Let’s legalise ganja before us does it

Let’s legalise ganja before us does it

In all the fog of counting, the US may be under the influence for some time to come. But voters in five states have been decisive about choosing to decriminalise marijuana-use for adult citizens. Joe Biden-voting Arizona and New Jersey, as well as Donald Trump-voting Montana, Mississippi and South Dakota have joined 11other states and Washington DC in legalising ganja. India should follow.

Not because what America thinks today India should think tomorrow, but because we had no problems with it to start with. Under pressure from Ronald Reagan’s media-fuelled ‘war on drugs’, India legislated the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in 1985 — bhang (edible cannabis) being left out of the list, simply because Americans never picked up the pleasures of milk-infused cannabis anyway.

But more than justifying decriminalisation in a ‘non-proliferation’ way, or because every sadhu and college kid puffs it (a 2019 Aiims study reported about 7.2 million Indians consuming cannabis in 2018), the bottomline is that consuming cannabis is less harmful than tobacco and alcohol, and is, indeed, prescribed to ameliorate illnesses such as cancer, epilepsy and HIV.

Prohibition, instead, only takes it underground, outside the purview of control (toxic additives can pose a danger). Ganja, charas (hashish) and bhang do not bear in India the same social opprobrium they carry in the West (the 1936 American movie, Reefer Madness, described marijuana-use leading to ‘moral degradation’ and ‘descent into madness’).

At best, in India, attitudes are class-laced, ganja being a ‘poor man’s tipple’. So, India should turn atmanirbhar in regulation, and return to its pre-1985 status and make it commercial and legal — before America counts down more ganja-legal states.