatment shall not be liable to prosecution under section 27 or under any other section for offences involving small quantity of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances: Provided that the said immunity from prosecution may be withdrawn if the addict does not undergo the complete treatment for de-addiction.
71. Power of Government to establish centres for identification, treatment, etc., of addicts and for supply of narcotic drug and psychotropic substances.—(1) 2 The Government may establish, recognise or approve as many centres as it thinks fit for identification, treatment, management, education, after-care, rehabilitation, social re-integration of addicts and for supply, subject to such conditions and in such manner as may be prescribed, by the concerned Government of any narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances to the addicts registered with the Government and to others where such supply is a medical necessity.
(2) The Government may make rules consistent with this Act providing for the establishment, appointment, maintenance, management and superintendence of, and for supply of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances from, the centres referred to in sub-section (1) and for the appointment, training, powers, duties and persons employed in such centres.
According to sections 7A, 39, 64a and 71, an addict can receive immunity from punishment if he or she signs up for rehabilitation and treatment. It is the responsibility of the government to create a fund for this purpose so that rehabilitation centers can be set up and treatment provided for an addict.
All this appears very noble and laudable on face value. But if we look more closely, these sections together constitute a nightmare much worse than imprisonment. It is of great concern that many individuals choose this route to escape punishment and imprisonment but it is a classic case of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, brought about by an Act that destroys the very fabric of basic individual rights and freedoms.
The definition of an addict is given in Section 2[(i) “addict” means a person who has dependence on any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance;]
Some basic questions are sufficient to reveal the state's incorrect legal approach and the dangers when law making takes on the role of physician and uses criminal laws to handle what lies squarely in the area of health policy.
How do you identify an addict? What are the parameters and criteria? Where is it laid down in quantifiable form? How is an addict defined? Are there different criteria for different substances? What is the scientific basis and evidence of such? How is dependence on a narcotic drug or psychotropic substance determined? Can an external person, be it a doctor, policeman, judge, family member or close friend, determine if a person is an addict without the cooperation of the person concerned? With regard to cannabis how do you define what is dependence on the plant?
Every person uses cannabis (and other drugs) at different rates. Some may use it only once or twice in their entire lives, others may use it many times a day. Even among these extremes and the huge range of frequencies, there is the factor of quantity. One person may consume a gram of cannabis a day. Another person may consume 20 grams a day. Then we have the effects of cannabis on a person. In one person even a few milligrams of cannabis may produce a more profound effect than what it produces in a person who consumes 25 grams a day. So it is very evident that it is impossible to lay down any quantifiable scientific criteria for what amounts of cannabis consumption and what frequencies constitutes addiction. Most importantly it is widely documented (the numerous expert witness testimonies in the Indian Hemp Commission Report of 1895 are a good source among the numerous available) that cannabis is nowhere as addictive as opium, tobacco or alcohol. It is as addictive as tea, coffee, sex and smartphones. Cannabis users have been found to be able to go without it easily even if they have consumed large amounts of it over long periods of time. This they are able to do without any of the dramatic withdrawal conditions associated with opioids or alcohol which in many cases may even lead to death due to sudden withdrawal. This points to a means of deciding whether a substance is addictive or not and to whether a person is an addict or not.
A substance can be classified as addictive if its usage over sufficient periods of time creates a dependency in the user such that if the user does not receive the substance he or she may develop a serious health condition or even die. This dependency does not mean mild headaches, irritability or restlessness which are exhibited even if a person does not receive his daily cup of tea or coffee on time. This life threatening nature of dependency that develops with prolonged use of certain substances should be the basis of having lists of controlled substances not some imaginary narcotic or psychotropic properties. If this criteria was used to create the controlled substances list then non-addictive substances like cannabis, peyote, psilocybin, etc would be off the list while alcohol would be on it. Nearly all pharmaceutical medications taken by people these days to control blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions, etc would be on the controlled lists because most people who consume these pharmaceutical drugs everyday are likely to develop serious health conditions without these drugs and likely to even die if they do not have them daily (at least that is what the doctors and pharma companies claim). Most pharmaceutical drug users on a regular basis are addicts and all the pharmaceutical drugs that they consume are addictive substances according to the definition of addiction being based on dependency. The Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act must in fact read as the Harmful and Addictive Substances Act and must remove all non-addictive plant medicines from it.
As per the Act and its rules, a consumer can be sent to a rehabilitation center of his or her choice or if unable to do so, he or she is sent to a center that the court chooses. In this regard there is a fund supposedly set up for the creation of rehabilitation centers. Most rehabilitation centers however are private run and for profit. It is common knowledge that in all these centers, the condition even in this day and age are far from ideal. Not only are many run by unqualified individuals with no medical expertise whatsoever in the process of rehabilitation, the very institutions are understaffed and unhygienic to both body and mind. Then there is the nexus of pharma companies and rehabilitation centers where dangerous synthetic pharmaceutical drugs are prescribed and administered to the accused. These are expensive, often highly addictive and extremely damaging to the health of the individual, causing many times more harm to the individual than the original drug consumed for which the individual was arrested. It leaves the individual, who may up to this point have been using the original drug safely, occasionally and recreationally, completely dependent on the highly potent and harmful drugs administered at the rehabilitation center in the name of treatment. It is quite common that individuals emerge much worse off from deaddiction centers than when they entered it. To top it all, the individual is required to pay all the costs of rehabilitation even though the Act states that it is a responsibility of the state to bear the costs. This has created a strong nexus between police, courts, rehabilitation centers and pharma companies where huge amounts of money are made by this group. It pays tremendously to arrest an individual on a drug charge and send him to rehabilitation.
Please note that the globally recognised method of treatment for cannabis addiction (if it exists at all which I don't think is the case) is predominantly counseling to break off the habit, requiring no pharmaceutical and medicinal intervention. The methods of treatment are similar to sex addiction or smartphone addiction where the cannabis using habit is tried and replaced with another habit viewed as more healthy. Please note that as per these criteria, even a person who drinks a few cups of coffee is eligible for this kind of rehabilitation.
Given all the above, what an addict is, the measures prescribed by the system for the same, and the context of cannabis, you can imagine the number of persons who have been inflicted with terrible treatment and dangerous medicines all in the name of curing the habit of consuming a medicinal herb. Considering that more than half the drug users in prison are said to be cannabis users, you can gauge the numbers that are being sent to rehabilitation centers through the courts and the above mentioned sections and what a criminal racket and damage to society is being inflicted by including cannabis in the NDPS act. In many instances the person arrested for cannabis use is a poor individual who cannot afford to pay for treatment. Hence the system does not stand to profit from him so he is tossed in jail. This accounts for the economic background of most cannabis users found in prison. The rich and well off users will opt for rehabilitation treatment, pay for the same and be back to their old habits making it a win-win for law enforcement and rehabilitation centers though even this class of cannabis users will surely be harmed by the exposure to the conditions, procedures and medicines at these rehabilitation centers.
What is the amount of funds allocated by the governments for this rehabilitation process? What are the sources of these funds? How are they allocated and used? How much of the funds go to setting up of centers? How much for paying so called medical experts and staff? How much for medicines? How much do individuals labelled as addicts pay overall for treatment? Where does this money go?
All the above questions coupled with the questions regarding the definition of who is an addict indicate that the whole process of defining addiction is unscientific. There are no criteria scientifically based and uniformly agreed as to who constitutes an addict, especially since this criteria varies completely from substance to substance, from person to person and most importantly is not even applicable to cannabis. Yet cannabis is the plant for which these sections of the NDPS act are applied most often and misused. Just this one fact should cause sufficient concern among society to immediately take cannabis out of the NDPS act. But Indian society sits smugly thinking it has done a great good by blindly copying what the US laid out to coerce its people and squeeze the maximum money out of them at great harms to personal freedom and health. It blindly accepts all the propaganda against its traditional herb and insists that this Act and all the rules and measures associated with it are absolutely necessary. It labels the cannabis user as a criminal who requires harsh treatment and strong medicine to correct his or her behaviour. It stands aside and watches as the system destroys millions of people who are caught between prison and coercive rehabilitation thinking what a great society it is. Ignorance is bliss till it leads to painful death.
The only realistic way for an external entity to label a person as an addict is to ask the question to the accused - are you an addict? In most instances, even a person who has consumed cannabis only once in his or her life, will say yes out of fear of imprisonment. In most other instances, the question is most likely not even posed to the individual. The prosecuting body labels the person as an addict, the accused's lawyer advises him that it is best to plead guilty of addiction so that the case can be closed and the accused is sent to treatment to avoid prison.
This is a problem arising from the criminalization of drug use and that too the selective criminalization of it. On the one hand you have vast numbers of individuals who consume numerous pharmaceutical drugs on a daily basis, actually many times a day, do so for many years and are so dependent on it that the doctors who prescribe these drugs for them say that they are likely to die if they stop consuming it. But all this is legal because it is the system that creates these drugs, prescribes them and sells them. On the other hand, if an individual dares to self medicate with any of these legal drugs, or worse still, any of the illegal drugs - many of which are more effective, less harmful and less addictive than the legal drugs, he or she is arrested and imprisoned or forced to undergo treatment. This is a case of the state taking away an individual's right to choose the medicine that he thinks is good for his body and forcing him through intimidation and legal coercion to take the medication it wants him to take. A person's body is his inviolate space and only he has complete authority to decide what he should put into it. By taking away the safe medicines that would heal him and not harm him, by replacing these with harmful medicines and forcing him to consume them by punishing him for taking what the individual believes is good for him, the state deliberately harms the individual and takes away one of his most fundamental rights, the right to life.
It is because of this deprivation of the right to life, and subsequently the freedom to choose one's medication, that the voices demanding decriminalization of drug use is rapidly increasing. Drug use and its abuse must be in the area of public health and not in the area of criminal justice. First and foremost, the relatively harmless, highly effective, non-addictive and affordable natural drug cannabis, used over thousands of years by billions of people worldwide, must be made legal. This will provide the natural alternative to all the dangerous legal and illegal pharmaceutical and synthetic drugs and will greatly bring down their consumption and addiction to them. Secondly, all the drugs for which the individual currently faces criminal action must be decriminalized. Then the persons who are truly addicted to these drugs will come forward without fear and voluntarily enroll for treatment. This self driven desire to heal oneself without fear is likely to produce far better results than the current system of intimidation, coercion and punishment which is the result of criminalization of drug usage.
LAWS AND PROCEDURES REGARDING SUMMONS AND ARREST
27. Punishment for consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance.—Whoever, consumes any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance shall be punishable,— (a) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is cocaine, morphine, diacetyl- morphine or any other narcotic drug or any psychotropic substance as may be specified in this behalf by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to twenty thousand rupees; or with both; and (b) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is other than those specified in or under clause (a), with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees, or with both.]
Offences of a certain kind, viewed as especially severe in society, such as murder, rape, violent harm, etc., have been classified as cognizable due to the severity of the crime and the damage to the victim. Immediate arrest is warranted to prevent the accused from further hurting the victim, escaping or causing further damage. When a crime is cognizable, the accused is first arrested and brought to a magistrate who decides the nature of custody required, while the police continue the investigation and prepare the case to bring the accused to trial. In the case of a non-cognizable case, a complaint is first filed by the public or a member of the police force. Based on this, a summons is issued by the court and the accused appears in court. Based on the interaction between the parties in court, the magistrate decides how to further proceed with the case. So cognizable offences are considered of a more serious nature requiring immediate arrest of the accused whereas non-cognizable offences are considered to be of a less serious nature not requiring urgent action from law enforcement in terms of bringing the accused to custody.
The cultivation, possession and consumption of cannabis is considered a cognizable offence i.e . an offence for which a police officer can arrest an individual without warrant.
In the case of cannabis, who is the victim? What is the nature and seriousness of the offence, especially if it involves cultivation, possession and consumption of a natural plant, that requires immediate arrest? It may be argued that selling is an offence that involves a victim, the buyer, thus requiring immediate arrest of the seller. But even in this case, is cannabis a deadly drug that can kill a person if sold above certain quantities? Most persons selling cannabis may possess a few kgs at the maximum or, as in many cases, a few hundred grams of the plant. Even if a buyer bought, say, 10 kgs from the seller, there is no realistic way in which the buyer can consume all 10 kgs at one time. Please note that it is scientifically evident that the ratio of effective dosage, i.e the dose at which the drug is effective, to the lethal dosage, i.e. the dose at which the drug can kill, is around 1:40,000 in the case of cannabis. This means that where a person typically consumes one gram of cannabis, he would have to consume 40 kgs in the span of a few minutes to die of overdose. As stated earlier, this is humanly impossible. For a commonly available legal drug, such as alcohol, the ratio is as low as 1:6-12. For fentanyl, it is as low as 1:2. Neither of these substances is on the NDPS list of controlled substances. So, even if a cannabis seller is selling 40KGs of cannabis to a buyer, it still does not constitute a serious crime warranting immediate arrest. Do we then even need to speak about the justification for arresting a person cultivating any number of plants, or arrest of a person for possession of even a few kilograms, let alone the immediate arrest of a person for consuming a few grams at a given point of time?
Today our prisons are filled with, and our judicial systems clogged with, cases related to cannabis cultivation, possession, sale or consumption. This is because of the system of immediate arrest, even if the individual possesses a few grams of the plant or is cultivating a single plant. Once in prison, these persons languish there for years often, awaiting trial. Many of the persons in prison and under trial for cannabis related crimes are from the poorest communities, who can least afford to pay their way out or put up a good defence in the criminal justice system of the country. Law enforcement and the judiciary waste precious time and resources on this while serious cognizable offences like murder, rape, financial fraud, criminal assault, extortion, etc continue unabated in society and the criminals through their connections and influence walk scot free.
All offences related to cannabis are victimless offences of a non-serious nature that should at a minimum be treated as non-cognizable. Also, all cases related to cannabis should have followed the summons route and not the arrest without warrant route. Most effectively, cannabis cultivation, possession and consumption for recreational purposes must be legalized to make the necessary corrections to an inhuman set of criminal laws. Mind you, we are talking about a plant here that has been used in India for thousands of years, by all religions, a leading intoxicant, and a key medicine in Indian pharmacology till the early 20th century.
Interestingly, only once did I find the occurrence of the word 'summon' in the entire NDPS document. That was in Section 68R which speaks about setting up an appellate tribunal to decide cases of property forfeiture related to drug crimes. So the act does not consider summon and trial as an approach, but relies overwhelmingly on arrest and trial to punish anybody who has any association with this venerable herb.
68R. Competent authority and Appellate Tribunal to have powers of civil court.—The competent authority and the Appellate Tribunal shall have all the powers of a civil court while trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908), in respect of the following matters, namely:— (a) summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person and examining him on oath;
There seems to be no equivalent to Sec 91 of the CrPC in the NDPS Act, where a person is first required to be summoned to court to answer questions or produce anything that is being investigated. A person growing some cannabis plants or possessing some cannabis for consumption can be summoned, if required, to court without the need for arrest if the person's name and address have been determined. Instead, what we see is arrest and confinement as an under trial, for many years in many cases, before the accused is brought to trial. In how many cases the accused are brought before the magistrate within 24 hours is itself worthy of further examination. Is it any wonder then that the prisons and judiciary are clogged with these petty cases and totally crippled when it comes to addressing crimes of a serious nature to society?
LAWS AND PROCEDURES REGARDING PROPERTY AND PERSON SEARCH
Looking at the procedures in the NDPS with relation to search, we have section 41, 42 and 43.
41. Power to issue warrant and authorisation.—(l) A Metropolitan Magistrate or a Magistrate of the first class or any Magistrate of the second class specially empowered by the State Government in this behalf, may issue a warrant for the arrest of any person whom he has reason to believe to have committed any offence punishable under this Act, or for the search, whether by day or by night, of any building, conveyance or place in which he has reason to believe any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance or controlled substance in respect of which an offence punishable under this Act has been committed or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of the commission of such offence or any illegally acquired property or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of holding any illegally acquired property which is liable for seizure or freezing or forfeiture under Chapter VA of this Act is kept or concealed:
(2) Any such officer of gazetted rank of the departments of central excise, narcotics, customs, revenue intelligence or any other department of the Central Government including the para-military forces or the armed forces as is empowered in this behalf by general or special order by the Central Government, or any such officer of the revenue, drugs control, excise, police or any other department of a State Government as is empowered in this behalf by general or special order of the State Government if he has reason to believe from personal knowledge or information given by any person and taken in writing that any person has committed an offence punishable under this Act or that any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance or controlled substance in respect of which any offence under this Act has been committed or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of the commission of such offence or any illegally acquired property or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of holding any illegally acquired property which is liable for seizure or freezing or forfeiture under Chapter VA of this Act is kept or concealed in any building, conveyance or place, may authorise any officer subordinate to him but superior in rank to a peon, sepoy or a constable to arrest such a person or search a building, conveyance or place whether by day or by night or himself arrest such a person or search a building, conveyance or place. (3) The officer to whom a warrant under sub-section (1) is addressed and the officer who authorised the arrest or search or the officer who is so authorised under sub-section (2) shall have all the powers of an officer acting under section 42.
This section 41 is essentially derived from section 93 of the CrPC. However there appear to be some differences and these differences are alarming in the context of an individual's freedom and right to privacy. While Sec 93 of the CrPC clearly states that only a magistrate of the first class may issue a search warrant, sec 41 (1) in the NDPS states that even a magistrate of the second class may authorise such a search if that magistrate is specially empowered by the state government. What does this mean? How does the state government empower a magistrate of the second class? What are the processes? When the judiciary is meant to be independent of the executive, how is it that in this case the executive empowers a person of the judiciary to issue a search warrant that impinges on the rights of an individual? In addition to this, 41 (2) goes so far as to say that any officer of gazetted rank of the central government or specially empowered by the state government can order a subordinate of higher rank than sepoy or peon to conduct a search and arrest or himself do the same. This subsection (2) seems to do away completely with the requirement of a magistrate's, whether first class or second, order provided the central government or state government has empowered the official. Is this the case? If so this appears to be an even greater infringement on an individual's rights and freedoms than sec 41(1). While a magistrate of the first class misusing his powers may be probable to some extent, the likelihood of a magistrate of the second class working under the direction of the central or state government misusing his powers is even more so. The case of an official of the government misusing the powers as per sec 41(2) is even more likely given that no whetting or validation from the judiciary is required for this individual to issue orders of or himself conduct search and arrest. Clearly in these ways, the NDPS appears to dilute all the safeguards that the CrPC sought to put in place through section 93. It takes power away from the judiciary and puts it in the hand of the executive who are much more likely to misuse it. Why has this been done? In how many instances have the extended powers to the executive through the section 41 of the NDPS been used or misused? The search for drugs is not in any way a more serious affair than say the search for a murder weapon or for a person held forcibly in captivity. If a law exists in this area it must be unambiguous and consistent to ensure that it is not misused. The extra powers to the state in the case of section 41 of the NDPS Act as against what is stated in Sec 93 of the CrPC is unnecessary. Sec 93 of the CrPC also states that in the magistrate's order, the specific item for which the search warrant is being issued must be mentioned. In the case of a general search, at least what is being looked for must be stated in the warrant. Further, there appears to be almost no difference between sec 41(2) and sec 42 of the NDPS.
42. Power of entry, search, seizure and arrest without warrant or authorisation.—(l) Any such officer (being an officer superior in rank to a peon, sepoy or constable) of the departments of central excise, narcotics, customs, revenue intellegence or any other department of the Central Government including para-military forces or armed forces as is empowered in this behalf by general or special order by the Central Government, or any such officer (being an officer superior in rank to a peon, sepoy or constable) of the revenue, drugs control, excise, police or any other department of a State Government as is empowered in this behalf by general or special order of the State Government, if he has reason to believe from personal knowledge or information given by any person and taken down in writing that any narcotic drug, or psychotropic substance, or controlled substance in respect of which an offence punishable under this Act has been committed or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of the commission of such offence or any illegally acquired property or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of holding any illegally acquired property which is liable for seizure or freezing or forfeiture under Chapter VA of this Act is kept or concealed in any building, conveyance or enclosed place, may between sunrise and sunset,—
(a) enter into and search any such building, conveyance or place; (b) in case of resistance, break open any door and remove any obstacle to such entry; (c) seize such drug or substance and all materials used in the manufacture thereof and any other article and any animal or conveyance which he has reason to believe to be liable to confiscation under this Act and any document or other article which he has reason to believe may furnish evidence of the commission of any offence punishable under this Act or furnish evidence of holding any illegally acquired property which is liable for seizure or freezing or forfeiture under Chapter VA of this Act; and (d) detain and search, and, if he thinks proper, arrest any person whom he has reason to believe to have committed any offence punishable under this Act: 1[Provided that in respect of holder of a licence for manufacture of manufactured drugs or psychotropic substances or controlled substances granted under this Act or any rule or order made thereunder, such power shall be exercised by an officer not below the rank of sub-inspector: Provided further that] if such officer has reason to believe that a search warrant or authorisation cannot be obtained without affording opportunity for the concealment of evidence or facility for the escape of an offender, he may enter and search such building, conveyance or enclosed place at any time between sunset and sunrise after recording the grounds of his belief. (2) Where an officer takes down any information in writing under sub-section (1) or records grounds for his belief under the proviso thereto, he shall within seventy-two hours send a copy thereof to his immediate official superior
There appears to be no difference between sec 41(2) and sec 42 of the NDPS except for the following that section 42 specifies - i)such search must be carried between dawn and dusk ii) if the officer is of a sub-inspector rank and believes that the accused may escape or destroy evidence, he may search between sunset and sunrise after recording the grounds of his belief iii) a report on such a search must be sent to the officer's immediate superior within 72 hours. The equivalent of this section 42 of the NDPS is covered in the CrPC as section 165 where an officer conducts a search without the prior authorisation by a magistrate of the first class. Such searches are to be carried out only where there is the risk of escape or destruction of evidence by the suspect as the officer believes to be likely. Such a search can again severely hamper the freedom of an individual and subject him to unnecessary harassment from law enforcement.
It is to specifically prevent such harassment that the section 165 of the CrPC has two very important clauses. 165)1) states that the officer who is about to conduct the search must first put down in writing why he plans to conduct the search and what he hopes to find and why he cannot wait to go through the proper process of an authorized search warrant as envisaged by sec 93 of the CrPC. 165)5) of the CrPC states that the officer must send 'forthwith' copies of any record made under 165)1) to the nearest magistrate who on application by the accused, must furnish the same to the accused This is a check on the officer to prevent misuse of powers and protect individual freedoms.
What we see in the NDPS section 42 is that this whole safety check provided in Sec 165 of the CrPC is done away with. Neither is the officer who is about to conduct a search required to give prior notification to a magistrate of the first class, nor is he required to inform the magistrate subsequently. All he needs to do is submit a report to his immediate superior and that too only within 72 hours regarding the reasons and justification for the search. Mind you, when it says “within 72 hours” here, it does not state whether this is 72 hours prior to the search or 72 hours post the search. The objective of a notification to the magistrate before the search as envisaged in sec 165 of the CrPC is so that the official making the search does not perform a general sweeping search that harasses an individual and then subsequently makes a report based on what the search yielded, making it an infringement on the individual's privacy and a matter of the ends justifying the means. This is completely done away with in sec 42 of the NDPS. An official and his immediate superior can do as they wish without any judicial oversight. They can conduct open-ended searches and even if it does not yield the object being sought, it looks to find anything that can be pinned on the individual. In this regard, sec 42 of the NDPS is an even further blow on an individual's rights and freedoms than section 41. So both section 41 and 42 together have completely negated all that section 91, 93 and section 165 of the CrPC set out to achieve. The CrPC at least acknowledged the likelihood of harassment of an individual and sought to minimize it. The NDPS however has removed whatever little protection that the CrPC offered and through sections 41 and 42 has opened every single individual to the threat of harassment and illegal arrest by the executive without any oversight by the judiciary. This is a most dangerous situation in any civil society and I am sure that this has been used multiple times by the executive to suit its needs.
Next let us take a look at section 43 of the NDPS dealing with public search and arrest. The section is as follows:
43. Power of seizure and arrest in public place.—Any officer of any of the departments mentioned in section 42 may— (a) seize in any public place or in transit, any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance or controlled substance in respect of which he has reason to believe an offence punishable under this Act has been committed, and, along with such drug or substance, any animal or conveyance or article liable to confiscation under this Act, any document or other article which he has reason to believe may furnish evidence of the commission of an offence punishable under this Act or any document or other article which may furnish evidence of holding any illegally acquired property which is liable for seizure or freezing or forfeiture under Chapter VA of this Act; (b) detain and search any person whom he has reason to believe to have committed an offence punishable under this Act, and if such person has any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance or controlled substance in his possession and such possession appears to him to be unlawful, arrest him and any other person in his company. Explanation.—For the purposes of this section, the expression “public place” includes any public conveyance, hotel, shop, or other place intended for use by, or accessible to, the public.]
Searches in a public place must follow the rules of any search as specified in sec 100 of the CrPC or sec 50 in the NDPS. For a public search, it is most likely that prior authorization from a magistrate is not feasible in most cases so such a search must follow the procedures laid down in section 165 of the CrPC and section 42 of the NDPS. The officer who plans to stop and search a person in public must according to 165 of the CrPC, send a notification to the magistrate beforehand detailing why he plans to conduct the search and what he is searching for and this must be produced when required to ensure that the search is not random and that it does not infringe upon an individual's rights and freedoms. Of course this has been diluted in sec 42 of the NDPS to state that the officer conducting or ordering the search can within 72 hours inform only his immediate superior and not a magistrate and that this is sufficient, with the ambiguity of whether 'within' 72 hours means prior or subsequent to the search. Here, in Sec 43 in the NDPS with regard to search in general without authorization, even the prior recording of the grounds of the search appears missing, which means that random public searches can be done without any prior approval or notification to either magistrate or superior, giving the officer complete freedom to search anybody on any pretext without having sound grounds for the search. He can then manipulate his report subsequently based on what he discovers as a matter of the ends justifying the means. That is if he finds anything concrete. In most cases the search will be a harassment for the victim who can be any member of the public that the official wishes to target.
Section 49 is also related to section 42 and 43 and deals with searching conveyances
49. Power to stop and search conveyance.—Any officer authorised under section 42, may, if he has reason to suspect that any animal or conveyance is, or is about to be, used for the transport of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance 2[or controlled substance], in respect of which he suspects that any provision of this Act has been, or is being, or is about to be, contravened at any time, stop such animal or conveyance, or, in the case of an aircraft, compel it to land and— (a) rummage and search the conveyance or part thereof; (b) examine and search any goods on the animal or in the conveyance; (c) if it becomes necessary to stop the animal or the conveyance, he may use all lawful means for stopping it, and where such means fail, the animal or the conveyance may be fired upon.
Corresponding to sec 100 of the CrPC is section 50 of the NDPS which is as follows:
50. Conditions under which search of persons shall be conducted.—(1) When any officer duly authorised under section 42 is about to search any person under the provisions of section 41, section 42 or section 43, he shall, if such person so requires, take such person without unnecessary delay to nearest Gazetted Officer of any of the departments mentioned in section 42 or to the nearest Magistrate. (2) If such requisition is made, the officer may detain the person until he can bring him before the Gazetted Officer or the Magistrate referred to in sub-section (1). (3) The Gazetted Officer or the Magistrate before whom any such person is brought shall, if he sees no reasonable ground for search, forthwith discharge the person but otherwise shall direct that search be made. (4) No female shall be searched by anyone excepting a female. 3[(5) When an officer duly authorised under section 42 has reason to believe that it is not possible to take the person to be searched to the nearest Gazetted Officer or Magistrate without the possibility of the person to be searched parting with possession of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance, or controlled substance or article or document, he may, instead of taking such person to the nearest Gazetted Officer or Magistrate, proceed to search the person as provided under section 100 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974). (6) After a search is conducted under sub-section (5), the officer shall record the reasons for such belief which necessitated such search and within seventy-two hours send a copy thereof to his immediate official superior.]
What is conveniently ignored in sections 41, 42, 43, and 49 of the NDPS is the rights of an individual under section 100 of the CrPC and section 50 of the NDPS. This section 50 of the NDPS states that any individual or property searched, whether under sections 41, 42, 43 and 49 of the NDPS, corresponding to sections 93 and 165 of the CrPC, must follow the procedures of section 100 of the CrPC. Section 100 states that when an individual or property is searched whether in public or in private, the officer conducting the search must follow certain rules. Some of these rules are as follows:
The search party must conduct the search in the presence of a gazetted officer or magistrate if so required by the person being searched. If not, search must be conducted in the presence of two independent witnesses, preferably persons of integrity from the locality where the search is being carried out. These persons must not be part of the search team or brought in by the search party. Before a search is carried out, the person being searched has all the rights to body search the members of the search party and the witnesses to prevent the likelihood of the planting of incriminating material at the search spot. The search party cannot legally prevent this from happening and the person being searched is fully within his rights to obstruct the search if this is not allowed. Once a search has been completed, a list must be prepared of all the items recovered from the search and this list must be signed by the independent witnesses. A copy of such a list must be made available for the defendant on request.
How often is section 100 of the CrPC or its version in the NDPS, section 50 followed when implementing sec 41, 42, 43 and 49 of the NDPS Act? My guess is that almost never. The persons subjected to these searches in most cases are not aware of these rules and hence the law enforcement agencies implementing these searches rarely, if at all, follow these procedures.
Where there are conflicts between the CrPC and the NDPS, and there are numerous as we can see, section 51 of the NDPS says that -
51. Provisions of the code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 to apply to warrants, arrests, searches and seizures.—The provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974) shall apply, in so far as they are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act, to all warrants issued and arrests, searches and seizures made under this Act.
It appears from section 51 of the NDPS Act and Sec 4 of the CrPC that the NDPS takes precedence in matters of conflict between the two providing further teeth to this totally unscientific, illogical and inhuman Act that attacks the basic freedoms and rights of the individual.
Looking at these sections 41, 42, 43, 49 of the NDPS and the corresponding sections 93, 165 and 100 of the CrPC, it is once again clear how much the NDPS is a dilution of all the laws set up to protect the freedom and rights of a citizen and how heavily it is stacked against the citizen, giving a free hand for law enforcement to use these sections and the ambiguities to search, arrest, bring to trial and imprison vast numbers of individuals under the pretext of implementing drug laws. Quite often drug use, which has essentially to do with a person's health and decisions related to one's body, brings large numbers of people into contact with the criminal justice system. Most of the persons without the financial means or the necessary connections end up in prison where they languish without trial for many years because most of these are non-bailable offences. The system does not even differentiate between lethal drugs and relatively harmless drugs, between a one time user and a chronic user, between severity of crime and victims of the crime, using a one size fits all approach to implement this monstrous act. It is often used to settle scores between groups, suppress minorities and indigenous communities, push forward government policies, intimidate the public, bloat up police performance data and secure police budgets. The principle that one's own body is one's supreme property and what one decides to consume is integral to one's right to freedom is not a consideration at all in the NDPS.
Considering that cannabis is a herb now used in most developed nations, for both medicine and recreation, and also considering that India has the longest history in the world with regard to cannabis use for both these reasons, besides the widespread use for religious purposes, this Act amounts to a serious attack on the rights of society with regard to cannabis. The acknowledgement that cannabis is an integral part of Indian culture is evident in the careful way in which the word 'bhang' has been omitted from the Act lest it provoke all religions within the country. The ambiguity with which it is said that one is free to consume cannabis but not sell it is completely evident when one sees the number of persons who are arrested for cannabis usage or for growing a few plants at home or in private spaces. The law says that the intent is to prevent large scale cultivators and sellers from functioning but the number of persons who are arrested for quantities as small as a few grams of ganja are many.
Article 50 of the Constitution states that "The State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services of the State." What the NDPS does is completely contrary to this article by giving excess powers to the executive in enforcing the NDPS.
What justifies the need for these extreme laws when it comes to the NDPS, which are essentially drug laws that should be in the area of public health rather than criminal justice, while crimes such as murder, rape, kidnap, violent assault and financial fraud draw much milder laws and better protection for the accused through judicial checks and balances through the CrPC? It is as if the lawmakers have arrived at the conclusion that drug offences, essentially victimless offences based on the personal choices of an individual with regard to what he puts into his own body, are much more heinous than murder or rape. This appears to be the work of overzealous lawmakers who have set about to bring their brand of lopsided moral justice onto society.
PUNISHMENTS AND BAIL IN THE NDPS ACT FOR CANNABIS
The following sections deal with punishments and bail for cannabis related offences.
SOME SECTIONS REGARDING PUNISHMENTS
20. Punishment for contravention in relation to cannabis plant and cannabis.—Whoever, in contravention of any provision of this Act or any rule or order made or condition of licence granted thereunder,— (a) cultivates any cannabis plant; or
(b) produces, manufactures, possesses, sells, purchases, transports, imports inter-State, exports inter-State or uses cannabis, shall be punishable,— 1[(i) where such contravention relates to clause (a) with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine which may extend to one lakh rupees; and (ii) where such contravention relates to sub-clause (b),— (A) and involves small quantity, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2[one year], or with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees, or with both; (B) and involves quantity lesser than commercial quantity but greater than small quantity, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years, and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees; (C) and involves commercial quantity, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than ten years but which may extend to twenty years and shall also be liable to fine which shall not be less than one lakh rupees but which may extend to two lakh rupees: Provided that the court may, for reasons to be recorded in the judgment, impose a fine exceeding two lakh rupees.]
27. Punishment for consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance.—Whoever, consumes any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance shall be punishable,— (a) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is cocaine, morphine, diacetyl- morphine or any other narcotic drug or any psychotropic substance as may be specified in this behalf by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette, with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to twenty thousand rupees; or with both; and (b) where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance consumed is other than those specified in or under clause (a), with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees, or with both.
It has to be read to believe that such
rules actually exist in a modern society. According to Sec 20)a)
whoever (a) cultivates
any cannabis plant; shall be punishable,— (i) where such
contravention relates to clause (a) with rigorous imprisonment for a
term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine
which may extend to one lakh rupees; Yes, rigorous imprisonment
upto 10 years for what? For growing a plant that has existed in
nature for 27 million years, is considered one of the most sacred
plants by all Indian religions, was considered an important
agricultural crop, and which was considered the most important
medicine by Indian physicians until the recent past. This is the
plant that grew in public places in abundance in many homes and
backyards through out India, akin to the holy basil plant grown and
worshiped throughout India. All this when the definition says that the flowering tops and resin are illegal, whereas the leaves and seeds are not.
The grower is subjected to the harshest
punishments as Section 20(a) indicates. The grower is typically a
poor farmer, tribal, or indigenous person who can least afford to
pay the cost of expensive alcohol, pharmaceutical medicine, tobacco
or even cannabis from the black market given how expensive
prohibition has made it. In some cases it is an urban individual
growing the plant for personal use, either as medicine or for
recreation because he cannot afford the expensive legal alcohol or
pharmaceutical medicine or because he is wise enough to reject both
as harmful. Quite often it is the poor who, in desperation, take to
growing a few plants to supplement their meager income despite
knowing the risk that especially they face through discriminatory law
enforcement action. In most cases, the person cultivating cannabis is
likely to have a small number of plants, maybe one or two or in the
rarest of cases, more than six. The large scale cannabis cultivator
who grows it in the thousands spread over many acres of land is
nearly non-existent in India today. If large scale cultivation
happens, it is mostly in hidden and remote areas, inaccessible to
most people or it happens under the protection of law enforcement and
lawmakers, supplying the black market and sharing profits with the
protectors of the cultivator. The NDPS does not seem to differentiate
between a small scale farmer or even an individual growing the plant
for his or her personal needs and the large scale cultivator growing
the plant for commercial gains. The law always seems to say that the
aim is to prevent commercial activity of the plant and that personal
consumption and private use is not prohibited but the fact remains.
As the above Section 20 states, even a person growing one plant faces
a 10 year sentence. Most often it is these small farmers and single
plant cultivators who end up in prison. It is possible that when
sentencing the grower, the law takes into account the number of
plants being cultivated and punishes accordingly. But then, when
nothing is written down regarding this, it appears to be fully
subjective to the discretion of the criminal justice system. So there
are surely likely to be instances where a person has got a severe
sentence of rigorous imprisonment for just growing a small number of
plants whereas an influential person growing thousands of plants in
large scale cultivation has walked free after serving a much milder
sentence. At the least you would expect some kind of gradation of the
punishments as it applies to production, manufacture, possession,
selling where the quantities involved determines the nature of
punishment. So why this clear discrimination against the cultivator?In 19th century India, when curbs were brought on cannabis cultivation by the British, home growing was also targeted even though the rules did not explicitely ban home growing. This was one of the methods to take the plant out of the hands of the individual, and make him or her dependent on the state.
If you are in possession, a consumer or a seller, as per Section 20(b) and Section 27, there are grades of punishment based on whether quantities are small quantities, less than commercial quantities or commercial quantities. Interestingly the Act does not specify what these quantities are, but rather leaves it to the central government to define in its weekly publication, the Official Gazette, what these quantities are. At the moment this apparently stands at small quantity = less than 1 kg of cannabis flower, intermediate quantity at between 1 to 10 kgs of cannabis flower, and commercial quantities as greater than 10 kgs of cannabis flower.
Mind you, the grower under Section 20)a) also subsequently becomes the producer and manufacturer under Section 20)b) because as the plant grows it flowers as a part of the natural process. So where, in fact, mother nature is growing this plant and bringing it to maturity, the person who tends to it gets punished for these acts of nature.
As debated earlier in the definitions, it is clearly stated there in Section 2iii) that ganja is the flowering tops excluding leaves and seeds. Also as reported in major newspapers and left ambiguous in the Act, bhang or the leaves of the plant are allegedly not illegal. If you call the plant bhang, it appears to be legal as it is widely partaken by large sections of Indian society during major festivals and social occasions. But by saying that the cultivation of the cannabis plant is illegal, then surely bhang is illegal. What is it actually? This is a horrendous ambiguity that remains at the heart of this Act with relation to cannabis. If we are to say that the leaves and seeds do not constitute an illegal part of the cannabis plant, then Section 20)a) itself is not valid as cultivation involves growing the plant through its leaf stage. Only Section 20)b) needs be made relevant because once the plant, not the human, mind you, starts producing flowers and resin, then the human can be booked for Section 20)b) production and manufacture of ganja and charas. Good luck to you if you are trying to grow the plant for the seeds because you may have received the death sentence as you passed through the flower and resin stage of the plant's growth.
27A. Punishment for financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders.—Whoever indulges in financing, directly or indirectly, any, of the activities specified in sub-clauses (i) to (v) of clause (viiia) of section 2 or harbours any person engaged in any of the aforementioned activities, shall be punishable with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than ten years but which may extend to twenty years and shall also be liable to fine which shall not be less than one lakh rupees but which may extend to two lakh rupees: Provided that the court may, for reasons to be recorded in the judgment, impose a fine exceeding two lakh rupees.
I had a look at Section 27A as it is something which could commonly be applied to larger numbers of cannabis related offences. Section 27A itself is invalid. In Section 27A where it reads as "Whoever indulges in financing, directly or indirectly, any, of the activities specified in sub-clauses (i) to (v) of clause (viiia) of section 2 or harbours any person engaged in any of the aforementioned activities," it should actually read as "Whoever indulges in financing, directly or indirectly, any, of the activities specified in sub-clauses (i) to (v) of clause (viiib) of section 2 or harbours any person engaged in any of the aforementioned activities," and not clause "(viiia) of section 2".
Clause (viiia) of section 2 reads as " 1[(viiia) “essential narcotic drug” means a narcotic drug notified by the Central Government for medical and scientific use;]"
Section 2 clause viiib which is the correct clause to be referenced in 27A reads as - "(viiib)“illicit traffic”, in relation to narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, means— (i)cultivating any coca plant or gathering any portion of coca plant; (ii) cultivating the opium poppy or any cannabis plant; (iii) engaging in the production, manufacture, possession, sale, purchase, transportation, warehousing, concealment, use or consumption, import inter-State, export inter-State, import into India, export from India or transhipment, of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances; (iv) dealing in any activities in narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances other than those referred to in sub-clauses (i) to (iii); or (v) handling or letting out any premises for the carrying on of any of the activities referred to in sub-clauses (i) to (iv), other than those permitted under this Act, or any rule or order made, or any condition of any licence, term or authorisation issued, thereunder, and includes— (1) financing, directly or indirectly, any of the aforementioned activities; (2) abetting or conspiring in the furtherance of or in support of doing any of the aforementioned activities; and (3) harbouring persons engaged in any of the afore-mentioned activities;.
So Section 27A Punishment for financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders is itself invalid as it incorrectly references viiia of Section 2 rather than viiib of section 2. This reads to me as until this mistake is corrected in Section 27A, no one can be arrested, tried or punished under section 27A. This also implies that all such arrests, trials and convictions done so far under section 27A are illegal, incorrect and void.
31. Enhanced punishment for offences after previous conviction.—(1) If any person who has been convicted of the commission of, or attempt to commit, or abetment of, or criminal conspiracy to commit, any of the offences punishable under this Act is subsequently convicted of the commission of, or attempt to commit, or abetment of, or criminal conspiracy to commit, an offence punishable under this Act with the same amount of punishment shall be punished for the second and every subsequent offence with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3[one and one-half times of the maximum term] of imprisonment, and also be liable to fine which shall extend to 4[one and one-half times of the maximum amount] of fine. (2) Where the person referred to in sub-section (1) is liable to be punished with a minimum term of imprisonment and to a minimum amount of fine, the minimum punishment for such person shall be 5[one and one-half times of the minimum term] of imprisonment and 6[one and one-half times of the minimum amount] of fine: Provided that the court may, for reasons to be recorded in the judgment, impose a fine exceeding the fine for which a person is liable. (3) Where any person is convicted by a competent court of criminal jurisdiction outside India under any corresponding law, such person, in respect of such conviction, shall be dealt with for the purposes of sub-sections (1) and (2) as if he had been convicted by a court in India.
Then we have the compounding of offences and the matter of quantities. As discussed in the section regarding cultivation of cannabis earlier, if an individual states that he is cultivating the plant for medical and/or scientific purposes, and given that there appear to be no provisions or rules created either by the state or central governments that control this, can any individual be actually tried for growing or possessing any amount of cannabis, be it in whatever form?
31A. Death penalty for certain offences after previous conviction.—(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in section 31, if any person who has been convicted of the commission of, or attempt to commit, or abetment of, or criminal conspiracy to commit, any of the offences punishable under 8[section 19, section 24, section 27A and for offences involving commercial quantity of any narcotic drug drug or psychotropic substance], is subsequently convicted of the commission of, or attempt to commit, or abetment of, or criminal conspiracy to commit, an offence relating to,— (a) engaging in the production, manufacture, possession, transportation, import into India, export from India or transhipment, of the narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances specified under column (1) of the Table below and involving the quantity which is equal to or more than the quantity indicated against each such drug or substance, as specified in column (2) of the said Table: (vii) Hashish 20 kgs. (x) THC (Tetrahydrocannabinols, the following Isomers: 6a (10a), 6a (7),7,8,9,10,9 (11) and their stereochemical variants) 500 grams
(b) financing, directly or indirectly, any of the activities specified in clause (a), 2[shall be punished with punishment which shall not be less than the punishment specified in section 31 or or with death]. (2) Where any person is convicted by a competent court of criminal jurisdiction outside India under any law corresponding to the provisions of 3[section 19, section 24 or section 27A and for offences involving commercial quality of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance], such person, in respect of such conviction, shall be dealt with for the purposes of sub-section (1) as if he had been convicted by a court in India
The premise that charas or hashish
warrants a greater sentence than ganja is based on the incorrect
assumption that charas is more concentrated than ganja and that ganja
is more concentrated than bhang when it comes to psychotropic and
narcotic properties. While there is no scientific evidence that this
is true, especially across different varieties of the plant, and
given that the evidence has shown that the charas or ganja produced
from the same plant contain the same amounts of THC and other
compounds, the gradation of severity as one progresses from ganja to
charas is incredibly ignorant, and has absolutely no scientific,
medical or legal basis. It is true that in a plant like opium,
morphine is more potent than opium and heroin is more potent than
morphine. Constituting a graded system of punishment may be
applicable to opium and its derivatives as the amount of morphine
required to die of an overdose is much less than the amount of raw
opium required, and similarly between heroin and morphine. But this
rule cannot be just lifted and applied to bhang, ganja and
charas/hashish as the potency does not increase in a similar manner
in this case with regard to cannabis, where the production of ganja
and charas is a natural process of the plant, unlike the transition
from opium to heroin which is a man made synthetic process with human
involvement. In fact, even in concentrated form, as in concentrates
(not charas which is a natural form) the amounts of THC remain more
or less the same as it does in the ganja from which it is derived.
With charas and concentrates there is the added fact that an
individual does not consume the same amounts of this as he would in
the case of raw ganja flower. It is most often the case that the
individual consumes smaller quantities of resin and concentrates,
given that they are much more expensive and difficult to come by. It
is common in many parts of North America to come across cannabis
varieties with THC content as high as 30% or more due to the many
hybrid varieties now commonly found there. So these varieties of
ganja flower are likely to contain way more THC, than most charas or
hashish that is naturally found worldwide in which the THC content is
rarely likely to be more than 15%. Also as stated earlier, THC is now
understood as having great medicinal value and there are a number of
medical conditions for which it is specifically recommended that
varieties of cannabis with high THC content be consumed. Hashish/charas is also legalized when cannabis is legalized for adult recreational use in US States and other countries. No special differentiation is given for the resin , or even for concentrates, for taht matter. So we see an equal demand for hashish/charas/resin as forcannabis flower. To have a special death penalty clause for 20kgs of hashish is outright ridiculous.
So, such graded punishments with regard to ganja and charas/hashish, shows the complete lack of scientific knowledge of the persons who have made these laws and acts. To consider the death sentence for 20kgs of charas or 500 grams of THC is just even beyond absurd.
Interestingly, what constitutes 'commercial quantities' of various substances is not in the NDPS Act, but supposedly in the Official Gazette of the Central government, a weekly publication, as per the NDPS. Only the punishments associated with them are described in the Act. So we have the UN list of controlled substances, the WHO list of Essential Medicines, the list of substances and quantities warranting the death penalty in the NDPS, the Central government Official Gazette and who knows what else..is it any wonder that the poor cannabis farmer is clueless when even the leading legal authorities appear to be?
SECTIONS REGARDING BAIL
37. Offences to be cognizable and non-bailable.—(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974),— (a) every offence punishable under this Act shall be cognizable; (b) no person accused of an offence punishable for offences under section 19 or section 24 or section 27A and also for offences involving commercial quantity shall be released on bail or on his own bond unless— (i) the Public Prosecutor has been given an opportunity to oppose the application for such release, and (ii) where the Public Prosecutor opposes the application, the court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty of such offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail. (2) The limitations on granting of bail specified in clause (b) of sub-section (1) are in addition to the limitations under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974) or any other law for the time being in force on granting of bail
Considering the error in section 27A , as noted above, and the reference to section 27A in Section 37(b) regarding granting of bail which reads as "37(b) no person accused of an offence punishable for offences under section 19 or section 24 or section 27A and also for offences involving commercial quantity shall be released on bail or on his own bond unless— (i) the Public Prosecutor has been given an opportunity to oppose the application for such release, and (ii) where the Public Prosecutor opposes the application, the court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty of such offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail.", Section 27A cannot be used as grounds for refusing granting of bail as it is incorrect. This also implies that as per the correct interpretation of Section 37, the Public Prosecutor cannot oppose bail on grounds of Section 27A but only do so on grounds of section 19 (related to opium) or Section 24 (related to international trade) or for matters relating to commercial quantities.
This means that nearly all activities related to cannabis, except those dealing with international trade or commercial quantities, are bailable offences and should not be opposed by the Public Prosecutor. Given that offences are bailable across such a wide range of cannabis related activities, all cannabis related activities that are not international, or that do not deal with commercial quantities, should be made non-cognizable, in addition to being bailable.
As discussed in this document in the section on definitions, when there is no scientific basis to even define what is a narcotic or psychotropic, and what constitutes safe and dangerous amounts of narcotic or psychotropic properties in any substance (and this is at the global level where the UN Controlled Substances Act exists), based on which the NDPS was formulated, you can start to understand, or rather you may not be unjustified, in questioning the sanity of this world we exist in.
THE NDPS ACT AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Rights of the Cannabis User
The prohibition of ganja and charas is discrimination against an Indian citizen on the basis of religion, economics, societal norms, value systems and culture. Whereas a significant number of religious mendicants across all religions were serious consumers of ganja and charas - and still are - the prohibition of ganja and charas has resulted in this section of society - which is generally among the poorest in the country - being unable to freely access and use the herb that enables them to follow their spiritual pursuits and endure the adverse conditions in their lives, as they did in the past before prohibition. Whereas most ganja and charas consumers were the poorest classes of society, especially the labouring and working classes, ganja prohibition has resulted in the rich, well-to-do upper classes freely enjoying the prohibited herb while the country's masses have suffered from non-availability, non-affordability., and the wrath of law enforcement. Whereas a number of ganja and charas consumers come from the non-upper caste Hindu society, i.e. they belong to minority religions, indigenous communities, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, these sections have been discriminated against for going against the societal norms, value systems and culture of the upper-caste Hindus and orthodoxy of other religions, as well as the value systems of the British colonists. Whereas many cultural and societal value systems across India - especially among the indigenous communities, as well as the earlier inhabitants of India - view ganja as an inherent part of the religious, social and medical landscape for thousands of years, the upper-castes, relatively newer migrants to India, and the British colonists have imposed their societal norms and value systems consisting of western alcohol, tobacco, opium and synthetic pharmaceutical medicines. Persons who wished to use ganja or charas for recreation or medicine were branded as the most abhorrent in society by the British and Indian upper-castes and ruling classes during the 1850s. With the passing of time, this discrimination against the other classes and religions translated into a complete prohibition of the herb of the masses. With the introduction of ganja and charas in the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985, the process of making this discrimination an official law was complete.
The question of the religious and spiritual significance of the ganja plant is conveniently avoided in the entire NDPS Act of 1985. This, along with the complete omission of the word 'bhang' in the Act, makes it clear that the NDPS Act was strongly influenced by other anti-ganja laws – the U.S. Marihuana Act of 1937, the 1961 Single Convention Treaty and the US Controlled Substances Act. These antiganja drug laws were essentially formulated by the Americans, who hardly understood the significance of ganja and charas to India, and formulated these laws to subdue their own lower classes and castes – the Hispanics, Blacks, Native Indians and liberal thinkers commonly known as hippies. It is common knowledge that large parts of India consume bhang, a drink made from the cannabis leaves, during major festivals like Holi, Diwali and Durga Puja. It is also common knowledge that lakhs of ascetics, fakirs and other religious mendicants regularly consume the cannabis plant as a part of their spiritual traditions and customs. It is common knowledge that Varanasi, revered as the holy city of Shiva, has retail outlets that sell cannabis and its derivatives. Almost the entire country associates the ganja plant with Shiva, who is revered across the country as one of its most important gods. Not only this, Muslims particularly of the Sufi sects -, Sikhs and Buddhists have been known for centuries to consume cannabis, in preference to alcohol, in keeping with their religious traditions. So, such a significant part of Indian long-standing medical, agricultural, social and religious customs and traditions being forcefully removed constitutes a direct infringement on the rights of vast numbers of individuals and communities. Through the NDPS Act, the State directly violates key articles of the Indian Constitution, namely Articles 14, 15, 19, 21, 25, 38, 43, 46, 47.
Article 14 of the Indian Constitution
Article 14 of the Indian Constitution states that “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” The prohibition of ganja and charas violates the right to equality. A person from a lower economic, social or religious strata faces much greater discrimination by law enforcement that the upper stratas. It is difficult to procure ganja and charas because they are so highly priced and made inaccessible except through the black market making them available only to the upper classes. Cultivation, trade, possession and cultivation are also more likely to draw harsh punishments to the lower sections of society than to upper classes. The denial of the medicinal ayurvedic herb ganja - both as medicine and intoxicant - and instead, the push, by the state, of western alcohol, tobacco and synthetic pharmaceutical drugs – legal and illegal - the preferred drugs of the elites, to the poorer sections of society and to those who do not want these alternatives, is a violation of Article 14.
For me, with the illegality of ganja and charas, I am unable to cultivate, home grow, procure, possess or consume the same. The rich upper classes and castes procure and consume ganja and charas, and a host of illegal synthetic drugs, from the black market, paying exorbitant sums of money, besides freely accessing the legal drugs – alcohol, tobacco and synthetic pharmaceuticals. I am neither able to afford the sums of money required to procure the legal and illegal synthetic drugs, nor do I wish to procure and consume them. I do not wish to go against the laws of the land by trying to procure ganja and charas from the black market illegally. I also do not wish to wholeheartedly embrace tobacco or alcohol, the government-endorsed highly harmful legal drugs. This bias towards the intoxicants and medicines of the rich, while denying me my preferred safe intoxicant and medicine, goes directly against the right to equality, as espoused in Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
Article 15.(1) of the Indian Constitution
Article 15.(1) of the Indian Constitution states that "The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them." The prohibition of ganja and charas is a clear discrimination against the persons who consider it an essential part of their religion. The NDPS Act discriminates against the religions that the ganja plant is associated with, which is effectively all religions. If cannabis is illegal, as per the NDPS Act, then the Kumbh mela and the existence of Varanasi's cannabis outlets and the groups of religious ascetics who practice their religion through cannabis consumption, perpetuate crimes that must be stopped and punished. Alternately, cannabis must be recognized as inherent to our religious culture and legalized uniformly throughout India. Not having a uniform set of laws when it comes to all citizens of India amounts to discrimination against some, and bias towards others, on the basis of religion, race, sex and caste. If the NDPS Act must stand with regard to cannabis, then its selective legality among certain sections of society and illegality among others amounts to a violation of Article 15. One of the least studied aspects of Indian society is how the non-ganja using communities – such as upper-castes and upper-class orthodoxy or conservatives among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains – have systematically taken away the ganja used by lower classes, lower castes, and indigenous communities of all religions, who were essentially the original inhabitants of India. Specifically, in the case of followers of Siva - for whom ganja is considered an essential path to communion with god - this forced conversion to the habits of non-ganja users can be clearly seen.
Besides ganja prohibition being religious discrimination, it is also discrimination on the basis of caste, where the upper-castes have tried to impose their norms on the lower castes. It is also discrimination on the basis of sex, because a woman smoking ganja is discriminated against by a patriarchical society. It is discrimination on the basis of race, where the later migrants to India view themselves as a superior race, and the indigenous races as inferior races that must give up their traditions and follow the customs and norms of the migrant races that settled in India subsequently.
From a personal standpoint, ganja is a most valuable spiritual aid for me. It enables me to, when I desire, meditate and keep my mind and focus on the eternal spirit. The non-availability, illegality and high cost of ganja, I find to be a massive hurdle to my path of religious and spiritual freedom. It is absurd if I am required to don a set of saffron robes to procure and consume my ganja and charas, and to get legal sanction from the authorities. Many charlatans follow the route of putting on garbs to access ganja and charas, whereas I, who do not wish to put on a particular attire to practice my spirituality, cannot procure the ganja and charas that I require for my spiritual practices. Hence, the prohibition of ganja and charas, discriminates against me and favors others, thus going against Article 15 of the Constitution of India.
Article 19 of the Indian Constitution
Article 19 of the Indian Constitution states that "(1) All citizens shall have the right — (g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business." The NDPS Act, by prohibiting the home growing, cultivation and sale of ganja - a plant cultivated for thousands of years in India forming one of the most important agricultural crops, - especially by India's poorest farmers, who still constitute a majority of the Indian agricultural community, infringes on Article 19. In 1895, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission stated that “Ganja ranks as one of the superior crops.” By keeping the highly sustainable and versatile ganja plant unavailable as an option for industry and trade, while many other countries allow it, the State violates Article 19. Plants such as tobacco, rice and cotton, that are no longer sustainable to grow in many places across the country, are still given the greatest importance by the State. This has led to depleted soils, water shortages, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. To top it all, a poor farmer is forced to take loans that they are unable to repay, in order to follow these unsustainable forms of agriculture. Ganja was grown by the poorest farmers across the country for medicine, intoxication, nutrition and industry, in what is now being discovered to be a highly sustainable manner. Preventing the poor small farmer from growing ganja and selling it in the legal market goes against Article 19. Cannabis used for industrial purposes - such as textiles, bio-degradable plastics, fabrics, construction material, paper , pharmaceutical drugs, intoxicants, wellness products, nutrition, etc. - would enable a vast number of individuals and communities to pursue sustainable occupations and businesses, instead of the highly unsustainable petrochemical, synthetic pharmaceutical, alcohol and tobacco businesses that destroy the world today. Moreover, by stating in the NDPS Act that cannabis can be consumed and cultivated for scientific and/or medical purposes but not providing the provisions and not permitting individuals to do so, the prohibition further impinges on this article. This violation of Article 19 is even more stark in the light of worldwide initiatives that have now legalized cannabis for recreation, home growing, industrial and medical use in the very same countries that pushed India into including ganja and charas in the NDPS Act of 1985.
In India, it was always the poorest sections of society that cultivated ganja or sold it in retail. Gradually, with regulation, this passed into the hands of select cultivators and sellers who were rich and influential with the administration. Today, complete legalization of ganja and charas will not only enable these poorer sections of society to grow and sell as they wish for some much needed additional income, it will also spawn a whole plethora of cannabis-based industries that are sound sustainable economics. For Indian physicians of natural medicine, who relied on ganja as a key medicine, the prohibition has taken away the most important medicine in their medical cabinet, greatly reducing their ability to perform their services effectively.
From a personal standpoint, I have shunned the path of accumulating material wealth for the past fourteen years. I have no means of income at the moment, relying on the money I saved from the past to get by. The prohibition of ganja and charas prevents me from growing ganja at home, or cultivating it if I wish to do so, not just for my personal use, but also to share with others who I think need the herb. It also prevents me from being able to sell ganja like any other agricultural produce, if I sought to do so as a means of income to sustain myself. Hence by keeping ganja and charas prohibited, Article 19 of the Constitution is clearly violated, both in my case, and also in the case of the numerous small farmers, and poor individuals who wish to do so.
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution states that "21. No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.” The number of persons from the lower castes, lower classes, the poor, the minorities and the indigenious communitities who have had their liberty deprived for cultivating, trading, possessing and consuming ganja or charas shows that neither are procedures established by law working, nor the law itself, when it comes to ganja or charas prohibition. The rich and upper classes procure their ganja and charas from the black market, bribe law enforcement, hire lawyers in law courts, pay the fines or undergo the meaningless drug rehabilitiation so as to escape prison. The poor spend their time languishing in prison as undertrials or prisoners for crimes that are insignificant compared to the crimes that the rich commit. Quite often, the cases filed against individuals with regard to ganja neglect many serious steps, with the procedure aimed mostly to teach the poor a lesson, harass individuals who do not toe the line of the authorities, or simply to boost law enforcement performance numbers. For associating with a herb that is integral to Indian society, an individual is likely to lose his or her liberty, with scant regard for judicial procedure by law enforcement. Searches are conducted without proper authorization; drugs are often planted to implicate the victim; biased witnesses are brought along, if at all, by the search party; attempts are made to extort money from the individual in exchange for leniency or no charge sheet; bail is denied for the most frivolous reasons; an undertrial, especially a poor one, is very likely to languish in prison for years for something as innocuous as possession of a small quantity of ganja or charas. Thus, by keeping ganja and charas illegal, the state infringes on the individual's right to life and personal liberty by depriving him or her of a most valuable medicine, a safe natural intoxicant and a key source of nutrition, well being and industry. The legal procedures set up through the NDPS Act deprives large sections of Indian society, especially the poorest, the minorities, the lower classes and castes, the religious mendicants and the indigenous communities of their right to life and liberty.
Article 25 of the Indian Constitution
Article 25.(1) of the Indian Constitution states that "Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion." Considering the role that ganja plays in Indian religious tradition, its ban goes against Article 25. Ganja is most often used by its spiritual consumers to aid in meditation, to improve concentration and to steady their minds in the pursuit of spiritual goals, as most commonly cited reasons why spiritualists of all Indian religions use the herb. For the religious mendicants across all religions, ganja and charas was key to their spiritual practice in many cases, as well as a way to face adverse conditions, and to combat fatigue, illnesses and hunger. Preventing a person from consuming ganja and charas which is as an aid to, and a most important aspect of, his spiritual quest is a violation of Article 25 of the Constitution. What one sees here is a clear discrimination by upper-castes and orthodoxy across religions to bring the majority of Indians to their ways of religion. For the British orthodoxy, it was part of the process of trying to convert Indians to Christianity. For the Indian orthodoxy across all religions, it was an attempt to convert Indians to Indian religious orthodoxy. Despite the fact that it was widely known and acknowledged that among many Saivite, Vaishnavite, Sikh, Islamic and indigenious communities ganja was a key part of the religious communion with god, the State went ahead and prohibited the herb, thus directly violating Article 25.
As stated above - with regard to Article 15 of the constitution - the prohibition of ganja affects me directly in terms of pursuing my prefered path of spirituality that uses ganja as a spiritual aid. Ganja and charas directly enable me to lead a simple, minimalist, natural life shunning the paths of procuring and amassing material wealth. Ganja and charas enable me to still the fluctuations of my mind, concentrate, focus and meditate on the eternal spirit and its manifestations as form. The nonavailability of ganja and charas directly hinder my spiritual practices, thus going against Article 25 of the Constitution of India.
Article 38 of the Indian Constitution
Article 38 of the Indian Constitution states that "(1) The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life. (2) The State shall, in particular, strive to minimise the inequalities in income, and endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations." The NDPS Act goes against Article 38 by prohibiting ganja and charas, going against the social order that existed for the country's entire history from as far back as we can see. By preventing the poor, the minorities and the indigenous communities from practicing their age-old occupation of ganja cultivation and engaging in its trade, the Act infringes on Article 38. By prohibiting ganja, it is these very same classes – the poor, the indigenous communities, the working and labouring classes who form the majority of ganja consumers in the country - that are being discriminated against. By selective justice that treats drug use, especially ganja and charas use, as a crime as serious as, or more serious than, most crimes defined in the IPC, and by constituting a special Act that harms mostly minorities, the poor, indigenous communities, religious mendicants and tribals, the Act infringes on Article 38. We see most often that it is the poor, minorities, and indigenous communities - who are the main consuming classes of ganja and charas - that are deprived of ganja and charas, and who face most severe action from law enforcement for cultivating, trading possessing or consuming ganja or charas.
The prohibition of ganja and charas reinforces class and caste based inequalities, as it has always been percieved that it is the lowest classes and castes who are consumers of the same, whereas bhang is viewed as a drug of the upper classes and castes. Thus, prohibition disrupts a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, informs all the institutions of the national life, a social order that existed for thousands of years before the advent of ganja and charas prohibition. The upper classes and castes also associate themselves with opioids, alcohol, tobacco and synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, and constantly seek to impose these harmful drugs on the lower classes and castes. In terms of economic inequalities, the prohibition on ganja and charas means that the occupations that the rich pursue - such as petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, western alcohol and tobacco industries - have only served to make the upper classes and castes wealthier, whereas the poor ganja cultivator or seller has been deprived of his or her means to earn income, thus vastly increasing economic inequality. The non-availability of ganja and charas for sustainable economics and industry – such as biodegradable plastics, textiles, paper, fiber, nutrition, wellness, etc. - deprives numerous sections and communities of society that would have used the ganja plant as a means to pursue related vocations, occupations and businesses. These are vocations, occupation and businesses that would not just boost the Indian economy, but would reduce the huge economic inequality gap, and most importantly, combat and reduce the highly unsustainable industries - such as petrochemicals, tobacco, synthetic pesticides, alcohol, synthetic fertilizers, and synthetic pharmaceuticals - that have wrecked havoc with planet and life on earth leading to the precarious condition of life on the planet today.
As an individual with little or no income, I cannot cultivate ganja in a sustainable manner for personal use, barter or commercial sale due to its prohibition. Thus, ganja and charas prohibition directly affects me, in terms of violating Article 38 of the Indian Constitution.
Article 43 of the Indian Constitution
Article 43 of the Indian Constitution states that "The State shall endeavour to secure, by suitable legislation or economic organisation or in any other way, to all workers, agricultural, industrial or otherwise, work, a living wage, conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to promote cottage industries on an individual or co-operative basis in rural areas.” In the US today, the cannabis industry is projected to be a $100-billion-industry in 2024. This is despite a federal prohibition, and despite only 24 out of 50 states having legalized ganja and charas for recreational use so far. Despite all the hurdles, cannabis was the sixth most valuable crop in the US last year. In India, ganja was one of the most important crops for agriculturists before 1850, being cultivated all across the country. Today, with legalization, the Indian farmer will have a valuable additional crop that is climate resilient. With ganja and charas legalization, an entire plethora of sustainable industries - ranging across pharmaceuticals, intoxicants, food, beverages, wellness, fabrics, textiles, paper, construction, bio-degradable plastics, research, etc. - will open up, replacing or reducing the existing unsustainable industries in these areas. Numerous forms of employment across a range of industries will be created, as will new businesses and services. Small farmers will be able to cultivate and sell to the market through co-operatives, much like other agricultural and dairy produce is done across the country today. The poor will be able to sell cannabis produce to supplement their incomes. Cannabis as an additional produce will inject new life into the storage, processing, packaging, transportation, distribution, retail and export industries. The humungous costs associated with ganja and charas prohibition, that I listed in an earlier section above, can be reduced. By neglecting all these, the State has failed the cannabis industry in India, which was one of the most robust industries in the past, earning Bengal nearly 20% of state revenue in the 19th century. Instead of pursuing proactive measures, like the reintroduction of the cannabis industry, the State encourages industries - such as petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, chemical pesticides and fertilizers and tobacco - that are harmful to man and planet.
The legalization of ganja and charas will provide me with an option to follow a path of sustainable economic activity to raise my standard of living through the growing, cultivation, and if required, sale of ganja. It will help me in the full enjoyment of leisure, cultural and social activities, along with other members of the ganja community, much like how it was in India before the end of the 19th century. I am unable to do so, at present, due to the prohibition on cultivation and home growing of ganja. Hence, my fundamental right under Article 43 of the Indian Constitution is violated.
Article 46 of the Indian Constitution
Article 46 of the Indian Constitution states that " The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.” Ganja and charas prohibition is, more than anything else, economic and social discrimination against the weaker sections of the people - especially the Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes - for whom ganja was an inherent way of life. Through ganja and charas prohibition, the State has not only taken away a key economic aid for the weaker sections of society, it has also taken away their means of safe, affordable medicine; it has taken away a safe intoxicant; it has disrupted the methods of worship of the poor; it has taken away a valuable means of nutrition; it has take away a means of sustainable industry, especially small-scale cottage industry. Rather than protecting the weaker sections of society, the prohibition of ganja and charas is a direct attack on these sections. Not only are they deprived of ganja and charas as intoxicant, medicine, source of revenue, nutrition, entheogen, etc., the weaker sections of society have had to face a relentless attack by law and drug enforcement, in the name of the war on ganja and charas. The majority of poor persons who commit ganja and charas violations end up in prison. For many of India's indigenous communities, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, ganja was an inherent part of their culture and social life. As we see from the Indian Hemp Commission's report of 1895, ganja was the drug of the poorest classes in India, before it was prohibited. Thus, the prohibition of ganja and charas is a direct violation of Article 46 by the State.
Article 47 of the Indian Constitution
Article 47 in the constitution speaks of the role that the state must play with regard to health as follows: “47. The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.” Every individual has the right to choose the measures to protect her body and mind against any disease or threat to life. She has the complete right to shun harmful substances and choose those substances which she believes is safe for her, whether it be intoxicants, food or medicine. This is entirely the freedom of choice of that individual, as her body constitutes an inviolate space that no other may invade. Bringing legal action against an individual just because she prefers to medicate or recreate with ganja or charas rather than use what she perceives to be harmful medicines or intoxicants prescribed by certain vested sections of society, is a violation of this fundamental right that the individual has over his or her own health, body and mind. In the US, where medical cannabis is legal in around 38 states, ganja and charas are used to treat over 30 medical conditions, conditions that are as prevalent in Indian society as in the US. Many persons, in western countries where medical cannabis is available, have rejected harmful synthetic pharmaceuticals in favor of cannabis. In India, where the majority of the population is poor, neither can the vast majority of the population access or afford the expensive and harmful synthetic pharmaceuticals, nor can they access the highly affordable and safe ganja and charas which can be grown in every person's home. The State has largely failed on this ground by removing a highly medicinal plant that is affordable, safe, tested and widely used in Indian society for thousands of years and which formed a key part of the Indian physician's medical cabinet till the end of the 19th century, a medicine that could be the pillar of universal public healthcare in India.
The plant also provided healthy, non-addictive and affordable intoxication to large numbers of people, almost free of cost if grown as a regular agricultural commodity or garden herb. By banning the plant and replacing it with highly toxic, expensive and addictive synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, opioids, tobacco and alcohol, the state has completely failed with regard to Article 47 in its duties to safeguard and protect the health of the Indian citizen. Millions of people are addicted to synthetic pharmaceutical drugs and many die each year from this. It is the same case with alcohol that has replaced many traditional Indian country liquors and cannabis. And so is the case with tobacco. Healthy medicinal beverages, such as thandai, have been replaced with aereated sugar-based drinks that wreck public health and the environment. In the area of nutrition, hemp-based foods and oils have been replaced with unhealthy junk foods. In the areas of wellness and cosmetics, cannabis-based wellness and cosmetics have been replaced with harmful synthetic products. Ganja and charas, if legalized, can provide affordable universal healthcare, safe intoxication and sustainable nutrition to large sections of India's population.
From a personal standpoint, I prefer ganja or charas for my medication and intoxicant - to relieve pain, stress, fatigue; to combat and prevent various diseases and illnesses; and as safe natural intoxicant - rather than the alcohol, tobacco and synthetic pharmaceutical drugs that I am constantly being coerced to turn to, even though I do not wish to - in the absence of ganja and charas. I have more or less managed to stay away from synthetic pharmaceutical medications as medicine for the last 30 years, but I still have to depend on the poor, harmful substitutes – alcohol and tobacco - provided as alternatives for intoxication. The State has failed miserably, through the prohibition of ganja and charas, in its duty as guardian of Article 47 of the Constitution of India.
Rights of the Cannabis Plant
The definition of cannabis, as specified in Chapter 1, section 2 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985, is as follows:
(ii)“cannabis (hemp)” means— (a) charas, that is, the separated resin, in whatever form, whether crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant and also includes concentrated preparation and resin known as hashish oil or liquid hashish; (b) ganja, that is, the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops), by whatever name they may be known or designated; and (c) any mixture, with or without any neutral material, of any of the above forms of cannabis or any drink prepared therefrom; (iv) “cannabis plant” means any plant of the genus cannabis;
According to the definition of cannabis in the NDPS Act, which is the same as that in the 1961 Single Convention Treaty on Narcotic Drugs from which it is blindly copied, the flowering parts of the cannabis plant and its resin are illegal, whereas the rest of the plant is legal. Is there anything more absurd than this law, which seeks to criminalize nature, saying that a natural plant is legal when it is young, but when it matures and flowers and starts producing resin it becomes illegal. The equivalent of this, in the human world, would be to say that a human is legal as a child, but becomes illegal as an adult. The entire world of humans – barring Canada, Uruguay, Luxembourg and Malta, and 24 US states till date - has signed up to, and zealously implemented, this most absurd law against nature. Every nation and the UN strive diligently each year to keep this absurd law in force, expending vast sums of money to keep the law in place, even though hundreds of millions continue to access ganja and charas through the black market. To make things far worse, the prohibition of ganja and charas has led to the insatiable demand for much more dangerous drugs – such as heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, novel psychotropic substances, besides the legal and highly dangerous alcohol, tobacco and synthetic pharmeceutical drugs. As if this absurdly blatant discrimination against the cannabis plant for producing flowers and resin as a part of its natural cycle was not enough, we also see that the Western world follows an additional system of discrimination, mainly that of considering cannabis legal or illegal, based on the amount of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinal (THC) that is present in the plant. The West has fixed a completely random, unscientific 0.3% limit for THC, the most medicinal compound in cannabis plants. The Indian NDPS lacks even this amount of sophistication, with a blanket prohibition of all cannabis plants that flower and produce resin. A plant that came into existence 28 million years ago has been banned by humans who climbed down from the trees about a million years ago.
Even though the plant cannot speak the human language and communicate its rights, it will be quite obvious for anyone - who gives the subject even the slightest thought to agree that the rights of the cannabis plant are the same as that of any living being in nature, no different. The cannabis plant is the most important stakeholder with regard to cannabis policy. This may appear strange to persons who view humans as superior to nature, vested with various rights and freedoms and the rest of nature as being subservient to them. However, a proper examination of reality will reveal that all of nature enjoys the same rights and freedoms as humans, and no part of nature can be denied these rights by humans, because humans are a part of nature, a creation of nature and not the other way around. As a living being on this planet, the cannabis plant - regardless of variety and amount of THC - has the following rights:
Right to life and to be a part of the web of life
The cannabis plant has as much right to life as any other living being on this planet, having being created by the same forces of nature that created the rest of life on this planet. Just as every other form of life forms intricate connections with other forms of life - consuming some forms to survive and being consumed, in turn, by other life forms for their own survival - so too must the cannabis plant be allowed to grow freely in nature, and to be accessible for all the forms of life that wish to consume it.
Right to equality
The cannabis plant has the same right to equality as all other living beings. It cannot be discriminated against, regulated and prohibited by humans. The bounds of human laws are limited to human creations, such as synthetic substances invented in laboratories. There are numerous regulatory bodies tasked with the regulation of these man-made substances - and that is how it should be - as these deviations from natural evolution need to be assessed to ascertain the threat they pose to nature. Human laws cannot be applied to a plant that has evolved in nature over millions of years, and that
56 existed for millions of years before humans even appeared on the scene, and that has been tested for safety by diverse human populations across the world for thousands of years. The fact that natural ganja and charas are the most popular intoxicants worldwide, despite prohibition, is testimony to the safe profile of ganja and charas as intoxicants and medicine. The cannabis plant must be governed by natural laws, like all other forms of life, not human laws. The cannabis plant must be allowed to grow freely in nature, to grow through its entire lifecycle into flowering and resin production. The plant cannot be discriminated against - based on the amount of THC it possesses or whether it produces flower and resin - which are all inherent qualities of the plant. That is the cannabis plant's right to equality.
Right to protection
No other plant has faced the sort of violence that the cannabis plant, once India's most revered plant and the favorite of the great god Siva, has. The actions over the last 150 years can be termed as “phytocide” or plant genocide. A plant that grew wildly in nature all over India, besides being cultivated and grown in house compounds across the length and breadth of India, has been systematically decimated wherever it has been found. Over zealous law and drug enforcement agencies and members of civil society with misplaced concepts of moral values have exterminated the plant wherever they found it. We will never know how many precious indigenous varieties of ganja have gone extinct forever. The cannabis plant must enjoy the same right to protection that all other forms of nature enjoy. Just as when we recognize that a particular form of nature is threatened with extinction by human actions, we extend all forms of protection and strive to revive the natural creation, we must recognize the threat to the cannabis plant from the destructive human policies that we have formulated against it. We must remove the destructive policies and must, instead, formulate new ones that protect the cannabis plant, propagate it and increase its biodiversity. This is no insignificant action, considering that the cannabis plant now offers us one of the foremost strategies to combat catastrophic climate change caused by the synthetic creations of humans which are the ones that need tight regulation and oversight.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
It has been found that whenever a special act is constituted to cover an area, over and above what exists in the Indian Penal Code, there is a great risk that such an act will undermine the existing laws, create scope for misuse, provide special and often exploitative powers to the state and create ambiguities due to the existence of two sets of laws related to the same area, both the IPC and the special act. Integrating the two becomes a legal nightmare, and very often grave injustices are carried out under the new special act which would not have been possible under the existing one. If there are gaps or inefficiencies in the existing IPC laws, then the imperative is to make amendments to these laws so that they are more robust, rather than to create a separate act which causes duplication and conflict. This is exactly what has happened with the NDPS and many other special acts, such as the AFSPA and UAPA for example.
The lazy and ill thought out approach to the cannabis plant in the NDPS has had a devastating effect on people and the plant itself. Law makers and law enforcers have run riot everywhere within the country, seizing and destroying the cannabis plant wherever they have found it, and punishing people who have tried to grow it, sell it or use it. For a plant whose usage was so widespread in Indian society, and whose benefits have increasingly been validated with growing scientific evidence, the NDPS Act and its definition of cannabis has been a slap on the face of reason. Law makers and law enforcers who do not have the time or incentive to think about the matter more deeply, have used it to their benefit causing great harm to society and environment.
With the NDPS Act that was foisted on the Indian public through sheer political pressure from the US, the Indian government made a significant change in the way it approached drug laws. Now the Act specified a list of substances which needed to be controlled tightly and the unauthorized production, cultivation, sale and consumption of which was considered illegal and triable by Indian criminal laws, specifically the NDPS. The Act not only listed the substances it covered, thus setting it in stone when the reality was that the dangerous synthetic substances were constantly evolving, but it also laid down procedures by which persons could be searched, arrested, tried and convicted for breaking these laws. Many of the sections that this Act covers run parallel to the rules of Indian Criminal Procedure and appear in a number of instances to be contradictory to it, to the extent that the NDPS offering sweeping powers to officials making it easy to misuse it and harass people. As expected, the list of dangerous substances contained cannabis and opium in natural plant form. It also included the coca plant which is endemic to South America showing that the thinking behind the Act was driven by the United States where cocaine derived from coca was a more pressing issue. With the institution of this Act, cannabis was well and truly outlawed and millions of persons in India have suffered from this Act as users, sellers, cultivators and supporters of the plant. This is the same plant that millions of India's sadhus across all religions swear by for its spiritual use. Many of them may have evaded law enforcement through religion, but I am sure that many more have been oppressed along with the general public through the Act.
The Act blindly follows and replicates what the western medicinal system regards as beneficial or harmful. It gets updated as and when the WHO lists a synthetic drug as essential or harmful. The WHO updates its lists as and when a western pharmaceutical company and the government that backs it exerts pressure. This may be to add a new drug or remove a competing drug. Based on this process we have seen that the NDPS Act was amended in 2014 to increase access and promote the use of extremely dangerous drugs such as fentanyls. The modification of NDPS in 2014 actually states that this was done to increase access to fentanyls, the drug that is said to be 50 times more potent than heroin, having killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide by 2018.
For pharmaceutical medicine the onus for setting regulatory guidelines and limits should be on the medical system that recognizes this as medicine and is responsible for its presence in society. For natural and plant medicine the main responsibility should rest with the traditional systems of medicine that primarily deal with it. Medical bodies covering all the systems of medicine prevalent in India, not just the western system of pharmacological medicine, must work together to arrive at a consensus of which medicines should be controlled and restricted and which should not. The toxicities of synthetic drugs synthesized from plants or from other chemicals in the pharmacy lab should be the basis of listing which synthetic drug is toxic or noxious and what its safe limits are.
We need to revisit how the Act has been implemented so far and in how many cases it has led to the wrong arrest, trial and conviction of a person when he or she meets the criteria of medical and/or scientific purposes, with regard to the growing and usage of the plant. Given the vast scientific evidence available, and the absolute irrationality of the cannabis laws, what is stopping the removal of cannabis - in all its forms - leaves, flowers, resin, seed - from the NDPS act other than sheer apathy, ignorance, selfish and vested interests by the lawmakers of this country who continue to turn a blind eye on the real sufferings and needs of the people?
All it takes is collective action by government to protect public health and remove grave injustices being carried out against the very people who elected them and to serve the interests of the larger society, not the government's own vested interests. Section 3 of the NDPS Act clearly provides the way out of this legal and social injustice, but it is for the government to act and to recognize once again that public health must consider what is best for the greater good of human society as well as the planet. Laws that greatly affect public health and push matters of health into the areas of criminal justice must be corrected immediately. Most importantly, the cannabis plant must be legalized for recreational use across the country once again like it was about a few centuries ago.
3. Power to add to or omit from the list of psychotropic substances.—The Central Government may, if satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do on the basis of— (a) the information and evidence which has become available to it with respect to the$ nature and effects of, and the abuse or the scope for abuse of, any substance (natural or synthetic) or natural material or any salt or preparation of such substance or material; and (b) the modifications or provisions (if any) which have been made to, or in, any International Convention with respect to such substance, natural material or salt or preparation of such substance or material, by notification in the Official Gazette, add to, or, as the case may be, omit from, the list of psychotropic substances specified in the Schedule such substance or natural material or salt or preparation of such substance or material
The irony of the whole thing is that the NDPS Act comes under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance in India. There is no DEA like in the US to oppose the removal of cannabis from the NDPS Act. An act of parliament is all that it takes. Considering that the legalization of cannabis in India can be enough to wipe out India's entire fiscal deficit, and that the Indian cannabis market has the potential of $500 billion to $ 1 trillion impact on the economy bringing in at least $50 billion to $100 billion in additional direct revenue for the state, one wonders what the Department of Revenue is thinking, as it devises new methods of squeezing the Indian citizen to fund its governmental pograms. India's lawmakers are busy trying to increase the gap between the rich and the poor, and to promote their favored industries - petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, opioids, alcohol, tobacco, chemical fertilizers, and the fossil-fuel based construction industry. It will probably take the people to shake up the government to make the change, and to bring in sufficent awareness among politicians so that they start addressing this vital issue. The Supreme Court says that it is up to the legislature, even though it can issue a mandamus writ to the government to make the change that will bring relief and end the suffering of hundreds of millions of Indians. But then, what are the people doing?
REFERENCES
The Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860)
Criminal Procedure 4th Edition by R. V. Kelkar
The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985
The Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895
The following set of articles that appeared in various news media and related to the above subject.
Words in italics are yours truly's thoughts and comments at the time of reading the respective article.
'The current suggestions respond to two ideas. One, it highlights the loopholes with the NDPS and its unbridled usage under the NCB. Senior Advocate Rebecca John told The Federal the real “mischief” lies in arresting persons with small quantities of drugs. “These are bailable offenses, but in order to justify the arrest, they routinely talk of international conspiracies, funding, etc that gives them time to convert a bailable offense to a non-bailable one and extend the period of detention – which is clearly illegal,” she noted. Most NDPS cases (97.3% in 2018) in Mumbai, for instance, dealt with “possession [of drugs] for personal consumption,” according to a study. The study noted this usage has led to the law exploiting people it sought to protect.
Secondly, it lacks nuanced distinctions between recreational users and addicts. “There is a deep lack of sophistication and nuance in the understanding of addiction in India – either on the level of society, or the law – and our laws are a reflection of our collective ignorance and bias,” writer Ronny Sen noted in Akademi Mag.'
https://theswaddle.com/dont-imprison-recreational-drug-users-states-social-justice-body/
'The 0.3% THC limit is based on a 1970s research paper, Bolt said, but it's largely been used out of context and was never meant to guide regulation. Recent research has shown psychoactive effects of THC tend to kick in around 1%, but most recreational cannabis contains closer to 30%.'
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environment/2021/05/17/indiana-hemp-regularly-destroyed-because-has-too-much-thc/4990932001/
https://www.firstpost.com/india/what-aryan-khan-supporters-need-to-know-about-ndps-act-and-indias-drug-war-10078911.html
Legalize ganja aka marijuana aka cannabis aka bhang aka hashish. Make it legal for 21 years and above if you're really concerned about the youth who will probably be better off with ganja than with tobacco or alcohol or pharmaceutical drugs. For you money hungry businessmen make it your business and earn beyond your wildest dreams. Researchers and pharma companies, please research the topic, it may make you jobless however as you are probably well aware. The number of people in India facing persecution because of ganja especially young people and poor farmers is terrible. Police and law makers please educate yourself on the subject first and foremost rather than harassing the young and economically weak while the real criminals in their cars, coats and ties are glorified. I suspect that at least half the prisoners and court cases in this country are linked to the useless misdirected expenditure of legal energy towards controlling the herb. Society will be much better off if this energy is directed towards removing and banning all kinds of arms and weaponry from the country. The links below to articles in the media archives shows our general attitude at a time when there is increasing awareness and maturity in the rest of the world. This is ironic considering it is one of our most ancient indigenous herbs and medications. If you think Indians love sex but act in public like its the worst sin then check out the attitude towards ganja... Indian hypocrisy and ignorance at its best..
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Cannabis-Marijuana-Ganja
http://indianexpress.com/?s=ganja
http://indianexpress.com/?s=cannabis
http://indianexpress.com/?s=marijuana
'What's more, although the cultivation of cannabis is prohibited under India's Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances (NDPS) Act, there are provisions within the law that permit state governments to allow regulated cultivation of hemp for industrial or horticultural purposes.
The clamour for the legalisation of cannabis has been growing louder in India, particularly in view of the increasing number of health and medicinal properties it is reported to have. Hemp can also be used as a building material. CM Thakur has himself stated previously that the cannabis seeds may also be used in the production of paint, biofuel and ink.
But the revival of the state's shelved plans to legalise cannabis is also a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Himachal Pradesh relies extensively on its burgeoning tourism sector to generate state revenues. But with the intra and inter-state restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 outbreak, the state's coffers have been struck hard.'
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/himachal-mulling-legalising-cannabis-for-med-use-whats-prompted-the-hill-state-to-consider-the-proposal-now/730073
The rescheduling of cannabis by the UN last week from the most restrictive category to the least restrictive one requires an urgent rewrite of India's NDPS Act. The NDPS Act is based on the UN conventions and related international treaties. It must therefore reflect the same removal of cannabis from the most restrictive category to the least restrictive one. All offences, punishments and legal procedures related to cannabis must be redrawn accordingly. As a matter of fact, since cannabis is in the UN's least restricted category, it makes no sense to include it in the NDPS Act which should focus on the more restrictive ones for efficiency. This also presents an opportunity to redraw the NDPS and correct the deep rooted flaws in its structure. For one, actually mentioning the names of substances that are part of controlled substances lists in national drug laws is what one would call 'hard coding', a bad programming practice in software parlance. The NDPS must essentially list what the offences, legal procedures and punishments are for different categories of substances and not list the actual substances which are constantly moving in and out of UN controlled substances lists based on new findings. The NDPS must also ensure that its categorization is in line with the UN's of schedule IV being the most restrictive and schedule I being the least unlike the US's which is the reverse leading to confusion. Absurd laws such as death sentences for possession of THC or charas must immediately be corrected. Law and drug enforcement agencies as well as all sections of the judiciary must be immediately informed of these changes lest harms continue to be perpetrated against the innocent plant and its users.
The rescheduling of cannabis by the UN last week from the most restrictive category to the least restrictive one requires an urgent major shift in the national drug laws of every single nation that cites the international drug laws and treaties as the basis for its cannabis laws and policies. All persons convicted of possession of small quantities of cannabis, its consumption and cultivation, must be immediately freed. Those under trial for these offences must be acquitted. The law and drug enforcement agencies of all these nations must cease to enforce legal action against the persons who are involved in these activities and wasting precious planetary resources on it. The judiciary must stop entertaining cases related to these activities. Past criminal records of all persons convicted for the above offences must be expunged. Equally importantly, national drug laws of every single nation that uses the UN conventions as the framework for defining its drug laws must rewrite the same so that cannabis is not treated as a drug in the most restrictive category that it currently is in at the national level. Not a moment is to be wasted, for the longer the delay in doing this, the more the costs are going to pile up in terms of future corrective actions required, and the more the continuing harms to the plant and its users.
Last week was extraordinary even in the stimulating world of cannabis. Three historic things happened, which few would have expected at the beginning of 2020, while the world lived out its pandemic fantasy.
- The UN removed cannabis from the most restrictive Schedule IV with no recognized medical value. It however still remains in its least restrictive Schedule I which means it is still controlled but it can be more easily researched and used as medicine.
- The US House of Representatives voted through the MORE act to remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances clearing the way for federal legalization. This however needs to pass the Senate and the President. The MORE act essentially means that the US federal government recognizes a state's cannabis legalization laws and will not interfere with it. All cannabis related past records will be expunged and prisoners released. If passed, the US can no longer put international pressure on the UN to keep cannabis scheduled when it recognizes legalization within its own states
- The EU Commission ruled that cannabidiol (CBD) is not narcotic within the meaning of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 in so far as it does not have psychotropic effect.
The world is taking important steps to release the plant and its users from unjust laws. More however needs to be done urgently to fully legalize it world wide and stop the terrible harms of cannabis prohibition.
Dec 08, 2020 9:08:34pm
'Congress, presidents, and governmental agencies have had more than enough excuses over the years for not wanting to legalize marijuana in the United States. One of the most prominent being that the United Nations drug treaties strictly prohibits it, and going against the grain of worldly laws would be a serious no-no. However, now that the U.N. has backed off its staunch opposition to the cannabis plant, one has to wonder how lawmakers will justify maintaining pot prohibition in the future.
Marijuana is in this bizarre purgatorial state right now that rests on either time (a lot more) or the outcome of the upcoming special election. Democrats could gain control of the Senate (if they win the two seats in Georgia), giving the party the power to further marijuana reform over the next few years.'
https://www.laweekly.com/now-that-un-accepts-marijuana-what-excuse-does-congress-have-to-uphold-prohibition/
'The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) on Wednesday accepted a World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
The historic vote in Vienna could have far-reaching implications for the global medical cannabis industry, ranging from regulatory oversight to scientific research into the plant and its use as a medicine.
The eagerly awaited approval of Recommendation 5.1 had a slim majority in favor with 27 votes for, one abstention and 25 votes against.
The CND – the main drug policymaking body within the United Nations – turned down all five remaining recommendations.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/united-nations-approves-who-recommendation-to-reschedule-cannabis-in-historic-vote/
'The history of how 0.3% became the THC limit for hemp goes back to Canada and various countries across Europe, who first adopted that standard for hemp farmers in the 1990s. When farmers in the US began to lobby for the right to farm hemp, they followed suit.
“We thought ‘well, we’ve got to go with what the standard is in Canada and Europe because it was going to be harder to make an argument that you needed a different standard,’” said Eric Steenstra, President and Co-Founder of US hemp advocacy group Vote Hemp. “It just sort of became a de facto standard, even though it wasn’t really based on any kind of science.” '
https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/hemp-testing-hot-must-be-destroyed
'Large hauls of cannabis seized post-lockdown is proof that bans and over legislation don’t work, especially when there is public demand. In 2018, a whopping four lakh kgs of ganja was seized. Such massive production is surely not a sign of deterrence. Besides, over 60% narcotics cases involve personal use rather than trafficking or production. Instead of choking overburdened police and courts with thousands of cannabis cases, there is a strong case for cash strapped governments regulating cannabis production, sale and use. In two years after legalisation in January 2018, California has netted $1 billion in revenue receipts from marijuana. With a nationalist government mindful of traditional cultures and strongly betting on ease of doing business, it is time to let go of overzealous, impractical, ineffective policies.'
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/legalise-cannabis-government-wrongly-banned-an-age-old-indian-habit-now-it-must-correct-that-mistake/
'Hong Kong police, it's said, fear local youth might discover the pleasures of grass, and what is currently a minor problem might mushroom. They quickly grabbed the "killer drug" image of cannabis and tied it to Lee as an anti-drug message. Lee's image, of course, suffered for it.' - The Legend of Bruce Lee by Alex Ben Block, 1974
'In Hong Kong however, where there is almost no marijuana use, the drug conjures up images of harder drugs, much as "grass" used to be considered the "devil weed" in the United States before its usage spread in the late 1960s. Police in Hong Kong, even now, tend to pay more attention to hash or grass, it seems, than heroin or opium, simply because the substances are less familiar and have come to be associated with the dreaded "hippie tourist Europeans" (anyone in Hong Kong who is not Chinese, and who has white skin, is called a European, just as all Japanese and Chinese are lumped together in America with Vietnamese and others as Orientals).' - The Legend of Bruce Lee by Alex Ben Block, 1974
'The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'In practice, pushing weed is a headache. To begin with, weed is bulky. You need a full suitcase to realize any money. If the cops start kicking your door in, then you are like with a bale of alfalfa.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact. most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash house meal.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953 - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Narcotics agents operate largely with the aid of informers. The usual routine is to grab someone with junk on him, and let him stew in jail until he is good and sick. Then comes the spiel:
"We can get you five years for possession. On the other hand, you can walk out of here right now. The decision is up to you. If you work with us, we can give you a good deal. For one thing, plenty of junk and pocket money. That is, if you deliver. Take a few minutes to think it over." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The cure at Lexington is not designed to keep the addicts comfortable. It starts at one-quarter of a grain of M[orphine] three times a day and lasts eight days-the preparation now used is a synthetic morphine called dolophine. After eight days, you get a send-off shot and go over in "population." There you recieve barbiturates for three nights and that is the end of medication.
For a man with a heavy habit, this is a very rough schedule. I was lucky, in that I came in sick, so the amount given in the cure was sufficient to fix me. The sicker you are and the longer you have been without junk, the smaller the amount necessary to fix you.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'About this time an anti-narcotics drive hit the town. The chief of police said, "This drive is going to continue as long as there is a single violator left in the city." The State legislators drew up a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. They did not specify where or when or what they meant by drug addict.
The cops began stopping addicts on the street and examining arms for needle marks. If they found marks, they pressured the addict to sign a statement admitting his condition so he could be charged under the "drug addicts law." The addicts were promised a suspended sentence if they would plead guilty and get the new law started. Addicts ransacked their persons looking for places to shoot in outside the arm area. If the law could find no marks on a man they usually let him go. If they found marks they would hold him for seventy-two hours and try to make him sign a statement.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'There was a raw ache in my lungs. People vary in the way junk sickness affects them. Some suffer mostly from vomitting and diarrhea. The asthmatic type, with narrow and deep chest, is liable to violent fits of sneezing, watering at eyes and nose, in some cases spasms of the bronchial tubes that shut off the breathing. In my case, the worst thing is lowering of blood pressure with consequent loss of body fluid, and extreme weakness, as in shock. It is a feeling as if the life energy has been shut off so that all the cells in the body are suffocating. As I lay there on the bench, I felt like as if I was subsiding into a pile of bones.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The doctor asked a few questions and looked at my arms. Another doctor with a long nose and hairy arms walked up to put in his two cents.
"After all, doctor," he said to his colleague, "there is the moral question. This man should have thought of all this before he started using narcotics."
"Yes, there is the moral question, but there is also a physical question. This man is sick." He turned to a nurse and ordered half a grain of morphine.
As the wagon jolted along on the way back to the precinct, I felt the morphine spread through all my cells. My stomach moved and rumbled. A shot when you are very sick always starts the stomach moving. Normal strength came back to all my muscles. I was hungry and sleepy.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'He asked the question they all ask. "Why do you feel that you need narcotics, Mr Lee?"
When you hear this question you can be sure that the man who asks it knows nothing about junk.
"I need it to get out of bed in the morning, to shave and eat breakfast."
"I mean physically."
I shrugged. Might as well give him his diagnosis so he will go. "It's a good kick."
Junk is not a "good kick." The point of junk to a user is that it forms a habit. No one knows what junk is until he is junk sick.
The doctor nodded. Psychopathic personality.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'An addict may be ten years off the junk, but he can get a new habit in less than a week; whereas someone who has never been addicted would have to take two shots per day for two months to get any habit at all. I took a shot daily for four months before I could notice withdrawal symptoms. You can list the symptoms of junk sickness, but the feel of it is like no other feeling and you can not put it into words. I did not experience this junk sick feeling until my second habit.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Safe in Mexico, I watched the anti-junk campaign. I read about child addicts and Senators demanding the death penalty for dope peddlers. It didn't sound right to me. Who wants kids fr customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning. Parents find out the kid is on junk and go to the law. I figured that either Stateside peddlers have gone simple-minded or the whole child-addict set-up is a propaganda routine to stir up anti-junk sentiment and pass some new laws.
Refugee hipsters trickled into Mexico. "Six months for needle marks under the vag-addict law in California." "Eight years for a dropper in Washington." "Two to ten for selling in New York."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Now that the Narcotics Bureau had taken it upon itself to incarcerate every addict in the U.S., they needed more agents to do the work. Not only more agents, but a different type agent. Like during prohibition, when bums and hoodlums flooded the Internal Revenue Department, now addict-agents join the department for free junk and immunity. It is difficult to fake addiction. An addict knows an addict. The addict-agents manage to conceal their addiction, or perhaps, they are tolerated because they get results. An agent who has to connect or go sick will bring a special zeal to his work.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'What about Roy?" I asked.
"Didn't you hear about him? He went wrong and hanged himself in the Tombs." It seemed the law had Roy on three counts, two larceny, one narcotics. They promised to drop all charges if Roy would set up Eddie Crump, an old-time pusher. Eddie only served people he knew well, and he knew Roy. The law double-crossed Roy after they got Eddie. They dropped the narcotics charge, but not the two larceny charges. So Roy was slated to follow Eddie up to Riker's Island, where Eddie was doing pen indefinite, which is maximum in City Prison. Three years, five months, and six days. Roy hanged himself in the Tombs, where he was awaiting transfer to Riker's.
Roy had always taken an intolerant and puritanical view of pigeons. "I don't see how a pigeon can live with himself," he said to me once.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'It would seem that junk is the only habit-forming drug. Cats cannot be addicted to morphine, as they react to an injection of morphine with acute delirium. Cats have a relatively small quantity of histamine in the blood stream. It would seem that histamine is the defense against morphine, and that cats, lacking this defense, cannot tolerate morphine. Perhaps the mechanism of withdrawal is this: Histamine is produced by the body as a defense against morphine during the period of addiction. When the drug is withdrawn, the body continues to produce histamine.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 1 -'"All drugs are more or less similar and all are habit forming."
This myth lumps cocaine, marijuana and junk together. Marijuana is not at all habit forming and its action is almost the direct opposite from junk action. There is no habit to cocaine. You can develop a tremendous craving for cocaine, but you won't be sick if you can't get it. When you have a junk habit, on the other hand, you live in a state of chronic poisoning for which junk itself is the specific antidote. If you don't get the antidote at eight-hour intervals, and enough of it, you develop symptoms of allergic poisoning: yawning, sneezing, watering of the eyes and nose, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, hot and cold flushes, loss of appetite, insomnia, restlessness and weakness, in some cases circulatory collapse and death from alergic shock....When I say "habit-forming drug" I mean a drug that alters the endocrinal balance of the body in such a way that the body requires that drug in order to function. So far as I know, junk is the only habit forming drug according to this definition.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 7 - '"There is a clear line between addict and peddler. The authorities pity the addict and are out only to get the peddler."
I have never seen an addict who did not sell, or a street peddler who did not use. There is no line at all. The authorities make no distinction, and the penalty for selling and possession are about the same.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 8 - '"Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers."
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Any anti-narcotic legislation is considered a good thing by the public. For this reason the field of narcotic legislation has become a testing ground for a type of law new to this country but familiar in police states. In the states of Louisiana and Kentucky it is a crime punishable by imprisonment (La., two to five years; Ky., one year) to be an addict. This is police-state legislation penalizing a condition or state of being. In the Louisiana law, no time or place is specified, nor is the term "addict" defined.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
So governments, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry cut off the supply of natural intoxicants like cannabis, opium, coca and palm toddy. They create refined and much more potent extracts from these natural materials. They control the supply and stock of these chemical drugs. They use the doctor-pharmacist route to administer these drugs to the public legally and the peddler-narcotics agent-rehabilitation center route to administer these drugs illegally. The individual is not allowed to grow or procure these intoxicants from nature. He must rely on the system to get his intoxicant and pay the maximum price for it. To realize more and more profits the system creates more and more potent chemical intoxicants moving further and further away from natural territory into synthetic chemically constructed territory. As the toxicity and addictive power of these drugs increase, the public gets addicted to an even greater extent and pays even more for any available intoxicant. Profits rise and fuel the growth of the system tremendously. The individual pays for the system, pays for the synthetic drug, pays for the treatment which is further synthetic drugs and eventually pays with his life for the synthetic intoxicant. Legalize all natural drugs - opium, coca, cannabis and toddy to name a few. Most importantly, legalize cannabis, the universal drug of the world...
'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Divide up what you possess with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, was said not only nineteen hundred years ago but five thousand years ago. And there can be no doubt of the truth of this law, and but for hypocrisy it would be impossible for men - even if they themselves did not conform to it - to fail to recognize at least its necessity, and that he who does not do these things is doing wrong.
But you say that there is a public welfare for the sake of which these rules may and should be infringed: for the public good it is permissible to kill, torture, and rob. You say, as Caiaphas did, that it is better for one man to perish than the whole nation, and you sign the death sentence of a first, a second, and a third man, load your rifles against this man who is to perish for the public welfare, put him in prison, and take his possessions. You say that you do these cruel things because as a member of society and of the State you feel that it is your duty to serve them: as a landowner, judge, emperor, or military man to conform to their laws. But besides belonging to a certain State and having duties arising from that position, you belong also to eternity and to God and have duties arising from that.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'If people tell you that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing order of life and that this social order, with its destitution, hunger, prisons, executions, armies and wars, is necessary for society, that still more miseries will ensue were that organization infringed; all that is said only by those who profit by such an organization. Those who suffer from it - and they are ten times as numerous - all think and say the contrary. And in the depth of your soul you yourself know it is untrue, you know that the existing organization of life has outlived its time and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles, and that therefore there is no need to sacrifice all human feeling to maintain it.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'By whatever names we dignify ourselves, in whatever apparel we attire ourselves, by whatever and before whatever priest we may be smeared with oil, however many millions we possess, however many special guards are stationed along our route, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called miscreant-revolutionaries and anarchists we may execute, whatever exploits we may ourselves perform, whatever States we may found, whatever fortresses and towers we may erect - from the Tower of Babel to that of Eiffel - we are always all of us confronted by two inevitable conditions of life which destroy its whole meaning. There is first of all death, which may at any moment overtake any of us, and there is the transitoriness of all that we do and that is so quickly destroyed leaving no trace. Whatever we may do - found kingdoms, build palaces and monuments, compose poems and romances - everything is transitory, and soon passes leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal physical existence, subject to unavoidable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.
Whoever you may be who read these lines, consider your position and your duties - not the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, or soldiers, temporarily attributed to you by men, nor those imaginary duties imposed on you by that position - but your real position in eternity as a creature who by Someone's will has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of nonexistence, to which by the same will you may at any moment be recalled. Think of your duties - not your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, minister, official to the State - but those real duties which follow from your real position as a being called to life and endowed with reason and love.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Hypocrisy in our time is supported by two things - pseudo-religion and pseudo-science - and has reached such colossal dimensions that were we not living in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe, that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. They have now reached such a strange condition and their hearts are so hardened that though they have eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not, neither do they understand.
Men have long been living in antagonism with their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not continue to do so. Their present arrangement of life in opposition to their conscience only exists because it is masked by hypocrisy.
And the more the divergence between reality and men's conscience increases, the more is that hypocrisy extended. But hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems that in our day those limits have been reached.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neigbours very much, and who do not notice that they are doing evil to their neighbours all the time, are like a man who, after a life of robbery, when at last caught with lifted knife in the act of striking a victim who is frantically crying for help, should declare that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant to the man he had robbed and was just about to kill. As that robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem impossible for men of our time, living on the sufferings of the oppressed classes, to persuade themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they unceasingly plunder, and that they do not know how the advantages they enjoy are obtained.
We cannot now assert that we do not know of those hundred thousand men in Russia alone who are always confined in prisons and convict settlements fr the security of our tranquility and property, and that we do not know of those trials in which we ourselves take part, and which at our instigation condemn men who have made attempts to our property or security prisons, exile, or convict settlements where men no worse than those who sentence them, perish pr become corrupt. Nor can we pretend that all that we have obtained and is maintained for us by murders and violence. We cannot pretend that we do not see the constable who with a loaded revolver walks in front of our windows defending us while we eat our appetizing dinner or see a new play at the theatre, or that we do not know of those soldiers who set off so promptly with rifles and live cartridges to where our property is in danger of being infringed.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'A single execution carried out dispassionately by prosperous and educated men with the approval and participation of Christian minister and presented as something necessary and even just, perverts and brutalizes men more than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion. An execution such as Zukhovsky proposed to arrange, which was to arouse in men a sentiment of religious emotion, would have the most depraving influence imaginable.
Every war, even the briefest, with the expenditure usual to war, the destruction of crops, the plundering, the licensed debauchery and murders, the sophisticated excuses as to its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, patriotism and devotion to the flag, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more to deprave people in a single year than millions of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'When whole nations have sometimes submitted to a new religious creed, and become Christians or Mohammedans, these conversions have been accomplished not because men wielding power rendered them compulsory by violence (on the contrary, violence has more often acted in the contrary direction) but because public opinion made such a change inevitable. Nations forced by violence to accept the faith of their conquerors have always remained antagonistic to it.
And it is the same with savage elements existing in our society. Neither the increase or decrease of the severity of the punishments, nor modifications of the prison system, nor increase of the police, either diminish or increase the quantity of crime. Changes occur only in consequence of changes in the moral standard of society. No severities have eradicated duelling and blood-fueds in certain countries. No matter how many Circassians were executed for robbery, they continued to rob out of bravado because no maiden would marry a young man who had not shown his daring by stealing a horse or at least a sheep. If men cease to fight duels and the Circassians cease to rob, it is not from fear of punishment (indeed that makes the bravado more attractive), but through a change in public opinion. And it is the same with all other crimes. Violence can never destroy what is sanctioned by public opinion. On the contrary, public opinion need only be directly opposed to violence to neutralize its whole effect, as has been shown by all martyrdoms both past and present.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Quite independently of any man's opinion as to whether chicks are mature enough for him to drive the mother-hen away from the nest and let them come out of their shells, the question will be indisputably settled by the birds themselves when, unable any longer to find room enough in the shells, they begin to peck with their beaks and come out of their own accord.
It is the same in regard to whether the time has or has not come to do away with governmental authority and substitute a new type of society. If, through the growth of a higher consciousness, men no longer comply with the demands of the State, if they no longer find sufficient room in it and at the same time no longer need its protection, then the question whether they have matured sufficiently to discard the State form of life is decided from quite a different side - just as in the case of chicks that break out of their shells into which no power on earth can make them return - by the men themselves who have outgrown the State and whom no power on earth can replace in it.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Republics abound in young citizens who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modification of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'The Manipur Cabinet has decided that any decision on legalising cultivation of marijuana or cannabis for use of medical and industrial purpose would be taken after getting feedback from the public.'
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/manipur-cabinet-cannabis-cultivation-legislation-1603846-2019-09-27
'The study, published in the journal Justice Quarterly and funded by the federal National Institute of Justice, found that violent and property crimes rates were not affected in a statistically significant way in the years after Colorado and Washington State became the first in the nation to legalize marijuana for adult use.
“Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington,” the paper concluded. “We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-legalization-doesnt-cause-increased-crime-federally-funded-study-finds/
'It has also been submitted that while enacting the NDPS Act, the government failed to consider the medicinal benefits of the drug, including its effect as an analgesic, its role in fighting cancer, reducing nausea, and increasing appetite in HIV patients.'
https://swarajyamag.com/insta/delhi-high-court-seeks-centres-take-on-use-of-cannabis-after-a-petition-challenges-ndps-act
'Even as the Central Government is yet to decide on legalizing the cultivation of cannabis, Madhya Pradesh government has decided to allow the farming of hemp in the state.
Madhya Pradesh Law Minister PC Sharma, however, made it clear that the cultivation will be only for medical and industrial purposes. '
https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/madhya-pradesh-set-to-legalize-cultivation-of-cannabis-for-medical-purposes-500887.html
'During a presentation Thursday for the International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) 2019 annual report, President Cornelis P. de Joncheere discussed the developments taking place with regard to cannabis and synthetic drugs.
“We have some fundamental issues around the conventions that state parties will need to start looking at,” he said, adding, “We have to recognize that the conventions were drawn up 50 and 60 years ago.”
Joncheere said 2021 is “an appropriate time to look at whether those are still fit for purpose, or whether we need new alternative instruments and approaches to deal with these problems.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/in-major-shift-un-drug-chief-questions-whether-control-treaties-involving-cannabis-are-out-of-date/
'In 2013, the Government of Uruguay approved legislation (Law No. 19.172) regulating the cultivation, production, dispensing and use of cannabis for different purposes, including non-medical use. In accordance with the legislation, Uruguayan citizens or foreigners with permanent residence aged 18 and older can obtain cannabis for non-medical purposes by registering with the national Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis and by choosing one of three options: (a) purchase in authorized pharmacies; (b) membership of a club; or (c) domestic cultivation. The quantity of cannabis permitted per person, obtained through any of the three mechanisms, cannot exceed 480 g per year. Initially, the Government of Uruguay set THC content at 2 per cent and CBD content at 6–7 per cent. In 2017, the Government introduced two new varieties, with a maximum THC content of 9 per cent and CBD content of no less than 3 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'One concern about legalizing the non-medical use of cannabis for adults (21 years and older) is that its use could also increase access to cannabis and its use among adolescents. Based on national data, cannabis use among high-school students remained stable overall, whereas the risk perception of the occasional use of cannabis declined in the United States over the period 2012–2018. In Colorado, although there has been a decline in daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students, they are now consuming and exposed to cannabis products with far higher THC content than was available or used earlier. In 2017, about 20 per cent of high-school students in Colorado reported non-medical use of cannabis in the past month; that rate is comparable to the national average among high-school students.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In addition to Vermont, Illinois is another state in which measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were passed through the state legislature rather than through voters’ initiatives, as was the case in the other states that have legalized the nonmedical use of cannabis. In May 2019, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, which was signed by the state Governor in June. The sale of cannabis for non-medical use began on 1 January 2020. Under the law, adults aged 21 and older are allowed to purchase and possess up to 30 g of cannabis flower, edibles with a maximum of 500 mg of THC, or 5 g of cannabis concentrates. Non-residents of Illinois will be allowed to purchase half of those amounts. As in some other states, individual cities, villages and municipalities have the option to decide whether to allow the non-medical use of cannabis in their jurisdictions by passing ordinances. Nonetheless, local governments may neither prohibit home cultivation of cannabis nor “unreasonably prohibit” its non-medical use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The sale of non-medical cannabis through legal sources represents only a portion of the cannabis market, as it appears that a substantial proportion of users still rely on illegal sources to obtain cannabis (42 per cent in 2019). Moreover, cannabis prices on the illegal market have remained considerably lower (and have been declining) compared with the prices on the legal market. In the second quarter of 2019, based on 236 submissions, the average price per gram of cannabis on the legal market was Can$10.65, compared with Can$5.93 per gram on the illegal market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While most cannabis users had used more than one product, over three quarters of users purchased and consumed dried cannabis flower or leaf for smoking. Although the sale of edibles and extracts started only at the end of 2019, a substantial share of cannabis users reported using edible cannabis products (26 per cent), cannabis oil or vape pens (19 per cent), hashish (16 per cent) and solid cannabis concentrates (14 per cent) during the same year.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In 2019, young people aged 15–24 were more likely than those in older age groups to obtain cannabis from illegal sources, whereas a larger share of older cannabis users relied solely on legal sources; 41 per cent of cannabis users aged 65 or older reported using only legal sources to obtain cannabis, compared with roughly one quarter of the other age groups.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The transition from the illegal market to legal sources of cannabis has been a gradual one. The proportion of cannabis users sourcing their products from the legal market increased from around 25 per cent in the second and third quarters of 2018 to about 50 per cent one year later, and in 2019 nearly 30 per cent relied solely on the legal market for their cannabis (compared with 10 per cent in 2018). Many users relied on multiple sources to obtain their cannabis, with about 40 per cent of cannabis users still getting their product from illegal sources.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'At the baseline, in the first quarter of 2018, nearly 14 per cent of Canadians (12.2 per cent of women and 15.8 per cent of men) reported that they had used cannabis, including cannabis products for medical purposes, in the past three months. The highest prevalence rates were reported among those aged 25–34 (26 per cent) and 15–24 (23 per cent). By the beginning of 2019, the prevalence of use in the past three months had increased to 17.5 per cent, and it remained close to that level until the third quarter of 2019 (17.1 per cent). While the prevalence of cannabis use in the past three months rose in most age groups in 2019, the most marked increase was observed in the oldest age group (65 and older), for which the prevalence nearly doubled in comparison with 2018. There also seems to be a larger proportion of new users among older adults than in other age groups: while 10 per cent of new cannabis users were aged 25–44 in the second and third quarters of 2019, more than one quarter were aged 65 and older.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The objectives of the current cannabis legislation in Canada are to keep cannabis away from young people (under 18 years of age), to prevent criminals from profiting from the distribution and sale of cannabis and to safeguard public health and safety by allowing adults (aged 18 and older) legal access to cannabis. Under the constitutional division of powers in Canada, the federal Government and provincial governments have different responsibilities. As the provinces historically developed their own systems to regulate the sale of alcohol, a similar approach has been applied to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis products.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The main characteristic and comparative advantage of darknet markets is their perceived anonymity, in particular the physical anonymity of those who do business on such markets. Purchasing drugs on those markets does not necessarily require physical contact, which reduces the inhibitions of some customers who might otherwise be reticent to interact personally with drug dealers. In addition, the customer does not have to go to dangerous places to buy drugs. Darknet trafficking also overcomes the challenge of sellers and buyers having to be in the same location; thus, organizations that traffic drugs over the darknet do not need to have the critical mass of customers necessary to sustain a local market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
Fundamental to programming is the avoidance of hard coding values that are likely to change, that need translation and that need to be used in different functions based on varying conditions. This is to avoid duplication, ambiguity and re-programming. These values are kept in configuration files that are accessed and amended as needed. This is even more true for medicines that need to be controlled based on nature of harm and use. The idea of globally agreed lists of medicines with harmful substances requiring tight control is good provided laws regarding these are universal, fair and consistent at regional, country or state levels. A key operational issue is that even these global lists are not updated fast enough considering the latest scientific knowledge and that new harmful synthetic substances are rapidly churned out of pharmacy labs. Worse, natural cannabis, peyote, psilcybin, etc. proven over thousands of years to be much more safer in their natural form than the recently created synthetic drugs, continue to remain in these global lists, significantly hampering their objective and efficiency, diverting precious resources and greatly damaging global public health. The Indian NDPS Act is like one of the worst examples of programming with a list of substances hard coded into it and a bunch of rules copy pasted around it, existing over and above the IPC. 20kgs of hashish or 500g of THC will get you the death sentence. Fentanyls, the leading cause of global drug overdose deaths, synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones, etc. are not even on the list...
Jul 21, 2020, 4:09 PM
'The percentage of chronic pain patients using cannabis therapeutically is increasing, according to data published in the journal Advances in Therapy.
Investigators affiliated with Harvard Medical School assessed trends in cannabis use among pain patients in a nationally representative sample during the years 2011 to 2015.
Authors reported, “Over the course of our study, … we identified a significant and progressive increase in the number of patients using cannabis. In patients with chronic pain, cannabis use more than doubled during this period.”
They reported that the average age of chronic pain patients who consumed cannabis was 45 and that the majority of users were lower on the socioeconomic scale than were non-users.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/14/cannabis-use-rising-among-chronic-pain-patients/
'“The evidence described in the present systematic review indicates that CBD is a promising adjunct therapy for the treatment of cocaine dependence due to its effect on cocaine consumption, brain reward, anxiety, related contextual memories, neuroadaptations and hepatic protection as well as its anticonvulsant effect and safety,” the study authors concluded.
“The clinical administration of CBD leads to a reduction in the self-administration of cocaine and, consequently, the amount of the drug consumed. Moreover, the reward induced by cocaine is blunted by CBD treatment.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/cbd-is-a-promising-therapy-in-treating-cocaine-misuse-meta-study-finds/
'An analysis of NPS reported to UNODC suggests increasing diversification in the NPS market until 2015, followed by a trend towards stabilization in the number of new substances arriving on the market in individual countries, at an overall rate of more than 500 NPS per year, with 528 synthetic NPS and 13 plant-based NPS reported in 2018. While there was a decrease in the number of new synthetic cannabinoids arriving on markets worldwide over the 2014–2018 period, the number of NPS with stimulant effects increased, and the number of newly emerging NPS with opioid effects rose sharply, from 7 substances in 2014 to 48 in 2018. That increase represents a rise from 2 per cent of all NPS in 2014 to 9 per cent in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In March 2019, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs decided to schedule four substances (all fentanyl analogues) under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol and a further five substances under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, thus raising the total number of psychoactive substances under international control to 282 as at the end of 2019. By comparison, the number of NPS identified by authorities worldwide and reported to UNODC is already more than three times that figure, having reached a total of 950 in December 2019, up from 892 in December 2018 and 166 in 2009.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The bulk of tramadol seized in the period 2014– 2018 was seized in West and Central Africa (notably in Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and the Niger), followed by North Africa (notably Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan) and the Near and Middle East (notably Jordan and the United Arab Emirates). In some instances, countries in Western and Central Europe (notably Malta and Greece) have been used as transit countries for tramadol destined for North Africa (Egypt and Libya), although some of the tramadol seized in Europe (in particular Sweden) was also intended for the local market. For the first time ever, significant seizures of tramadol were reported in South Asia (India) in 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of the global total that year, which reflects the fact tramadol was put under the control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of India in April 2018.
As the full-scale scheduling of tramadol in India took place in 2018,218 and India had been the main source for (illegal) tramadol shipments, the decline in seizures outside India in 2018 may have been the result of a disrupted market. By contrast, and probably as a result of the control in India, seizures of tramadol in that country increased greatly in 2018, and thus in South Asia as a whole (more than 1,000-fold compared with a year earlier).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The 2019 drug use survey in India estimated that nearly 1 per cent of the population aged 10–75 had misused pharmaceutical opioids in the past year and that an estimated 0.2 per cent of the population (2.5 million people) were suffering from drug use disorders related to pharmaceutical opioids. Although the breakdown by type of pharmaceutical opioids misused in India is not available, buprenorphine, morphine, pentazocine and tramadol are the most common opioids misused in the country.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of tramadol among other pharmaceutical drugs is reported by several countries in South Asia: Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In 2017, 130,316 capsules containing tramadol and marketed under the trade name “Spasmo Proxyvon Plus (‘SP+’)” were seized in Bhutan. In Sri Lanka, about 0.2 per cent of the population aged 14 and older are estimated to have misused pharmaceutical drugs in the past year. Among them, the non-medical use of tramadol is the most common, although misuse of morphine, diazepam, flunitrazepam and pregabalin have also been reported in the country. The misuse of more than one pharmaceutical drug (including tramadol) is also a common pattern among heroin users who may use them to potentiate the effects of heroin or compensate for its low level of availability. Recent seizures of tramadol suggest the existence of a market for the drug: in April and September 2018, 200,000 and 1.5 million tablets of tramadol were respectively seized by customs in Sri Lanka.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The clandestine manufacture of fentanyls within North America is thus not really a new phenomenon and has the potential to increase in importance following the recent control of fentanyls substances in China. Moreover, the clandestine manufacture of fentanyl has already spread beyond North America to neighbouring subregions, as a clandestine fentanyl laboratory was dismantled in the city of Santiago, Dominican Republic, in 2017. At the same time, there is a risk that other countries with a large and thriving pharmaceutical sector may become involved in the clandestine manufacture of fentanyls. In 2018, for example, authorities of India reported two relatively large seizures of fentanyl destined for North America. Furthermore, according to United States authorities, in September 2018, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence of India, in cooperation with DEA of the United States Department of Justice, dismantled the first known illicit fentanyl laboratory in India and seized approximately 11 kg of fentanyl' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
' Overall, in 2018 overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioids, comprising mainly fentanyls, accounted for nearly half of the total overdose deaths in the United States. Among the reasons for the high number of overdose deaths attributed to fentanyls are their often small lethal doses relative to other opioids: fentanyl, for example, is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, and carfentanil may be as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine for an average user. A lethal dose of carfentanil for a human can be as low as 20 micrograms.
The rapid expansion of fentanyl use in the United States is also visible in the data on seizures and the drug samples analysed, with a considerable increase since 2014 in the number of samples identified as fentanyl. In 2018, fentanyl accounted for 45 per cent of the pharmaceutical opioids that were identified in different samples, while oxycodone accounted for 14 per cent' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Act, 2014 (Act No. 16 of 2014) amended the NDPS Act to relax restrictions placed by the Act on Essential Narcotic Drugs (Morphine, Fentanyl and Methadone), making them more accessible for use in pain relief and palliative care. The Amendment also contained measures to improve treatment and care for people dependent on drugs, opened up the processing of opium and concentrated poppy straw to the private sector, and strengthened provisions related to the forfeiture of property of persons arraigned on charges of drug trafficking. The Amendment also removed the NDPS Act's imposition of a mandatory death sentence in case of a repeat conviction for trafficking large quantities of drugs, giving courts the discretion to use the alternative sentence of 30 years imprisonment for repeat offences. However, the Amendment increased the punishment for "small quantity" offences from a maximum of 6 months to 1 year imprisonment.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances_Act,_1985
'During the discussion of the Bill in Parliament, several members opposed it for treating hard and soft drugs as the same. However, the Rajiv Gandhi administration claimed that soft drugs were gateway drugs. The NDPS Act was criticized in The Times of India. The paper described the law as "ill-conceived" and "poorly thought-out" due to the law providing the same punishment for all drugs, which meant that dealers shifted their focus to harder drugs, where profits are far higher. The paper also argued that the Act had "actually created a drugs problem where there was none." The Times of India recommended that some of the softer drugs should be legalized, as this might reduce the level of heroin addiction.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances_Act,_1985
'Cannabis and its derivatives (marijuana, hashish/charas and bhang) were legally sold in India until 1985, and their recreational use was commonplace. Consumption of cannabis was not seen as socially deviant behaviour, and was viewed as being similar to the consumption of alcohol. Ganja and charas were considered by upper class Indians as the poor man's intoxicant, although the rich consumed bhang during Holi. The United States began to campaign for a worldwide law against all drugs, following the adoption of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961. However, India opposed the move, and withstood American pressure to make cannabis illegal for nearly 25 years. American pressure increased in the 1980s, and in 1985, the Rajiv Gandhi government succumbed and enacted the NDPS Act, banning all narcotic drugs in India.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances_Act,_1985
'India had no legislation regarding narcotics until 1985. Cannabis smoking in India has been known since at least 2000 BC and is first mentioned in the Atharvaveda, which dates back a few hundred years BC. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, an Indo-British study of cannabis usage in India appointed in 1893, found that the "moderate" use of hemp drugs was "practically attended by no evil results at all", "produces no injurious effects on the mind" and "no moral injury whatever". Regarding "excessive" use of the drug, the Commission concluded that it "may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive
consumers the injury is not clearly marked". The report the Commission produced was at least 3,281 pages long, with testimony from almost 1,200 "doctors, coolies, yogis, fakirs, heads of lunatic asylums, bhang peasants, tax gatherers, smugglers, army officers, hemp dealers, ganja palace operators and the clergy."'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances_Act,_1985
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/passing-of-ndps-act-amendment-bill-will-make-morphine-more-accessible/article5718188.ece
Scrap the 1961 Single Convention focusing on natural plant medicine, legalize the natural plants and focus on the more harmful synthetic substances. Promoting harmful synthetic medicines causing wide spread abuse and poisoning and keeping universal plant medicine illegal is the biggest joke on world health. The nations who have been dictating what should be legal and illegal medicine and laughing all the way to the bank so far, are reaching only the graveyard on the way back home..unfortunately the world's majority are the unwilling passengers...
'International scheduling of existing medicines puts in conflict two important public health objectives: protecting people from the health harms certain substances may pose and ensuring the adequate availability, accessibility and affordability of medicines that contain those substances. It also engages potentially competing drug control and human rights obligations, at a time when human rights are becoming more and more mainstreamed in international drug policy discussions, and system-wide coherence within the SDG framework is a central concern. The current process for international scheduling of medicines has an important normative deficit in the absence of shared principles of decision making to weigh these interests. It has a related democratic deficit given such decisions can be made by a minority of States creating legal obligations for all States parties. A human rights-based legality, effectiveness and proportionality test can help address these deficits and bring the decision-making process more into line with good governance standards.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171726/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/hyderabad/200-kg-cannabis-seized-in-aps-krishna-district-2-arrested/videoshow/71562085.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/directorate-of-revenue-intelligence-nabs-seven-with-ganja-worth-of-rs-1-26-crore-in-madhya-pradesh/articleshow/71476255.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/hyderabad/visakhapatnam-40-kg-cannabis-seized-by-police-4-arrested/videoshow/71603314.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/himachal-pradesh-cops-trek-six-hours-to-raid-charas-makers-31-held/articleshow/71887429.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/ganja-worth-rs-1-crore-seized-from-kamrej/articleshow/71962005.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/cops-arrested-5-persons-a-week-for-drugs-this-yr/articleshow/71999120.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/up-man-nigerian-held-for-possessing-drugs-worth-rs-3l/articleshow/72030061.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/drugs-worth-rs-1081-crore-seized-in-the-last-19-months-rti/articleshow/72075414.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/peddlers-mostly-target-tourists-sp/articleshow/72079064.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/ganja-worth-rs-89l-seized-4-held/articleshow/72090316.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/mp-govt-plans-to-promote-hemp-cultivation-bjp-opposes-move/articleshow/72182339.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/56-youngsters-detained-in-dcb-raids-on-drug-pockets/articleshow/72191619.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/88-packets-of-cannabis-worth-over-rs-70-lakh-seized-in-tripura-1-held/videoshow/72223469.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/700kg-ganja-seized-near-muzaffarpur/articleshow/72265292.cms
Please note the picture of pharmaceutical synthetic drugs while what is being destroyed is a natural medicinal plant...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/three-men-caught-with-7kg-drugs-in-anti-drug-drive-that-began-on-nov-1/articleshow/72266374.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/police-seize-10kg-cannabis-in-chhattisgarhs-kondagaon/videoshow/72367737.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolhapur/break-the-ganja-nexus-sp-instructs-officials/articleshow/72374351.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/2-nepalese-women-held-with-4-kg-cannabis/articleshow/74124471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/agra-woman-in-rajdhani-held-for-smuggling-20-kg-of-cannabis/articleshow/74328809.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/bhopal-minor-made-drug-addict-and-raped/articleshow/73075813.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vijayawada/enforcement-wing-keen-on-rooting-out-cannabis-trade-engg-students-addicted/articleshow/74601270.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/cannabis-cultivation-busted-in-botad-farm-owner-arrested/articleshow/72986675.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/football/indian-super-league/top-stories/chennaiyin-fc-official-held-for-carrying-cannabis-at-isl-match/articleshow/74654700.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/mandrax-cannabis-cocktail-worries-cops/articleshow/71768388.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-crime-branch-arrests-notorious-drug-dealer-karan-khanna/articleshow/70244892.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/hc-junks-plea-to-legalise-cannabis/articleshow/70402875.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/nihangs-cut-off-hand-of-policeman-after-scuffle-in-vegetable-market/articleshow/75104243.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/five-held-with-narcotics-in-separate-raids/articleshow/74165677.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/man-in-possession-of-cannabis-worth-8l-held/articleshow/73815916.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/mp-dri-seizes-cannabis-worth-rs-3-1-cr-in-chhattisgarh/articleshow/74212523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/report-flags-pot-cultivation-its-impact-on-kids/articleshow/74358523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/ncb-arrests-six-with-over-380kg-ganja-in-delhi/articleshow/74426471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-a-1st-government-oks-cannabis-research-in-up-uttarakhand/articleshow/71040612.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/delhi-mumbai-among-worlds-biggest-consumers-of-weed-study/photostory/71148455.cms
Please note the picture of a pharmaceutical synthetic drug while what is being destroyed is a natural medicinal plant...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/1-held-with-cannabis-worth-rs6-10-lakh/articleshow/74583687.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/cannabis-crop-destroyed-on-6175-bighas-in-kullu/articleshow/71250688.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mysuru/farmer-growing-cannabis-in-krs-backwaters-held/articleshow/74601643.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/hc-relief-to-law-student-in-cannabis-on-campus-case/articleshow/75071763.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/chennai-customs-officials-seize-1-7kg-of-cannabis-sent-from-us/articleshow/75377661.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/chennai/cannabis-worth-rs-9-lakh-seized-from-sleeping-bags-in-chennai/videoshow/75382831.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/woman-arrested-for-possession-of-arrack-cannabis-gets-bail/articleshow/75334994.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/21kg-of-cannabis-rs-20-lakh-in-cash-seized-from-vaniyambadi-house/articleshow/75832354.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/up-3-held-in-noida-with-105-kg-cannabis-sourced-from-odisha/articleshow/73089542.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/man-held-at-new-delhi-railway-station-with-over-90-kg-cannabis/articleshow/73215604.cms
This article says that according to the NDPS Act, the leaves and seeds of the cannabis plant are legal, the flowers and nectar/resin is illegal. How absurd is that? One analogy that comes to mind is that a woman as a child is legal, but she becomes illegal once she reaches puberty. Her eggs which she produces once she reaches puberty however are legal while she is not legal anymore...??
'It’s only on January 31 that India’s first medical cannabis clinic opened in Bengaluru. Launched by a Bhubaneswar-based startup, Hempcann Solutions, the clinic has the license to prescribe CBD and THC medication by an ayurvedic doctor. “Patients can then order these medicines online from our website. We are not stocking them in the clinic as of now,” a spokesperson of the company said.'
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-this-patient-has-pot-in-his-pav-bhaji/articleshow/74240739.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/two-held-for-growing-cannabis/articleshow/72961201.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/russian-held-for-growing-cannabis-in-goa/articleshow/74427647.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/drug-ring-busted-in-faizabad-cantonment-soldiers-buying-cannabis-under-lens/articleshow/73003241.cms
'“People in the high concentration group were much less compromised than we thought they were going to be,” said co-author Kent Hutchison, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder who also studies alcohol addiction. “If we gave people that high a concentration of alcohol it would have been a different story.”
One reason that higher THC blood levels didn’t translate to higher highs could be that the body’s finite number of cannabinoid receptors, which THC molecules bind to, become saturated regardless of whether higher- or lower-THC products are used. Any excess THC in consumers’ blood plasma, in that case, would be metabolized and not contribute to further impairment'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/do-highly-potent-marijuana-concentrates-get-users-more-high-not-exactly-study-finds/
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mangaluru/ganja-sale-10-held-in-4-separate-incidents-746311.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mangaluru/udupi-mangaluru-high-on-ganja-peddling-775162.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/bengaluru-gang-grows-ganja-under-led-light-3-arrested-785378.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/karnataka-districts/cops-seize-160-kg-ganja-in-humnabad-805742.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-crime/tweet-leads-to-arrest-of-ganja-smoking-cabbie-812219.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mangaluru/police-bust-ganja-racket-15-arrested-840445.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-crime/duo-caught-trying-to-sell-ganja-15-kg-marijuana-seized-775158.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mangaluru/mangaluru-4-arrested-for-selling-marijuana-773825.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/first-sniffer-dog-raid-on-prison-767317.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-crime/drug-dealer-arrested-with-61-kg-of-marijuana-759391.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-crime/gang-selling-marijuana-held-749706.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-crime/2-drug-dealers-held-large-amount-of-marijuana-seized-747826.html
'His injuries were similar to those observed in people suffering from "popcorn lung," a condition found in workers in a microwave popcorn factory who had accidentally inhaled diacetyl, a product used by the food industry which gives popcorn a buttery buttery flavour.
Diacetyl is safe if ingested, but dangerous if it enters the lungs. Studies have been warning for years that this product is ubiquitous in electronic cigarette liquids, but no case of injury has previously been reported'
https://www.deccanherald.com/science-and-environment/danger-from-popcorn-lung-chemical-while-vaping-study-778317.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/south/mysuru-father-son-arrested-for-running-marijuana-business-808390.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mysuru/bilikere-police-arrests-marijuana-peddler-in-mysuru-808867.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/city/25-peddlers-druggies-arrested-across-bengaluru-813558.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/indian-man-arrested-for-smuggling-3346-pounds-of-marijuana-into-us-850500.html
'A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar said there was no substance in the petition and it was not inclined to grant the prayer. "It appears this petition is seeking direction to legalise cannabis for medical use. It can only be done by bringing proper enactment or amendment under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. We are not inclined to grant the prayer," the bench said. The court said the cost of Rs 10,000 is deposited by the petitioner with the Delhi High Court Bar Association Library fund.'
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/hc-dismisses-plea-to-legalise-cannabis-for-medical-use-750562.html
'"The government is working very hard as medicinal marijuana or cannabis will be legalised soon. Scientists are aggressively working to find out the active components of cannabis," Dr Saurabh Saran, CSIR-IIM Technology Business Incubator, Jammu said. The CSIR Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine is the first institute to get government approval for cannabis and they are working on seed varieties from all over the world, he said. "We are trying to develop seeds more of active compound cannabidiol (CBD) and less of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). To make cannabis available for pain management to masses, we need to develop our own varieties as we cannot look at the option of only exporting cannabis. It has to be indigenously developed for medical cultivation and pain management," he added.'
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/ayush-bats-for-medicinal-use-of-cannabis-at-oja-fest-753473.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/madhya-pradesh-govt-to-legalise-cannabis-cultivation-778282.html
'Yaba', the Thai word for "crazy medicine," is a tablet form of methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant and caffeine. These synthetically produced pills are available in a variety of flavours including grape, orange and vanilla and colours mostly reddish orange or green. "Now the smugglers are more interested in smuggling 'Yaba' tablets as it brings good money and is easier to smuggle," he said. The BSF seized items worth Rs 32.92 crore, smuggled through Tripura's borders this year, of which 'Yaba' tablets worth Rs 17.57 crore were recovered. The 'Yaba' tablet seizure was almost double than that of the previous year.'
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/east-and-northeast/smugglers-in-tripura-switching-from-cannabis-to-yaba-780883.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/fact-check-weed-kills-coronavirus-vivek-agnihotri-shares-scientific-misinformation-via-meme-803236.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/police-seize-200-kg-cannabis-in-delhi-ncr-2-arrested-851668.html
'The THC fallacy persists despite everyone’s best efforts. Both Instagram influencers as well as cannabis entrepreneurs and advocates have tried to explain that the THC number is, at best, a rough estimate (and a number that, depending on the lab that came up with it, might be inflated or suspect).
With this much momentum, it’s unlikely science will change anything. It will take a long time for buyers to adjust their habits and realize THC content isn’t like alcohol by volume on a beer label after all. Until they do, connoisseurs can take advantage of the market inefficiency, and take home superior pot with lower THC levels at a reduced price. It will just require a little more work on the consumer’s end. '
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/06/16/science-reveals-the-cannabis-industrys-greatest-lie-youre-buying-weed-wrong-and-so-is-everyone-else/
'Global seizures of cannabis herb fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2018 – a slump driven by declines in North America, where seizures have fallen by 84 per cent in the last 10 years. By contrast, seizures almost doubled in the rest of the world over the same period. The pattern of seizures suggests policies aimed at liberalizing cannabis markets have played a key role in the decline.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Cannabis is the drug that most brings people into contact with the criminal justice system, accounting for more than half of all drug law offences cases, based on reports from a total of 69 countries over 2014–2018 The predominance of cannabis-related cases in the statistics reflects the drug's large global market. ATS were the next biggest drug category (responsible for 19 per cent of cases), followed by cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of suspects were men.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
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