The Green Medicine:

BOOK EXCERPTS

"The prohibition of ganja is an interference with liberty which the Government of India is not justified in undertaking, except upon evidence which clearly establishes the fact that the harm permitted by non-prohibition is great and manifest. Not only is this not the case, but the evidence has rendered it abundantly manifest that those who have hitherto recommended the prohibition of ganja have done so under an erroneous; or at least a greatly exaggerated, impression as to its real effects."  from Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894

"A strange thing about hashish is that an overdose has never produced death in man or the lower animals. Not one authentic case is on record in which Cannabis or any of its preparations destroyed life. We thus have a poison which lacks a maximum and a fatal dose. Indeed, if we desire to be finical, we can claim that according to what is now considered the best definition of a poison, Cannabis is no poison at all, for the aforesaid best definition defines a poison as "any substance which is capable of causing death, otherwise than mechanically, when introduced into the body or applied to it" -- and Cannabis does not seem capable of causing death by chemical or physiological action." An Essay on Hasheesh, 1912