WHERE DAGGA IS GROWN

Shannon News, 26 October 1926, Page 3

WHERE DAGGA IS GROWN

NORTH COAST OF NATAL. DODGES OF DRUG TRAFFICKERS The growth of the dagga-smoking habit among the natives and coloured people residing in the towns has aroused much concern recently among the police, wires the Durban correspondent of the Johannesburg "Sunday Times." t Although offenders are being prosecuted almost daily in every Court House in the Union, the demoralising effects of dagga smoking are spreading to an alarming extent. An altogether strange and inexplicable aspect of the insangu habit —a name by which, it is known to the natives —is. that the evil effects ,of the smoking are 'only very slightly apparent iA the country districts, where umfaans are accustomed to the use of dagga almost from the time they have sufficient intelligence to pick it for themselves. In crowded suburbs and towns, however, where altogether different conditions of living obtain, insangu has a far more disastrous effect on the mind and body of the smoker* and over-indulgence is known to cause 25 per cent, of the crimes against the person, while it is also stated to be a factor in the rapid degeneration of the natiyes. Insangu is not new in this country. It was smoked by the South African natives probably hundreds of years before white men came to the country, but it is only of recent years that the habit has been producing abnormal results; so that it seems obvious that the effects of dagga on the smoker are purely relative to environment and conditions. Carefully Cultivated. A police constable, who has, until quite recently,' been engaged in fighting the illicit trafficking of insangu along the North Coast, informed the Durban representative of the "Sunday Times" that he was sure that nearly every ounce of hemp tobacco that finds its way into Natal was grown on the coast, particularly in the native locations in the neighbourhood of Mapumulo and Ndwedwe. Here, he said, the drug is cultivated by the natives and the. Indians with all the care devoted to ordinary farming, and extensive fields are to be found neatly laid out in perfect rows. ! "But how is all this leaf carried | into the towns?" he was asked. 1 "You would be surprised," re- ' plied the constable, "to know, a few of the tricks these people get up to Ito get rid of their crop." Tndian buses, he said, played a very large part in the distribution of the drug, I and, by means of hundreds of shrewd dodges, earired very large | consignments to Durban, where it ' was redirected. .

One of the methods at one time used by the growers to get their illicit produce past the police was to pack it in straw mats and send it by bus, but the abnormal traffic in thick mats soon aroused suspicions, with the result that the police made a big haul. Never at a Loss.

But the insangu farmers were never at a loss to find some method of safe transport. Some natives wore occasionally seen at the railway stations and bus ranks carrying unusually largo bundles and blankets, and on numerous occasions a search had resulted in a conviction. # On one occasion the constable told our representative he was standing near the railway station when - he saw a native suddenly snatch a bundle of blankets from another native who was about tc board a train. The thief was overtaken and brought back to the railway station, and the owner of the blankets was asked to conic along to the police station to lay a charge. To the constable's surprise, the man said that he was satisfied at having recovered his blankets and did not wish to lay a charge. This generosity aroused the policeman's suspicion, and he removed both men to the police station, where the blankets were laid open and a large bundle of insangu was revealed.

"The sellers charge half a crown for a fistful of dagga," went on the constable. "Do you wonder, therefore, that, a grower has been known to produce £IOO for his legal defence? As long as the natives in the locations on the North Coast are ncrmitted to carry on this wholesale production of insangu, the drug habit will continue to grow in the towns."