History of Drug Policy in India
The traditional intoxicants used in India are cannabis, poppy, khat and datura. Cannabis and opium are part of the cultural and religious elements in India, and have been used in controlled fashion by millions of persons over thousands of years. Consumption of opium continues to be common - a part of the custom and tradition of many castes and communities. In the evenings men gather to drink opium water (kasumba). Kasumba is consumed on both joyous and sad social occasions. Regular users of opium more often consume it in the form of a pill taken twice daily. Opium smoking has always been less common in India.
As early as 1895, the Royal Commission on Opium concluded that the use of opium in India was not to any appreciable extent injurious. The Commission relied heavily upon an analysis of the evidence developed by Sir William Roberts, a member of the Commission and one of Britain�s leading medical researchers. Using clinical data on several thousand patients compiled by witnesses who were physicians in India, Dr. Roberts concluded that, in India, opium consumption was a habit of men rather than women, and middle-aged and older persons rather than children or young adults. He found that in regular users, opium was "usually a life-long habit" with a dose taken twice a day, in the morning and evening. Beginning users initially increased their dosage levels until they reached "the level of individual tolerance" and often kept the same dosage for life. Indian and British physicians alike testified that moderate, habitual use of opium did not have harmful effects on either health or longevity. Roberts concluded that, "the general health of opium-eaters, provided they keep within their tolerance, appears to be just as good as that of other people." Users who habitually took large doses of opium suffered consequently from nothing but chronic constipation, and such "opium sots" were a "rare spectacle."
While the findings of the Royal Commission on Opium (and the similar India Hemp Drugs Commission) blocked the efforts of British prohibitionists, later pressures by the United States were successful in bringing about legal prohibition of both opium and cannabis. This did not result in any decline in non-medical drug use but, to the extent that the law was enforced, it did cause a shift in which drugs were used and an increase in the hazards associated with drug use.
With criminalisation, the sale of cannabis/opium became as risky as that of modern drugs such as heroin. In many ways more so because they were more bulky and less easily concealed.
Criminalization of drug use and repression-induced scarcity increased the street price of the drugs, attracting more people to enter the business. When the government enhanced its efforts to repress the drug industry, the remaining drug entrepreneurs re-organized their activities so as to reduce the risk of detection and prosecution. In India, there were already numerous large well organized criminal syndicates involved in smuggling gold, diamonds, electronic goods, and, in some states, alcohol. These syndicates readily added illicit drugs to their stock in trade.
These developing forces coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The resistance forces supported by Britain and America were largely made up of warlords and their followers who had traditional ties to the opium trade. As they turned to the heroin trade to further finance their warfare, they became the major source of heroin for both Europe and Asia. While production of opium and heroin was greatly suppressed after the ruling Taliban declared it unIslamic, the U.S. invasion has permitted restoration of Afghanistan as a major source of heroin.
Prior to 1979, heroin use in India had been too expensive for any but the rich to buy. Now �number 3 heroin� (�brown sugar�) began to appear on the streets of Kashmir, Bhubaneshwar, Madras, Coimbatore, Pune, Hyderabad, Goa and Mumbai. By 1990, brown sugar was available in all state capitals. From a phenomenon that began in the metropolitan cities and tourist spots, the use of crude heroin soon spread to newly industrialised district capitals and towns along major train/bus routes. Border villages lying on trafficking routes were also soon affected. Today, brown sugar may be found in all but the most isolated rural areas.
Brown sugar was not suitable for use by injection but more recently purer �number 4� heroin, largely originating in Burma, has become available, especially in the states of NorthEast India, and is typically used by injection. The injection of various pharmaceutical opiates has also become increasingly common. Today, there are perhaps one-half-million injecting drug users in India.
These numbers still are small compared to the numbers of users of traditional drugs, with about three-million opium users and ten-million cannabis users, but these users of traditional drugs present no serious social or health problems. Despite alcohol prohibition in some states, there are over one-hundred-million alcohol users in India. While only a minority of the alcohol users are problem drinkers, the number of problem drinkers greatly exceeds the number of opiate abusers. Those who inject heroin or other opiates include some who are neither dependent on the drugs nor are using them in a way that puts their health at serious risk, but given the short supply of sterile injection equipment the greater proportion are taking a serious risk of HIV or other infection.
Clearly prohibition in India has had a harm maximizing effect both for the drug users and for Indian society at large.
