Cannabis Prohibition in South Asia During the 1920s

The baseline: what South Asian cannabis policy looked like in 1920

Entering the 1920s, British India did not prohibit cannabis. It taxed and licensed it. Under provincial excise systems, three products were regulated separately: ganja (dried flowering tops), charas (resin/hashish), and bhang (leaf preparation, usually drunk). Each had its own tax rate, licensed vendors, and cultivation controls, most elaborately in Bengal, where a state-supervised ganja cultivation tract operated around Naogaon ^[1][2].

The intellectual anchor of this system was the seven-volume Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report of 1894–1895, commissioned after questions in the British Parliament. Its central finding was that moderate use of cannabis produced no significant physical, mental, or moral harm, and that prohibition would be unjustified, unenforceable, and would push users toward alcohol or worse ^[2]. That report shaped the official Government of India position for the next thirty years. Strong evidence

Bhang in particular was — and is — embedded in Hindu ritual, especially around Holi and Shivaratri, and colonial administrators repeatedly warned London that suppressing it would provoke religious backlash ^[1][2].

Geneva 1924–1925: how 'Indian hemp' entered international drug law

Cannabis was not on the original agenda of the Second Opium Conference convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in November 1924. It was added because of a single delegation.

On 12 November 1924, the Egyptian delegate Mohamed El Guindy delivered a memorandum arguing that hashish was a grave menace, claiming — without controlled evidence — that chronic use caused insanity and that a large share of inmates in Egyptian asylums were hashish users ^[3][4]. He proposed that 'Indian hemp' be added to the list of controlled substances. Turkey supported the Egyptian position. Weak / limited — the epidemiological claims El Guindy cited were not based on methodology that would be accepted today, and were directly contradicted by the earlier Indian Hemp Drugs Commission findings.

The British Indian delegation, led by John Campbell, opposed inclusion. Campbell argued that bhang was a traditional and largely harmless beverage, that suppression would be culturally impossible, and that no international body should dictate India's internal excise policy ^[3][4]. Historians such as James Mills have documented that behind this principled-sounding stance was also a straightforward revenue interest: cannabis excise was a meaningful line item in several provincial budgets ^[1]. Strong evidence

The compromise, embedded in the International Opium Convention signed 19 February 1925, did the following ^[5]:

• Added cannabis resin ('charas') and preparations of it to the international control regime.
• Restricted international trade in Indian hemp to medical and scientific purposes.
• Explicitly exempted the leaves (i.e. bhang) from these controls.
• Did not require signatories to prohibit domestic cultivation, sale, or use.

So the popular claim that 'cannabis was banned worldwide in 1925' is inaccurate. What happened was narrower: international trade in resin was restricted, and cannabis was formally placed inside the League's drug-control architecture for the first time. Domestic policy remained a matter for each state. Strong evidence

What actually changed in South Asia after 1925

In the short run: not much. British India ratified the 1925 Convention but continued its excise-based licensing system. Ganja shops stayed open. Bhang stalls stayed open. Charas imports from Central Asia (Yarkand, Bukhara) were tightened at customs but not eliminated ^[1][6].

What the 1920s did was shift the burden of justification. Before 1925, prohibition needed to be argued for. After 1925, cannabis was internationally classified alongside opium and coca, and Indian officials increasingly had to argue why they were not prohibiting it. Over the following decades this ratchet tightened at each subsequent treaty — the 1931 Convention, the 1953 Opium Protocol, and finally the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which folded cannabis into Schedule I and Schedule IV ^[7].

India held out on bhang, negotiating a 25-year transition period at the 1961 Single Convention that preserved traditional bhang use. Domestic prohibition of ganja and charas in India did not arrive until the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985, sixty years after Geneva ^[7]. Nepal's government-licensed hashish shops in Kathmandu were only closed in 1973 under pressure from the U.S. Nixon administration ^[6]. Strong evidence

How the myths grew

Several popular claims about this period are wrong or oversimplified:

• 'The 1925 Geneva Convention banned cannabis.' It restricted international trade in resin and preparations, exempted leaves, and did not require domestic prohibition ^[5]. Disputed in popular sources, Strong evidence in the treaty text itself.
• 'The British banned cannabis in India in the 1920s.' They did not. They defended the existing excise system at Geneva and continued it for decades ^[1][2].
• 'Egypt's evidence was solid science.' El Guindy's claims about hashish and insanity relied on hospital admission records without controls, base-rate correction, or diagnostic standardisation, and were contested at the time ^[3][4]. Weak / limited
• 'The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission proved cannabis is safe.' It concluded moderate use was not causing the harms alleged, based on 1890s methods; it is a valuable historical document, not a modern safety study ^[2]. Treat it as evidence about policy history, not as a modern clinical reference.

The deeper pattern the 1920s reveal is that cannabis's international legal status was set less by pharmacology than by diplomacy — by which countries showed up, what they claimed, and what leverage they had. That inheritance still shapes global cannabis law today.

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