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Cannabis legalization in Canada
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The cultivation and possession of cannabis is currently illegal in Canada, with exceptions only for medical usage. However, the use of cannabis by the general public is broadly tolerated[1], and a vigorous campaign to legalize cannabis is underway nation-wide. This article describes the history of prohibition of cannabis in Canada and the political efforts to reverse it.
Recently, the new Conservative government of Canada which won the January 23rd elections has said it will trash the legislation slated to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
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The prohibition of cannabis actually began with the prohibition of opium, which itself began with an anti-Asian riot in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1907, the railroad had been completed and the goldmines had been depleted, and the white community was being agitated against a further influx of Asian labourers by the local media, itself controlled by whites. On September 8th, 1907, there was an anti-Asian riot in Vancouver, where a mob threw stones and broke the windows of many of the Asian businesses. Many Asians died due to riots and caused an uprising within the Asian community. It was two men that immerged from the smokey rubble that took a stand. The Asian businessmen asked Ottawa for compensation for the damage. Two of the businessmen were licensed opium dealers. Ottawa sent the new deputy Minister of Labour (and future Prime Minister) William Lyon Mackenzie King to Vancouver to solve the problem. Instead of providing compensation, Mackenzie King blamed the racist riot on the opium dens, arguing that because "white women and girls" were customers, the riot was justified. Instead of providing compensation, Mackenzie King created the Anti-Opium Act of 1908 - North America's first National anti-drug law. The law was racist on the surface — it forbade opium sales in Chinese opium dens but allowed it to continue in white botanical drug stores.
Judge Emily Murphy, Canada's first female judge and one of the famous five who fought for and won the right for women to vote, began writing a series of articles in 1920 in Maclean's Magazine entitled "The Grave Drug Menace". This series of articles was collected in a book called The Black Candle in 1922. These stories were mostly about opium and the Chinese, but Marihuana was also mentioned. Murphy took scare stories from American newspapers and repeated them verbatim, ascribing the worst crimes to the much-scapegoated hemp plant. Like Mackenzie King, Murphy saw opium as a tool the dark races used to seduce good white girls — she just added cannabis to their evil arsenal. Canadians, who always knew hemp as cannabis in medical form, had never heard of marihuana and were scared into supporting the prohibition. In 1923, cannabis was added to the growing list of prohibited drugs, with absolutely no debate in Parliament. Mackenzie King, the father of drug prohibition in North America, was Prime Minister at the time.
Interestingly, the forces behind cannabis prohibition in the USA were also behind Canadian cannabis prohibition. John D. Rockefeller Sr. owned Standard Oil, and through his influence had "The Flexner Report" of 1910 written out of the Rockefeller Institute. This report had the effect of keeping natural medicine and herbal medicine schools from getting funding. Rockefeller may well have understood that hemp was his natural competitor for the fuel market in North America, and most certainly understood that cannabis was a natural (and unmonopolizable) competitor to his large investments in synthetic medicine. Rockefeller had Mackenzie King on the payroll since 1915. Rockefeller's associate Andrew Mellon (along with another Rockefeller-dependent politician, Franklin Roosevelt) worked together to create the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which prohibited the cultivation and sale of cannabis in the United States.
At a federal level, the Marijuana Party of Canada is leading the campaign for cannabis legalisation. Provincial parties also exist, including the British Columbia Marijuana Party, Bloc pot, and the Marijuana Party of Nova Scotia.
As in many other countries of the world there is a de facto tolerance among many Canadians towards the private consumption of marijuana in Canada.
Health Canada permits marijuana for approved patients who can demonstrate a medical need for it. Chris Buors, a marijuana activist, was sentenced to six months in jail in November 2004 after pleading guilty to cannabis distribution and marketing charges arising from his operation of the Manitoba Compassion Club which served patients suffering from a variety of illnesses.
There are cases of users of medical marijuana in the United States who, on being persecuted in their own country, have fled across the border to Canada, where they have sought asylum under the United Nations refugee convention. [1] This began occurring in the early part of the 2000's when the then US Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered a clampdown on the use of medical marijuana in the US. Some of those who have fled are wanted by the US federal government on charges related to their use of marijuana.
On May 27th 2003, the Liberal Party of Canada introduced a bill that would have decriminalized small amounts of cannabis. Possession of 15 grams or less would have been punishable only with a fine, and those possessing between 15 and 30 grams would be either ticketed or arrested for criminal charges at the officers discretion. Personal cultivation of up to three plants would have also become a ticketable offense, while the punishment for cultivation in larger amounts would have been more severe. The Bill looked as though it was going to pass into law, but it died when parliament prorogued. An identical bill was introduced in November of 2004 which also died when the 2006 election was called. The recently elected Conservative government has publicly stated that it does not intend to resurrect this bill.[2]
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration is attempting to extradite Marc Emery, a cannabis activist and seed distributor from Vancouver,along with Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, his employees, to the United States, where they could face life sentences for selling seeds and allegedly laundering the profits into pro-cannabis legalization activities.
This is a draft plan by the city authorities in Vancouver called Preventing Harm from Psychoactive Drug Use that aims to regulate the sale of cannabis.