The War on (Some) Drugs

The actual roots of the war on drugs in Canada go back to the late 1800s, which saw a great many Chinese immigrants arriving on the west coast. They were in search of employment from gold mining on the Fraser River and more significantly the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

After the railway was complete, at the cost of 4000 Chinese lives, most former labourers were left in destitute poverty in Vancouver shantytowns. Desperate for work, the Chinese would accept very low wages to support their families. White labour movements within British Colombia began to see the Chinese as a threat, rallying around the familiar cry of “they’re stealing our jobs!” This labour unrest -- combined with racism -- created an explosive situation and a 1907 race riot in Vancouver.

At this time William Lyon Mackenzie King, future Prime Minister of Canada, was determined to eliminate this civil unrest by eliminating the Chinese. During the course of his investigation he discovered the use of opium among some Chinese immigrants and decided this would be his catalyst. Mackenzie King submitted a report entitled “The Need for the Suppression of Opium Traffic in Canada”. Rather than being based on any social or scientific study, the report instead relied on sensational news clipping about white women being ruined by opium (primarily by sleeping with Chinese men) and Chinese men making money off selling opium.

This report led to Canada’s first drug law on which all future drug laws would be based, The Opium Narcotic Act of 1908, which banned the import, manufacture and sale of opiates for non-medical purposes. It passed in legislature without any debate or opposition in senate. The section of the new law with the most disastrous effect for the Chinese population was that anyone convicted could face deportation if applicable. Whipping was also a punishment under the act, which wasn’t removed until 1961. Thousands of Chinese were deported to the joy of white supremacists everywhere.

The Opium Narcotic Act of 1908 was later amended in 1911 to include cocaine and morphine and gave the police wider powers of search and seizure. By the early 1920s other groups had wised up to the idea of using drug laws to control, harass and deport minorities. Emily Murphy, Canada’s first female police magistrate judge, began writing articles about the drug trade in Maclean’s Magazine and wrote a book called The Black Candle. The articles and book were filled with racist stereotypes, baseless, exaggerated claims about drug effects (like marijuana causing insanity and murder) and the familiar fear mongering imagery of innocent white youth being corrupted by vile foreigners through drugs. Murphy, a member of the Irish Orange Order - a religious group dedicated to a pure white Canada - wrote The Black Candle in 1922. Like clockwork, in 1923 a new Opium and Narcotic Drug Act made marijuana illegal, 14 years before the USA did the same. Murphy was instrumental in defining addiction as a law enforcement issue.

This general trend of fear mongering, dishonest and slanderous media campaigns followed by pressure on complacent governments has been the driving force of drug war legislation in Canada ever since. In all cases the police and other government organizations have been given more money and unprecedented power, all in the name of “fighting drugs”. The drug war is thus one of the greatest and costliest scams ever pulled in this country.

By 1961 the minimum sentences for marijuana were second only to murder, in terms of severity. Although there seemed to be a thaw in the 1970s with numerous Canadian politicians agreeing to legalize marijuana, the 1980 election of Ronald Regan as president of the U.S. put a halt on all of that. Canadian politicians rushed to please the American government and join the escalated War on Drugs. In 1988 the government passed a censorship law that banned the avocation of legalization or promotion of any drug, herb or substance outlawed by the government. Fortunately, this draconian law was overturned in 1994.

There has been dissent however. In 1969 the government appointed LeDain Commission studied illicit drug use in Canada and concluded in favour of a gradual decriminalization of all illegal drugs. The 2002 Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which researched marijuana, favoured outright legalization. And, people all across Canada resist the War on Drugs every day by disobeying its unjust laws. TRIP and the harm reduction movement as a whole is part of that resistance.

The reasons for dissent are powerful. According to the Senate itself this nation is giving the police upwards of 1 billion dollars a year to fight a war that has failed and was impossible to ‘win’ in the first place. At the same time we are told there is no money for hospitals or better schools. Last year 92, 255 people had run-ins with the law for drugs. The War on Drugs is a travesty in principle because a government that calls itself democratic has no business telling anyone what to ingest. Make no mistake; at its core the War on Drugs is simply militarized diet control and mind control. The War on Drugs has also failed to accomplish any of its major goals (in fact it has had the opposite effect) and has caused much more harm than good in pursuing those goals.

The dissent is spreading. Portugal has decriminalized personal possession and use of all formally illegal drugs. Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands and several states in Australia have decriminalized personal possession of marijuana in one way or another. Many other nations are considering drug law reforms, especially decriminalization of marijuana. Up until the election of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, Canada was one of them. Last spring the Drug Tsar of Scotland publicly stated, “We’ve lost the war on drugs”.

There is still however a great deal of unwillingness from the authorities to end this war. Money, pride and political pressure play large roles in the state of denial. From within Canada, police forces that have gained huge sums of money and power have almost always spoken out against any moves to end or lessen the impact of the drug war. Politicians who have based their careers on being tough on crime also stand to lose prestige if prohibition ends. Certain politically powerful groups on the right, like the Conservative Party, advocate strict moral control and are ideologically opposed to ending the drug war. Case in point: despite the obvious failure of prohibitionist policies the Harper government has called for mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes.

Above all, pressure from the United States, the central architect and driver of the War on Drugs has always threatened any Canadian government that even thinks about decriminalization or legalization. This pressure is exerted overtly by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a powerful American super agency founded in 1973 by Richard Nixon, the man who formally coined and declared the War on Drugs. The DEA works closely with the RCMP and one their most recent collaborations has resulted in the arrest and potential extradition to the US of Marc Emery, who has been charged with selling marijuana seeds, not technically a crime in Canada, and faces life in a US prison if extradited. Could obeying the US be more important to Canadian authorities than the rights of its citizens or the sovereignty of the nation?

In the future when this is all over, because any insane situation must eventually come to an end, the War on Drugs will be seen as a horrible blight on humanity, one of the low points of our history. But until we as people stop allowing these vile politicians, petty bureaucrats and police thugs to dictate laws to us, the War on Drugs will have a long life yet.