Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKADDAddiction0965-2140© 2002 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs982Original Article

EDITORIAL NOTE

It is with the greatest sadness that I find myself at a late obituary notice will be published in a later issue of this
proof stage having to report that Robert Kendell died sud- journal.
denly on 19 December 2002. He had recently been
elected President of the Society for the Study of Addiction. GRIFFITH EDWARDS
To his wife and family go our profound sympathies. A full Editor-in-Chief
97Original ArticleCannabis condemnedRobert Kendell

ADDICTION HISTORY

Cannabis condemned: the proscription of Indian hemp

Robert Kendell
University of Edinburgh Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh, UK

Correspondence to: ABSTRACT

R. E. Kendell
3 West Castle Road
Edinburgh EH10 5AT Aims To find out how cannabis came to be subject to international narcotics
UK legislation.
Tel.: + 44 131 229 4966 Method Examination of the records of the 1925 League of Nations’ Second
Fax: + 44 131 228 7547
Opium Conference, of the 1894 Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission
Submitted 7 August 2001; and other contemporary documents.
initial review completed 5 November 2001; Findings Although cannabis (Indian hemp) was not on the agenda of the Sec-
final version accepted 24 July 2002 ond Opium Conference, a claim by the Egyptian delegation that it was as dan-
gerous as opium, and should therefore be subject to the same international
controls, was supported by several other countries. No formal evidence was pro-
duced and conference delegates had not been briefed about cannabis. The only
objections came from Britain and other colonial powers. They did not dispute
the claim that cannabis was comparable to opium, but they did want to avoid a
commitment to eliminating its use in their Asian and African territories.

KEYWORDS Cannabis, international controls, League of Nations.

INTRODUCTION always so, however. The decision to subject cannabis, or

Cannabis is regarded formally by the United Nations and
its agencies as a dangerous and addictive narcotic, and is
subject to the same stringent international controls as
opiates and cocaine, despite the fact that its pharmaco-
logical effects are different from and its objective dangers
much less than those of heroin and cocaine. This was not
Indian hemp as it was then known, to international leg-
islation was taken, unexpectedly, in 1925 at a conference
in Geneva arranged by the League of Nations to
strengthen the controls on opium and cocaine which had
been negotiated at The Hague in 1912. In view of the cur-
rent widespread use of cannabis, and increasing doubts
about the wisdom of subjecting it to the same draconian

© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs Addiction, 98, 143–151
144 Robert Kendell
legislation as heroin, it is interesting to look back to see
how cannabis achieved its status as a dangerous narcotic,
and what the arguments were that persuaded represen-
tatives of the world’s most powerful countries that they
should do everything in their power to restrict the use of
cannabis to a few limited medical and scientific purposes.
THE SECOND OPIUM CONFERENCE
OF 1924–25
The conference in question, known as the Second Opium
Conference, opened in Geneva on 17 November 1924. It
had this title because the Assembly of the League of
Nations, under whose auspices it was held, had decided
the previous year to mount two simultaneous and inde-
pendent conferences, the first being concerned solely
with the suppression and eventual elimination of traffic
in ‘prepared opium’ in the Far East, much of which was
then governed by European powers. Forty-one nations
were represented at this Second Conference, and because
it was suspected that there might be serious differences of
opinion between Britain and the other European colonial
powers and the United States of America, several were
represented by political or diplomatic heavyweights. The
United States was represented by The Hon. Stephen Por-
ter, the long-serving Chairman of the Committee on For-
eign Affairs of the House of Representatives, and Bishop
Charles Brent, who had presided previously over both the
original Shanghai Commission of 1909 and the 1912
International Conference at The Hague. The British
Empire was represented by Sir Malcolm Delevingne KCB,
a senior Home Office official, and eventually by the Mar-
quis of Salisbury (a member of Stanley Baldwin’s Cabinet
and soon to become Conservative leader in the House of
Lords) as well. Australia, Canada and India were repre-
sented separately, the latter by British members of the
Indian Civil Service.
A description of these key figures by a contemporary
American historian (McAllister 2000) is invaluable to an
understanding of the outcome of the conference. McAl-
lister describes Stephen Porter as a bombastic man who
had ‘acquired the status of czar over American drug pol-
icy’, ‘behaved in a manner appropriate to the appellation’
and was regarded even by his own government as a ‘loose
cannon’. Bishop Brent, a man of evangelical fervour and
righteousness, ‘took an extreme prohibitionist position’
and regarded any non-medical use of opium as immoral.
Sir Malcolm Delevingne, although intelligent and proba-
bly better informed than anyone else about drug issues
world-wide, was a cantankerous little man whose ‘sharp-
ness of tongue often caused difficulties in face to face
negotiations’. There were also serious, unresolved differ-
ences between the British and Indian delegations. Delev-
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
ingne himself almost certainly favoured strict controls, at
least on opium, but India’s British administrators were
determined to resist any intrusions on their authority
which might have undesirable political or financial con-
sequences, and because the Labour Government of Ram-
say MacDonald had fallen unexpectedly in October 1924,
the new Conservative administration had not had time to
resolve these differences and agree a coherent policy in
the few weeks before the Conference started. The fact that
Sun Yat Sen’s Chinese government was no longer in con-
trol of several of its provinces and was visibly tottering,
was a further unspoken influence, particularly on the
outcome of the First Conference.
The agenda of the Second Conference was deceptively
simple: ‘Consideration of the measures which can be
taken to carry out the Opium Convention of 1912’ (the
Hague Convention, whose protocol had by then been
signed by some 40 nations) (League of Nations 1925).
This was to be achieved by limitation of the amounts of
morphine, heroin or cocaine to be manufactured; limita-
tion of the amounts of raw opium and coca leaf to be
imported for that and other medicinal and scientific pur-
poses; and limitation of the production of raw opium and
coca leaf to the amount required for such medicinal and
scientific purposes. Although this agenda was adopted
without dissent Mr Porter gave notice that, if the First
Conference failed—as it did—to agree satisfactory mea-
sures for suppressing the traffic in prepared opium in the
Far East, the United States reserved the right to move an
amendment.
Hashish (which was referred to in all formal docu-
ments as Indian Hemp rather than cannabis) was first
mentioned at the 5th meeting of the conference on 20
November. The Egyptian delegate, Dr Mohamed Abdel
Salam El Guindy, a physician and Secretary of the Royal
Egyptian Legation at Paris and Brussels, described it as ‘at
least as harmful as opium, if not more so’ (vol. 1, p. 37)
and asked for it to be included ‘in the list of narcotics the
use of which is to be regulated by this conference’. He
repeated his request at the 7th meeting two days later and
was supported by the Greek and Turkish delegates, but Sir
Malcolm Delevingne expressed doubts about the compe-
tence of the conference to consider a substance which
was not on its agenda and suggested that it might be bet-
ter for hashish to be discussed ‘in Committee, if at all’ (vol.
1, p. 54).
Although it was undoubtedly true that hashish was
not on the conference agenda, and as a result few if any
delegates would have been briefed on the subject, Dr El
Guindy’s proposal was not entirely out of the blue. Italy,
motivated by hashish smuggling in its north African col-
onies, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, had raised the issue of
international controls during the preparations for the
Hague Conference in 1911. Indeed, that Conference had
Addiction, 98, 143–151

actually adopted a resolution on hashish, namely that
‘The Conference considers it desirable to study the ques-
tion of Indian hemp from the statistical and scientific
point of view, with the object of regulating its abuses,
should the necessity thereof be felt, by international leg-
islation or by an international agreement’ (Bruun, Pan &
Rexed 1975, p. 182). In 1923 the South African govern-
ment (which was not represented at the 1924 Opium
Conferences) had suggested to the League of Nations that
Indian hemp should be regarded as a habit-forming drug
and brought within the scope of the Hague Convention.
The suggestion had been referred to the League’s Advi-
sory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Danger-
ous Drugs, which had recommended 3 months before the
start of the Second Opium Conference that ‘in the first
instance, the Governments should be invited to furnish to
the League information as to the production and use of,
and traffic in, this substance in their territories’, and that
the issue should be considered further at the 1925 meet-
ing of the Advisory Committee in the light of this infor-
mation (League of Nations 1923–25).
In the event, Dr El Guindy was allowed to present the
Egyptian government’s case at the 16th meeting of the
Opium Conference on 13 December. He described hash-
ish as ‘a problem of capital importance for a large number
of Eastern peoples’ (vol. 1, p. 132). He conceded that
taken ‘occasionally and in small doses, hashish perhaps
does not offer much danger’, but stressed that ‘there is
always the risk that once a person begins to take it, he will
continue. He acquires the habit and becomes addicted to
the drug, and, once this has happened, it is very difficult
to escape.’ He then described the manifestations of both
acute and chronic hashishism. The former, he said, con-
sists of a ‘state of inebriation or delirium . . . which takes a
violent form in a person of violent character’. The latter
‘is extremely serious, since hashish is a toxic substance, a
poison against which no effective antidote is known’.
Indeed, ‘intellectual faculties gradually weaken and the
whole organism decays. The addict very frequently
becomes neurasthenic and, eventually, insane.’ He then
claimed that ‘the proportion of cases of insanity caused by
the use of hashish varies from 30 to 60% of the total num-
ber of cases occurring in Egypt’. He also described the
measures already taken by his government to combat the
abuse of hashish—a ban on cultivation dating back to
1884, a ban on imports, and closure of the mashhashas
(hashish smoking cafés). At the same time he conceded
that, despite these strict controls, over 5.5 million kg
(over 5400 tons) of hashish had been seized by the Egyp-
tian Customs and Coastguards in 1924 alone, in addition
to an unknown but ‘certainly . . . greater’ quantity
impounded by the police. Finally, Dr El Guindy pleaded
that hashish should be added to the list of narcotic drugs
with which the conference should deal and insisted that
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
Cannabis condemned 145
he was voicing ‘the views of the entire Egyptian people,
from His Majesty King Fuad . . . down to the humblest
fellah of the Nile valley’ (vol. 1, p. 135), apparently obliv-
ious to the difficulty of reconciling this claim with the vast
quantities currently being confiscated by the Egyptian
authorities.
No one questioned El Guindy’s chilling description of
the dangers of hashish and he was supported strongly
by both the Chinese and American delegates (Mr Sze,
vice president of the conference, and Stephen Porter),
although the former had the grace to admit that he knew
‘next to nothing’ about the subject and the latter that his
knowledge was ‘quite limited’. The delegates from India
(Mr Clayton), the British Empire (Sir Malcolm Delev-
ingne) and France (M. Gaston Bourgois) all expressed
sympathy for Dr El Guindy but then argued that, as his
government had not given prior notice to the secretariat,
the Conference was not competent to apply the provisions
of the Hague Convention to hashish and that the only
possible course was to refer the issue to a subcommittee
for further study. Eventually, after much lobbying, a
unanimous but ambiguous decision was taken to refer
the matter to Sub-committee F (vol. 1, p. 138).
This subcommittee existed to deal with a variety of sci-
entific and technical issues and all its members, apart
from the British representative (Mr Kirwan, a Home Office
official), were physicians, pharmacists or chemists. On
learning of its new and unexpected task it decided to set
up a ‘subsub-committee’ chaired by the French represen-
tative, Professor Perrot (Vice-dean of the Faculty of Phar-
macy in Paris), on which Britain was represented by
another Home Office official. When Professor Perrot’s
group met, the Greek representative, Professor Emman-
uel, described the problem of hashish as being ‘as grave as
that of opium’ and the Brazilian representative, Dr Per-
nambuco, described it as ‘more dangerous than opium’
(vol. 2, p. 297). Again, no one challenged these state-
ments, possibly because both were speaking on behalf of
countries where hashish use was endemic (in Brazil
under the name of diamba). As a result of these and Dr El
Guindy’s representations, the group’s report concluded
that abuse of hashish and charas (the resin) and the smok-
ing of the drug ‘are specially dangerous, since their
immoderate use due to addiction leads to troubles at least
as serious as those caused . . . by the use of opium and its
derivatives’ (vol. 2, p. 318). The group was very con-
cerned, however, to produce a definition of Indian hemp
which would not interfere with the production of hemp
from the cannabis plant for rope and matting, for the
Indian and British delegates emphasized that this was a
vital industry for India, involving exports of some
100 000 tons (101 600 metric tonnes) of hemp fibre a
year. Eventually, after much discussion with those two
delegates, it was agreed to define Indian hemp as ‘the
Addiction, 98, 143–151
146 Robert Kendell
flowering or fecundated tops of the female plant of Can-
nabis sativa L, from which the resin has not been
extracted, under whatever denomination it is employed
in commerce’ (vol. 2, p. 318).
The conclusions of Professor Perrot’s subsub-commit-
tee were emphatic. ‘The use of Indian hemp and the prep-
arations derived therefrom may only be authorised for
medical and scientific purposes. The raw resin (charas),
however, which is extracted from the female tops of the
Cannabis sativa, L., together with the various preparations
(hashish, chira, esrar, diamba, & c.) of which it forms the
basis, not being at present utilised for medical purposes
and only being susceptible of utilisation for harmful
purposes . . . may not be produced, sold, traded in, & c,
under any circumstances whatever’ (vol. 2, p. 318). The
report was adopted by Sub-committee F without formal
dissent, although the delegates of the British Empire,
India and the Netherlands abstained and Mr Kirwan
stated that he ‘was unable, without giving the matter
more careful consideration, to accept the conclusions’.
The Indian delegate (Mr Walton) also submitted a formal
Note stating that, although ‘The Government of India are
in full sympathy with the proposal to bring the interna-
tional traffic in the drug Indian hemp under interna-
tional control’, and could undertake to restrict exports to
‘cases covered by import certificates issued by the Govern-
ments of the importing countries’, there were ‘ various
serious difficulties of an administrative order in confining
the use of hemp drugs to medical and scientific purposes’
(vol. 2, p. 319). Domestic consumption and its regulation
were matters for Provincial Governments and Princely
States which there had been no time to consult, and
‘there are social and religious customs which naturally
have to be considered’. The French delegate, M. Bourgois,
had previously expressed similar reservations in more
colourful language when referring to the Congo,
where there were ‘several tribes of savages and even can-
nibals among whom the habit is very prevalent’ (vol, 1,
p. 137).
Sub-committee F’s report on Indian hemp was consid-
ered by the plenary Conference at its 31st meeting on
February 12,1925. It was presented by Professor Perrot
and accepted with little discussion, but it was pointed out
that it was a purely technical document and that ‘no text
providing for the application of these principles has yet
been prepared for inclusion in the International Conven-
tion’ (vol. 1, p. 262). Accordingly, another ad hoc subcom-
mittee was hastily convened, again chaired by Professor
Perrot and with representatives from Egypt, Turkey, the
British Empire, India and three other countries. This
subcommittee’s conclusions, effectively the section of the
Draft Convention relating to Indian hemp, were presented
to the plenary Conference within 48 hours for a first
reading, and again 4 days later on February 18 for a final
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
reading. Apart from some discussion of the definitions of
Indian hemp and the resin, and the distinction between
the two, they were adopted unchanged. As a result,
Indian hemp, as defined above, and the resin prepared
from it, were to be subject to the same restrictions on
international trade, and the same surveillance by the
newly established Permanent Central Board, as opium
and cocaine and their derivatives. Galenical preparations
(extract and tincture) of Indian hemp were also to be sub-
ject to the same internal controls as manufactured drugs
derived from opium and cocaine. In addition, there was to
be a ban on the export of all preparations of Indian hemp
or its resin to countries prohibiting their use, and on
exporting to any country without the production of a
special import certificate testifying that the substance ‘is
required exclusively for medical or scientific purposes’
(vol. 1, p. 352).
The following day, on 19 February 1925, the Second
Opium Conference finally closed, after 38 plenary ses-
sions and over 100 committee and subcommittee meet-
ings. In his closing speech the President, M. Herluf Zahle,
described the conference, without exaggeration, as ‘the
most difficult in the history of the League of Nations’ and
also the longest. After a surprisingly frank account of the
disagreements between the United States and the Euro-
pean colonial powers he insisted that ‘this Conference has
struck a most powerful blow at the drug evil . . . we have
started on a road which eventually can lead only to
success . . . the Conference has greatly strengthened the
Hague Convention of 13 years ago’ (vol. 1, p. 361). Refer-
ring to the decision to establish a Permanent Central
Board, he predicted that ‘The first step has been taken
towards the constitution of that international control
which will eventually destroy the evil aspects of the drug
traffic’. [Professor Perrot expressed similarly optimistic
views a few months later (Perrot 1925), and although
others held less sanguine views, even doubting whether
anything worthwhile had been achieved, this was not the
judgement of Bruun et al. (1975, pp. 276–277) 50 years
on.] Amid the closing courtesies and felicitations of the
Conference Dr El Guindy could still think only of hashish,
rising to his feet to argue that ‘the question is not entirely
settled . . . I entreat you, gentlemen, to assist me . . . by vot-
ing a recommendation for submission to the Council of
the League of Nations . . . with a view to the complete sup-
pression of the use of Indian hemp as a narcotic, and even
as a medicine’ (vol. 1, p. 364).
The Conference had been open to journalists from the
beginning and their attention, like that of most delegates,
had been focused throughout on the looming disagree-
ments between the United States and the colonial powers
of Western Europe. Having declined to join the League of
Nations, the United States was not well placed either to
understand its procedures or to influence its decisions
Addiction, 98, 143–151

and, whether or not that was the intention, the League’s
decision (taken at Britain’s instigation) to hold two simul-
taneous Opium Conferences, with no provision for joint
discussion or cross-reporting, effectively excluded the
American delegates from discussing or even commenting
upon the ineffective attempts of the First Conference to
agree on a timetable for suppressing the smoking of
opium in the Far East. America, supported strongly by
China, wanted the colonial powers to be committed firmly
to eliminating the use of opium in their Asian territories
within 15 years, as the Hague Convention had envisaged.
Britain, France and the Netherlands agreed that this goal
was highly desirable, but they insisted that it was impos-
sible to achieve while smuggling—mainly but not exclu-
sively from rebellious Chinese provinces where opium
production was estimated to have risen to over 15 million
kg a year (Perrot 1925)—was still rife. They maintained
therefore that the 15-year countdown could not start
until the smuggling had been brought under control. The
Marquis of Salisbury, who was not conspicuously well
informed on the issue, even argued that ‘opium smoking
has nothing whatever to do with the question of drug-
addiction’ (vol. 1, p. 149). America regarded the elimina-
tion of opium smoking as a moral imperative and was also
deeply suspicious of the motives of the Colonial Powers,
particularly Britain. Harsh words were exchanged
beneath a veneer of diplomacy, and Bishop Brent
observed that he ‘feared that support would be given to
the accusation that Western nations with possessions in
the Far East were indifferent to the welfare of the inhab-
itants of those possessions, and were content to have one
law for the protection of their home population and
another for the exploitation of dependent races’ (British
Medical Journal Editorial 1925). Indeed, in the ‘Appeal to
my Colleagues’ which he circulated he even asserted that
‘Christ and His religion are brought under reproach and
put to open shame’ (Willoughby 1925).
Despite an impromptu Christmas recess to allow tem-
pers to cool and delegates to consult their governments,
all attempts to achieve a compromise foundered and on 6
February 1925 the American delegation withdrew from
the Conference, as it had been committed to doing if it
failed to achieve its objectives by a rather ill-judged Con-
gressional resolution the previous May. The next day the
Chinese delegation also withdrew. This confrontation and
its dramatic dénouement dominated most contemporary
accounts of the Conference. [Willoughby (1925) gives a
detailed account from the American perspective.] As a
result, the decision to treat Indian hemp with the same
severity as opium and cocaine received little attention, at
least in Western Europe and North America. Perhaps
because drug abuse was then regarded mainly as a polit-
ical or forensic rather than a medical problem, few med-
ical, psychiatric or even public health journals made any
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
Cannabis condemned 147
mention of the conference. There were editorials in the
British Medical Journal (Editorial 1925) and the Lancet
(Editorial 1925) but only the latter made even a passing
reference to the inclusion of Indian hemp.
COMMENTAR Y
The role of the Egyptian government and its senior dele-
gate, Dr El Guindy, was clearly crucial. Without the
Egyptian initiative and Dr El Guindy’s single-minded
determination, Indian hemp would never have been
brought under the controls of the 1925 Convention. In
his original speech to the conference Dr El Guindy gave
three main reasons for regarding hashish as a dangerous
narcotic—that intoxication with hashish ‘takes a violent
form in persons of violent character’ (although he admit-
ted that ‘in persons of a cheerful disposition’ intoxication
merely produced ‘a kind of hilarious and noisy delirium’);
that it was highly addictive (‘there is always the risk that
once a person begins to take it, he will continue. He . . .
becomes addicted to the drug, and, once this has hap-
pened, it is very difficult to escape’); and that it was a
potent cause not only of intellectual and physical decline
but of insanity. Indeed, he claimed that it was responsible
for 30–60% of all cases of insanity in Egypt (vol. 1, pp.
133–134).
At the time none of these claims was contested, but
none of them would now be accepted without serious
qualification. Police experience in the contemporary
western world, as in 19th century India, suggests
strongly that cannabis is much less likely to be associated
with violence than alcohol (Goldstein 1997). There is
also a consensus of expert opinion that the health and
psychological hazards of cannabis are almost certainly
less serious than those, not only of opiates and cocaine,
but of the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco as well. Recent
reviews commissioned by the Australian (Hall, Solowij &
Lemon 1994), American (Institute of Medicine 1999)
and British (Johns 2001) governments have all come to
broadly the same conclusions. Although dependence on
cannabis undoubtedly occurs, and is accompanied by a
well-defined but mild withdrawal syndrome, it develops
mainly in people who have been heavy users for several
years and the risk is considerably less than that associated
with tobacco or heroin. Other adverse effects are modest
and ‘except for the harms associated with smoking . . .
within the range of effects tolerated for other medica-
tions’ (Institute of Medicine 1999); and although can-
nabis certainly produces short-lasting psychotic states,
and may be responsible for an increase in the frequency
and severity of psychotic relapses in people already suf-
fering from schizophrenia, it is very doubtful whether it
ever leads on its own to a state of chronic psychosis.
Addiction, 98, 143–151
148 Robert Kendell
Dr El Guindy also claimed that hashish was ‘at least as
harmful as opium, if not more so’, and again no one chal-
lenged this statement. Indeed, he was supported in this
view by the Greek and Brazilian delegates, and as a result
the statement that ‘the abuse of these preparations . . .
leads to troubles at least as serious as those caused . . . by
the use of opium and its derivatives’ appeared in the for-
mal report from Sub-committee F to the Conference (vol.
2, p. 318). Although this judgement may now seem ill-
informed, it is understandable in the light of the circum-
stances of the time. Few if any of the conference delegates
had been briefed about Indian hemp beforehand because
it had not been on the agenda, and there was a superficial
plausibility to the argument. Both opium and hashish
were mysterious Eastern drugs, used mainly by the illit-
erate poor in distant Oriental countries. Both were gener-
ally smoked, and both were said to lead to mental, moral
and physical decline. On moral grounds the case seemed
clear enough, and it can safely be assumed that none of
the delegates foresaw the day when their own grandchil-
dren would be nonchalantly smoking cannabis in their
own cities. As a result, the only objections came from
the European Colonial Powers and India. They foresaw
potentially serious problems in their dependent territories
if they were forced to ban long-established customs which
were not only a source of pleasure but in some cases
imbued with cultural and religious significance as well.
They therefore tried repeatedly to prevent hashish getting
onto the agenda, or to divert the issue into a subcommit-
tee from which it would not emerge. At no stage, however,
did they argue that its dangers were being exaggerated.
The Western powers had a further reason for agreeing
to the pleas of the Egyptian and Turkish delegates. Turkey
and other Eastern nations were being required by the rich
countries of the West to stop growing opium poppies,
largely for the sake of others, at a considerable economic
cost both to their governments and their farmers. Ban-
ning hashish, which would please the Turkish govern-
ment, would therefore be a quid pro quo and Stephen
Porter was quick to see the potential benefits. ‘We are ask-
ing them (the Egyptian and Turkish people)’ he said in
response to Dr El Guindy’s speech ‘to help us to destroy
the vice of opium, coca leaves and their derivatives, and I
believe this is a good time to practice a little reciprocity . . .
many countries of the world have their own problems; by
helping each other we can make the world much happier
and much better’ (vol. 1, p. 135).
Although both had important allies, the debates over
hashish in the conference essentially represented a con-
flict of interest between a newly independent Egypt, and
Britain and India. It may therefore be worthwhile to
explore in more detail their respective experiences of and
attitudes towards the drug.
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
EGYPTIAN ATTITUDES TO CANNABIS
Hashish (an Arabic word variously translated as grass,
fodder, the herb, or the weed) was introduced into Egypt
by the Arabs some time between the 9th and 11th centu-
ries AD, probably by Sufi mystics, and was used widely,
particularly by the rural poor, the fellahin, from then on.
Repeated attempts were made to abolish its use as far
back as the 13th century, first by the governor of Cairo in
the closing years of the Ayyubid dynasty and then a gen-
eration later by Babar, the founder of the Mameluk
dynasty. In general, rulers with martial or economic
ambitions such as Babar, and later Napoleon, sought to
suppress its use, mainly because of its debilitating effects
on their armies or their commerce, while those who were
content to enjoy the pleasures of power, such as the dis-
solute Circassian and Turkish rulers of the later Mameluk
and Ottoman eras, tolerated it. As a result the attitudes of
the ruling and educated classes towards hashish (and
wine) were in a constant state of flux. It was both reviled
and praised by theologians, lawyers, poets and storytell-
ers alike, leading Nahas (1982, p. 824) to remark that
from the 13th to the 16th centuries the controversy over
cannabis amongst the Islamic intelligentsia ‘dwarfs the
debate among American intellectuals of the last part of
the 20th century’.
From the 13th to the 20th centuries, none of the
repeated attempts to control the use of hashish had suc-
ceeded for long, at least in the countryside. Even in the
1900s, despite strict controls, ‘every one who wants to
smoke (hashish) seems to have no difficulty in obtaining
it’ (Warnock 1903). Life was hard both for the urban poor
and the fellahin of the Nile valley and hashish was cheap
and easily grown or smuggled in from Greece or else-
where. It was also, at least in their eyes, tolerated by the
Koran. The intoxicating properties of the cannabis plant
had been unknown to the Arabs until the 9th century,
two centuries after the death of Mohammed. As a result,
the original Koranic ban on the use of khamr applied only
to wine and other intoxicants and Moslem theologians
and lawyers argued for centuries about whether hashish
should be regarded as khamr. Although three of the four
schools of Islamic law decided eventually that it should,
this failed to convince the Egyptian peasantry, and a frag-
ment of ancient verse—‘Declaring forbidden what is not
forbidden is forbidden’—was often quoted, particularly at
times when Egypt’s rulers were openly drinking alcohol
(Rosenthal 1971; Nahas 1982, 1985).
This long experience of hashish had, of course, given
the Egyptians ample opportunity to observe its effects. Its
medicinal properties were widely respected by their phy-
sicians and many writers and poets extolled its psycho-
logical effects. But many of Egypt’s rulers, from Babar to
Addiction, 98, 143–151

Napoleon, were alarmed by its effects on the uneducated
masses, sapping their energy, their abilities and their will-
ingness either to work or to fight. It was also believed
widely, even by its apologists, that long continued use
often resulted in insanity. Nor was this simply a lay belief.
Warnock, the British medical director of the Egyptian
Hospital for the Insane outside Cairo, had no doubt that
hashish was a potent cause of insanity, and several other
British physicians responsible for native populations in
India or the Caribbean shared this view (e.g. Barnes
1892; Ireland 1893). Although at least one of Warnock’s
contemporaries disagreed with him, arguing that ‘there
is no country in the world where lunacy is so rare as in
Egypt, and yet . . . the use of Indian hemp is almost uni-
versal’ (‘Pyramid’ 1893), and Warnock himself admitted
that the problems of both insanity and crime would prob-
ably be worse if hashish were to be replaced by alcohol
(Warnock 1903), his opinion was taken seriously by
Kraepelin, then the most eminent psychiatrist in the
world. Indeed, Kraepelin had taken the trouble to visit
Warnock and to take a ‘large lump’ of hashish back to
Heidelberg for research, and was only prevented from
returning to Cairo and visiting India to find out more
about hashish psychoses by the First World War
(Kraepelin 1987). The views expressed by Dr El Guindy
were therefore broadly consistent with contemporary
Egyptian beliefs, even though many of those beliefs had
been prone to change from generation to generation for
600 years. However, his dramatic claim that 30–60% of
all cases of insanity in Egypt were attributable to hashish
was not supported by the statistical data published by his
own government. The annual report of the Abbasiya Hos-
pital – the larger of the country’s two mental hospitals –
for 1920–21 records 715 admissions, of which only 19
(2.7%) were attributed to hashish, considerably less than
the 48 attributed to alcohol; and even this modest num-
ber is qualified by the comment that ‘many of the factors
mentioned in the preceding table are not, strictly speak-
ing, causes, but conditions associated with the mental
disease’ (Lunacy Division 1921).
Despite the firm international action promised by the
(1924) Conference, huge quantities of hashish continued
to enter Egypt, mainly from Syria and Lebanon (El Hadka
1965). The country also found itself faced with an
unforeseen and much more dangerous epidemic of intra-
venous heroin abuse that by 1929 was estimated to
involve half a million of the country’s 14 million inhabit-
ants (Russell 1949). Although Russell, the commandant
of the Cairo police, eventually succeeded in eliminating
the heroin smuggling, this involved an ‘unholy pact’ with
the drug trafficers, allowing them to continue to smuggle
hashish into Egypt in exchange for information about the
devious import pathways for heroin.
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
Cannabis condemned 149
BRITISH AND INDIAN ATTITUDES TO
CANNABIS
In Britain, extract and tincture of cannabis had been
widely prescribed by physicians in the latter half of the
19th century. Indeed, the tincture was actually used as a
treatment for insanity (Clouston 1904). Although hash-
ish had been smoked in the 1890s for its mind-expanding
effects by intellectuals and poets such as W. B. Yeats, its
use except as a medicine had always been rare and was
never perceived as a problem (Berridge & Edwards 1981).
The drug had, however, been used for centuries in several
parts of the British Empire, particularly in India where it
was widely used by both Hindus and Moslems, mainly as
ganja (prepared from the dried flowering tops of cultivated
female plants and usually smoked) or bhang (a drink pre-
pared from the dried leaves of the plant, male or female,
cultivated or uncultivated). In 1924, 5 years after the
Amritsar massacre and faced with an increasingly trou-
blesome Congress Party, the Government of India would
have been very anxious to avoid any interference with
traditional cultural and religious mores that might cause
further social unrest. Indeed, it had been warned 40
years before that the use of bhang ‘is considered essential
in some religious observances by a large section of the
community’ and that ‘interference with the use of hemp
in connection with the customs and observances above
referred would be regarded by the consumers as an inter-
ference with long established usage and as an encroach-
ment upon their religious liberty’ (Indian Hemp Drugs
Commission 1894, vol. 1, p. 166).
A generation before the (1924) Opium Conference the
Government of India had commissioned what was prob-
ably the most extensive and well-documented investiga-
tion of the effects of cannabis ever carried out, not
because of any concern or disturbances in India itself, but
in response to a question by the antidrug campaigner, W.
S. Caine, in the House of Commons in London. The Indian
Hemp Drugs Commission was appointed in 1893 and
published its report, in seven volumes, the following year.
It had seven members, three of whom were ‘native non-
official gentlemen’ and one the professor of chemistry at
the Calcutta Medical College, and they travelled widely
and took evidence from over 1000 people, British and
Indian. The Commission considered the physical, mental
and moral effects of hemp drugs separately, and also dis-
tinguished between moderate and excessive use. They
concluded that moderate use had no significant ill effects
in any of these three spheres. Excessive use, on the other
hand, ‘tends to weaken the constitution and to render the
consumer more susceptible to disease’ (particularly bron-
chitis). It also ‘indicates and intensifies mental instability.
It tends to weaken the mind. It may even lead to insanity’,
Addiction, 98, 143–151
150 Robert Kendell
and it ‘both indicates and intensifies moral weakness or
depravity’ (vol. 1, p. 263–264).
The report emphasized that ‘the moderate use of these
drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is compara-
tively exceptional’. It also emphasized that ‘In respect to
his relations with society . . . even the excessive consumer
of hemp drugs is ordinarily inoffensive. His excesses may
indeed bring him to degraded poverty . . . but for all prac-
tical purposes it may be laid down that there is little or no
connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime’
(vol. 1, p. 264).
The Commission was particularly keen to determine
whether hemp drugs caused insanity as this was an
ingrained popular belief in India as in Egypt, and they
heard much contradictory evidence on the subject. The
central problem was that, although a high proportion of
those admitted to mental hospitals were undoubtedly
hashish users, hashish was widely used by the Indian
populace, and there appeared to be nothing distinctive
about the phenomena of hashish insanity. The door was
therefore wide open to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy
and, as Samuel Johnson had observed long before, ‘It is
incident to physicians, I am afraid, to mistake subse-
quence for consequence’ (Johnson 1734). To compound
the problem, relatives or other informants were rarely
available for questioning because most cases of insanity
were brought to the asylum by the police on a magis-
trate’s order and, as the Commission observed in its
Report, ‘The inquiry into the history of the case is not an
inquiry conducted by a professional man from the per-
sons likely to know most about the lunatic. The informa-
tion consists often merely of the guesses of police officers
as to the history and the habits of a friendless and home-
less wanderer’ (vol. 1, p. 231). Moreover, as one of their
medical witnesses explained, the patients themselves
‘belong nearly always to the lower and grossly ignorant
classes, to whose minds the relations of cause and effect,
except in very ordinary affairs of life, are, more or less,
unknown’ (Walsh 1894).
The Commission examined the admission statistics of
all 24 mental hospitals in British India, but judged them
to be worthless because the attributions were usually
those made by police or magistrates before admission.
They therefore asked the superintendents of the 24 hos-
pitals to examine all the cases attributed to hemp drugs
admitted in 1892. Two hundred and twenty-two of the
1344 patients studied (16.5%) were attributed to hemp
drugs by their physicians, but only 61 of these (4.5%)
were accepted as genuine by the Commission. On the
basis of this somewhat ambiguous evidence the Commis-
sion commented that ‘with non-medical witnesses the
mere use of the drug along with the fact of insanity . . . has
as a rule been accepted as cause and effect’, and that ‘the
usual mode of differentiating between hemp drug insan-
© 2003 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs
ity and ordinary mania was in the highest degree uncer-
tain, and therefore fallacious’. The Commission was also
convinced that ‘there is no evidence of any brain lesions
being caused directly by hemp drugs’. Even so, their final
conclusion was that ‘admitting (as we must admit) that
hemp drugs as intoxicants cause more or less of cerebral
stimulation, it may be accepted as reasonably proved, in
the absence of evidence of other cause, that hemp drugs
do cause insanity’ (vol. 1, p. 250).
Having reached these conclusions about the harm
attributable to hemp drugs, the Commission’s final deci-
sion was that ‘total prohibition of the cultivation of the
hemp plant for narcotics, and of the manufacture, sale or
use of the drugs derived from it, is neither necessary nor
expedient’. Instead, it recommended continuing the exist-
ing policy ‘of control and restriction, aimed at suppress-
ing the excessive use and restraining the moderate use’.
This was to be achieved by a combination of (a) adequate
taxation; (b) prohibiting cultivation, except under
licence, and centralising licensed cultivation; (c) limiting
the number of shops; and (d) limiting the extent of legal
possession (vol. 1, pp. 359–361). All seven members of
the commission signed the report. However, two of the
three Indian members also submitted lengthy Notes of
Dissent (vol. 1, pp. 363–477). Both regarded charas (a
potent preparation of cannabis resin mainly imported
from Yarkand in SW China) as ‘very deleterious’ and
wanted it banned immediately. Both also wanted to see
ganga banned (and one of them referred disparagingly to
its users as ‘bad characters, low class people and beg-
gars’), although they recognized that this would have to
be achieved slowly and cautiously. Bhang, on the other
hand, they regarded as virtually harmless and they
deplored the proposal to tax it.
It is surprising that no mention was made of this com-
prehensive and authoritative report at any stage by either
the British or the Indian delegates to the Opium Confer-
ence. The latter at least must have been well aware of its
existence and had ample opportunity to get the key find-
ings and recommendations telegraphed to Geneva from
India. The report could have been used to rebut the claims
of the Egyptian and other delegates that Indian hemp was
a highly dangerous and addictive drug, but it was not,
and it must be assumed that this was a deliberate deci-
sion. Perhaps Sir Malcolm Delevingne and his Indian Civil
Service colleagues hoped until a late stage that it would
be possible to divert Dr El Guigny’s proposals into a pro-
cedural cul de sac; perhaps they wanted to avoid offend-
ing a country that had until 2 years before been a British
Protectorate; perhaps they wanted to avoid laying Britain
open to the charge—which would certainly have been
levelled by the American delegates—that they were indif-
ferent to the welfare of the citizens of a country for which
they had been largely responsible for the previous 40
Addiction, 98, 143–151

years. They might also have suspected that the Commis-
sion’s conclusions could have been discredited by the sim-
ilarly reassuring conclusions of the Royal Commission on
Opium (1894–95), by the dissenting views of two of its
Indian members, or simply by its 19th century prove-
nance. Only one thing is certain: that in 1925 an author-
itative international conference decided formally, without
any attempt to examine the relevant evidence, that
Indian hemp was as addictive and dangerous as opium,
and should be treated accordingly in international law,
when what was at the time the most thorough and best
documented investigation of its dangers had found these
to be rather modest.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Dr Nasser Loza for access to several Egyp-
tian documents.
REFERENCES
Main sources
(NB: All text references to individual volumes that are not
identified further are to one or other of these primary
sources.)
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(Volumes IV–VII).
League of Nations (1925) Records of the Second Opium
Conference, 2 vols. Geneva: League of Nations.
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El Hadka, A. A. (1965) Forty years of the campaign against nar-
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