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Letter to Editor: Cannabis added to list of prohibited drugs in 1923
By Hempology | September 8, 2007
The Georgia Straight, BC
06 Sep 2007
RACE RIOT GENESIS OF OUR POT PROHIBITION
Your article on Vancouver’s race riot 100 years ago was interesting ["Commemorating a race riot", Aug. 30--Sept. 6]. A point not mentioned is that its legacy continues in the criminalization of cannabis/hemp/marijuana. If Wikipedia is correct, “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]. Ottawa sent the new deputy Minister of Labour ( and future Prime Minister ) William Lyon Mackenzie King to Vancouver to resolve the issue. Since the Asian businessmen were licensed opium dealers, Mackenzie King condoned 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.”
Canada’s first female judge, Emily Murphy, wrote a book called The Black Candle in 1922. Wikipedia continues: “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 and just added cannabis to their evil arsenal.”
Canada passed the Immigration Exclusion Act in 1923. At that time, “cannabis was added to the growing list of prohibited drugs, with absolutely no debate in Parliament.”
PETER LIPSKIS, Vancouver
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