Twistyman
Well-Known Member
I copied this from our friend email.....
The following is taken without permission from Volume One of Ed Rosenthal's Big Book of Buds. The book was written in 2001, so the information is dated - but thought you may enjoy a little history.
Pot in Canada: The Early Days
and
Cannabis Across Canada
by Dana Larsen
About Dana Larsen: Dana Larsen has served as editor of Cannabis Culture magazine since its inception in 1994. He has written hundreds of articles and essays on cannabis and drug policy, hisotry and related issues. Dana is also a founding member of the BC and Canadian Marijuana Parties, and is the author of the Pot Puzzle Fun Book. Cannabis Culture can be accessed online at www.cannabisculture.com
Pot in Canada: The Early Days
Cannabis has been grown on Canadian soil since 1609, when Louis Hebert, a successful Parisian apothecary and friend of explorer Samuel de Champlain, harvested his first crop of cannabis and other plants in Nova France (now Nova Scotia). Skilled in the use of plant medicines, it is certain that Hebert was well aware of the medicinal properties of his cannabis buds.
Cannabis remained a staple crop in Canada until the early 1920s, when anti-pot sentiment began spreading across North America. In Canada, the flames of prohibition were fanned by Emily Murphy. Renowned as a champion for women's rights, Murphy was also a harsh racist who wrote under the pen name of "Janey Canuck."
Her most famous book, The Black Candle, was a very biased and sensationalized diatribe against cannabis and opium that was serialized in Maclean's magazine. In one chapter, a Los Angeles County Chief of Police is quoted as saying:
"Persons using this narcotic smoke the dry leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."
Throughout much of the book, Ms. Murphy uses race to inflame, claiming that "Chinese peddlers" and "Negroes coming into Canada" were engaged in a menacing plan to rule the world by getting the white race hooked on "dope," which they knew better than to use themselves.
When The Black Candle was released in 1922, its sole purpose was to arouse public opinion and pressure the government into creating stricter drug laws. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used this book to increase its power along with making cannabis illegal under the name "marijuana" in the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act of 1923.
In 1954 possession for the purpose of trafficking was created as a new offense in Canada, with a sentence of seven years. The sentence for this crime was immediately doubled in the following year, raising the maximum penalty to fourteen years imprisonment.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs took effect in 1961. While this Act eliminated whipping as a remnant of anti-Chinese days, it also increased the minimum penalty for cultivation of marijuana or opium poppies to seven years, and that for importation and exportation to fourteen years. Marijuana new carried the second heaviest minimum sentence in Canadian criminal law, surpassed only by sentencing for murder.
Despite the draconian penalties, the 1960s saw marijuana use among Canadian youth become more widespread than ever before. The United States became embroiled in the Vietnam War, and many conscientious objectors avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada, where they grew pot to support themselves. Much of the famed BC Bud now exported to the U.S. comes from genetics first brought to Canada by these American draft-dodgers.
By the late 1960s, the Canadian government seemed to be easing up on marijuana prohibition. Canada's Minister of Health and Welfare was quoted as saying that "both the Canadian and U.S. governments, by employing scare tactics, have been guilty of the indiscriminate overkill which has been effective only in reducing our own credibility."
The Le Dain Commission was appointed in Canada to undertake a complete and factual study of marijuana use and its effects. The results of the study were presented to the government in 1971, after four years and four million dollars' worth of research.
The Le Dain Commission recognized that the use of marijuana is not linked to violent crime in any way. It also concluded that prohibitionist laws have only served to create a subculture with little respect for the law and law enforcement, as well as diverting law enforcement capability, clogging the judicial system, and providing a base of funds for organized crime. The recommendation of the Le Dain Commission ranged from outright legalization to small fines for marijuana use.
After the commission's recommendations were announced, a "smoke-in" was held in Vancouver's Gastown. The event was called Grasstown, and attracted a few hundred activists, hippies and curious onlookers. Although this event began well, with songs being sung and a twenty-foot joint being passed around, the chief of police at this time felt the demonstration was in flagrant violation of law that could not be tolerated, and mounted policemen stormed the event, followed by the riot squad. Many of the event's participants suffered injuries, as did innocent bystanders and local shopkeepers who did not identify themselves quickly enough.
By the late 1970s there seemed to be consensus in parliament that marijuana needed to be legalized. Many politicians of the time, including Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, and Jean Chretien, publicly stated that they would enact some form of marijuana decriminalization as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the elections of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1980 ruined any chance of this happening.
With Nancy Reagan at the helm, the U.S. War on Drugs began in earnest once again, and Canada dutifully went along with their Southern Neighbors.
Cannabis Across Canada
The marijuana activism scene in Canada experienced a rebirth in the early 1990s, when activists began opening "hemp stores" that openly defied the ban on paraphernalia and pro-pot literature and magazines.
One of the first such stores was Hemp Nation, in London Ontario, owned by Chris Clay. In 1994, Marc Emery opened a store called Hemp BC in Vancouver, also violating Canada's prohibition. The Hemp BC store was a hive of sales and activity, and served as the central focus of pot activism in BC for the next few years. Profits from the Hemp BC funded activist projects, rallies and a newsletter that eventually grew into Cannabis Culture magazine. After meeting Sensi Seeds founder Ben Dronkers at the High Times Cannabis Cup, Emery was inspired to add a small selection of marijuana seeds. The seeds proved popular, and quickly became the financial backbone of the enterprise.
By 1995 the proliferation of hemp stores across Canada faced increasing legal pressure. Chris Clay was arrested and charged for selling some cannabis cuttings and seeds from his shop in May of that year. Thus began one of many legal challenges to the constitutionality of Canada's ban on marijuana. In December 1995, Ken Venema's hemp store, Kaiyun, was raided in Ontario. Emery's Hemp BC operation was raided in January 1996, exactly one month after Emery and his store were profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
During these raids, the police would empty out the store, taking out every single bong, pipe and pot seed on the premises. Sometimes they wouldn't even press charges for the seized paraphernalia, forcing the financially devastated store owner out of business without the need for a trial.
Hemp BC reopened in 1997, expanding to include the Cannabis Cafe, the Little Grow Store, and the Hemp BC Legal Assistance Centre, only to be raided again, almost two years after the first, in December of 1997. The raid was followed by a series of raids during 1998, so that Hemp BC and the Cannabis Cafe were shut down entirely.
There is now no overt over-the-counter outlets for marijuana seeds in Vancouver. There are some reputable places where seeds can be acquired, but most of the seed business takes place through mail-order only.
In 2001, Vancouver has a number of underground clubs where marijuana can be bought for a good price. A catering business called Stranjahs advertises that they will provide ganjalicious goodies for private parties. A few cafes allow patrons to smoke pot, but don't sell pot or tolerate any dealing on the premises.
Meanwhile, a number of "constitutional challenges" to marijuana prohibition are working their way through the Canadian court system. Most of these challenges are being fought in court by dedicated lawyers John Conroy and Alan Young, and include both Terry Parker's and Jim Wakeford's challenges for medical use.
In 1987, epileptic Terry Parker was charged with possession of marijuana, but the judge accepted Parker's plea of "medical necessity" and acquitted him of possession charges, thus making him Canada's first semi-legal marijuana user. Despite this, Parker's apartment was raided by Toronto police nine years later in July 1996. They found 71 plants, and charged him with possession, cultivation and trafficking.
The Ontario Court of Justice again accepted Parker's defense in December 1997, and found him not guilty of possession and cultivation of marijuana, by reason of medical necessity. He was found guilty of trafficking after admitting he had given buds to other sick friends. The judge even ruled that Parker's pot plants should be returned, although the police failed to do so. The decision made headlines across Canada.
The feds appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal, taking the cast to Ontario's highest court. In July 2000, the judge ruled that Canada's law against marijuana use was unconstitutional, and granted Terry Parker the right to use medical marijuana. The judge also ruled that Parliament had one year to rewrite Canada's marijuana laws to accommodate med-pot usage, or else pot-prohibition law would be completely erased from the Criminal Code.
Meanwhile, Ontario AIDS patient Jim Wakeford was fighting a court battle which ultimately forced Canada's government to grant him the nation's first "Section 56 exemption" to the ban on pot. Section 56 of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act allows the Minister of Health to grant individual exemptions to aspects of the drug laws, for scientific or medical purposes.
Wakeford received his exemption in May 1999, and by early 2001 over 200 other Canadians had also received exemptions for med-pot use. The process remains very slow and bureaucratically complex. Exemptees are not provided with pot or allowed to buy it from others. They must grow their own marijuana, but have no legal access to seeds or clones. They are also strictly limited to cultivating a small number of plants, and face police inspections and possible arrest if they violate any of the guidelines.
Many medical marijuana users buy their pot from an ever-increasing number of cannabis compassion clubs across Canada, which supply marijuana to those with a medical need. The largest of these is the BC Compassion Club, which sells medical pot to over 1500 clients from their clinic in downtown Vancouver. The club was founded in 1997 and has never suffered a police raid, although other Canadian clubs have.
Canada's Liberal government is slowly moving toward access to medical marijuana for medical purposes. New regulations which came into force July 31, 2001, allow patients to designate a caregiver who can grow marijuana for them, and expand the range of illnesses for which marijuana can be used. Although many patients and doctors still have serious complaints about the complexity and invasiveness of the regulations, no one can deny that Canada's prohibition against marijuana, and medical marijuana in particular, is fracturing in the face of increasing public pressure and court decisions.
Canada's marijuana liberation activists have also moved to directly challenge the status quo in the political arena. In 1997 the Province of Quebec saw the formation of a political party called the "Bloc Pot," a play on the name of Quebec's sovereigntist political party, the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc Pot ran in Quebec's 1998 provincial elections and gathered 1.25 percent of the vote.
In 2000, Bloc Pot founder and leader Marc-Boris St-Maurice traveled across Canada working with local activists to create a national political party devoted to cannabis liberation. The Canada Marijuana Party was born, with candidates all across the country running Canada's November 2000 federal election. Most candidates averaged between 2-3 percent of the popular vote, and in some ridings beat out the more established Green, Alliance and NDP candidates.
In January 2001, activists in BC got together and formed the BC Marijuana Party, running in BC's May election. Marc Emery became BC party president, financing the campaign and coordinating candidates, while Party Leader Brian Taylor, past mayor of Grand Forks, BC, traveled the province in the "Canna-Bus" campaigning for local candidates. The BC Marijuana Party has received a special mention in the BC election archives for being the first party in the province's history to run a full slate of 79 candidates in their very first election. The party received about 53,000 votes, 3.5 percent of the popular vote.
Nova Scotia activists have already registered the Nova Scotia Marijuana Party, and other Canadian provinces are working toward forming their own local marijuana parties, so that within a few years there should be a Marijuana Party candidate of some kind running in every single election - federal, provincial or municipal - everywhere in Canada.
Many Canadians hope that continuing activism, protest, and legal challenges will finally break the back of prohibition in Canada, giving all Canadians access to the benefits of the world's most amazing plant.
--------------------
The following is taken without permission from Volume One of Ed Rosenthal's Big Book of Buds. The book was written in 2001, so the information is dated - but thought you may enjoy a little history.
Pot in Canada: The Early Days
and
Cannabis Across Canada
by Dana Larsen
About Dana Larsen: Dana Larsen has served as editor of Cannabis Culture magazine since its inception in 1994. He has written hundreds of articles and essays on cannabis and drug policy, hisotry and related issues. Dana is also a founding member of the BC and Canadian Marijuana Parties, and is the author of the Pot Puzzle Fun Book. Cannabis Culture can be accessed online at www.cannabisculture.com
Pot in Canada: The Early Days
Cannabis has been grown on Canadian soil since 1609, when Louis Hebert, a successful Parisian apothecary and friend of explorer Samuel de Champlain, harvested his first crop of cannabis and other plants in Nova France (now Nova Scotia). Skilled in the use of plant medicines, it is certain that Hebert was well aware of the medicinal properties of his cannabis buds.
Cannabis remained a staple crop in Canada until the early 1920s, when anti-pot sentiment began spreading across North America. In Canada, the flames of prohibition were fanned by Emily Murphy. Renowned as a champion for women's rights, Murphy was also a harsh racist who wrote under the pen name of "Janey Canuck."
Her most famous book, The Black Candle, was a very biased and sensationalized diatribe against cannabis and opium that was serialized in Maclean's magazine. In one chapter, a Los Angeles County Chief of Police is quoted as saying:
"Persons using this narcotic smoke the dry leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."
Throughout much of the book, Ms. Murphy uses race to inflame, claiming that "Chinese peddlers" and "Negroes coming into Canada" were engaged in a menacing plan to rule the world by getting the white race hooked on "dope," which they knew better than to use themselves.
When The Black Candle was released in 1922, its sole purpose was to arouse public opinion and pressure the government into creating stricter drug laws. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used this book to increase its power along with making cannabis illegal under the name "marijuana" in the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act of 1923.
In 1954 possession for the purpose of trafficking was created as a new offense in Canada, with a sentence of seven years. The sentence for this crime was immediately doubled in the following year, raising the maximum penalty to fourteen years imprisonment.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs took effect in 1961. While this Act eliminated whipping as a remnant of anti-Chinese days, it also increased the minimum penalty for cultivation of marijuana or opium poppies to seven years, and that for importation and exportation to fourteen years. Marijuana new carried the second heaviest minimum sentence in Canadian criminal law, surpassed only by sentencing for murder.
Despite the draconian penalties, the 1960s saw marijuana use among Canadian youth become more widespread than ever before. The United States became embroiled in the Vietnam War, and many conscientious objectors avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada, where they grew pot to support themselves. Much of the famed BC Bud now exported to the U.S. comes from genetics first brought to Canada by these American draft-dodgers.
By the late 1960s, the Canadian government seemed to be easing up on marijuana prohibition. Canada's Minister of Health and Welfare was quoted as saying that "both the Canadian and U.S. governments, by employing scare tactics, have been guilty of the indiscriminate overkill which has been effective only in reducing our own credibility."
The Le Dain Commission was appointed in Canada to undertake a complete and factual study of marijuana use and its effects. The results of the study were presented to the government in 1971, after four years and four million dollars' worth of research.
The Le Dain Commission recognized that the use of marijuana is not linked to violent crime in any way. It also concluded that prohibitionist laws have only served to create a subculture with little respect for the law and law enforcement, as well as diverting law enforcement capability, clogging the judicial system, and providing a base of funds for organized crime. The recommendation of the Le Dain Commission ranged from outright legalization to small fines for marijuana use.
After the commission's recommendations were announced, a "smoke-in" was held in Vancouver's Gastown. The event was called Grasstown, and attracted a few hundred activists, hippies and curious onlookers. Although this event began well, with songs being sung and a twenty-foot joint being passed around, the chief of police at this time felt the demonstration was in flagrant violation of law that could not be tolerated, and mounted policemen stormed the event, followed by the riot squad. Many of the event's participants suffered injuries, as did innocent bystanders and local shopkeepers who did not identify themselves quickly enough.
By the late 1970s there seemed to be consensus in parliament that marijuana needed to be legalized. Many politicians of the time, including Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, and Jean Chretien, publicly stated that they would enact some form of marijuana decriminalization as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the elections of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1980 ruined any chance of this happening.
With Nancy Reagan at the helm, the U.S. War on Drugs began in earnest once again, and Canada dutifully went along with their Southern Neighbors.
Cannabis Across Canada
The marijuana activism scene in Canada experienced a rebirth in the early 1990s, when activists began opening "hemp stores" that openly defied the ban on paraphernalia and pro-pot literature and magazines.
One of the first such stores was Hemp Nation, in London Ontario, owned by Chris Clay. In 1994, Marc Emery opened a store called Hemp BC in Vancouver, also violating Canada's prohibition. The Hemp BC store was a hive of sales and activity, and served as the central focus of pot activism in BC for the next few years. Profits from the Hemp BC funded activist projects, rallies and a newsletter that eventually grew into Cannabis Culture magazine. After meeting Sensi Seeds founder Ben Dronkers at the High Times Cannabis Cup, Emery was inspired to add a small selection of marijuana seeds. The seeds proved popular, and quickly became the financial backbone of the enterprise.
By 1995 the proliferation of hemp stores across Canada faced increasing legal pressure. Chris Clay was arrested and charged for selling some cannabis cuttings and seeds from his shop in May of that year. Thus began one of many legal challenges to the constitutionality of Canada's ban on marijuana. In December 1995, Ken Venema's hemp store, Kaiyun, was raided in Ontario. Emery's Hemp BC operation was raided in January 1996, exactly one month after Emery and his store were profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
During these raids, the police would empty out the store, taking out every single bong, pipe and pot seed on the premises. Sometimes they wouldn't even press charges for the seized paraphernalia, forcing the financially devastated store owner out of business without the need for a trial.
Hemp BC reopened in 1997, expanding to include the Cannabis Cafe, the Little Grow Store, and the Hemp BC Legal Assistance Centre, only to be raided again, almost two years after the first, in December of 1997. The raid was followed by a series of raids during 1998, so that Hemp BC and the Cannabis Cafe were shut down entirely.
There is now no overt over-the-counter outlets for marijuana seeds in Vancouver. There are some reputable places where seeds can be acquired, but most of the seed business takes place through mail-order only.
In 2001, Vancouver has a number of underground clubs where marijuana can be bought for a good price. A catering business called Stranjahs advertises that they will provide ganjalicious goodies for private parties. A few cafes allow patrons to smoke pot, but don't sell pot or tolerate any dealing on the premises.
Meanwhile, a number of "constitutional challenges" to marijuana prohibition are working their way through the Canadian court system. Most of these challenges are being fought in court by dedicated lawyers John Conroy and Alan Young, and include both Terry Parker's and Jim Wakeford's challenges for medical use.
In 1987, epileptic Terry Parker was charged with possession of marijuana, but the judge accepted Parker's plea of "medical necessity" and acquitted him of possession charges, thus making him Canada's first semi-legal marijuana user. Despite this, Parker's apartment was raided by Toronto police nine years later in July 1996. They found 71 plants, and charged him with possession, cultivation and trafficking.
The Ontario Court of Justice again accepted Parker's defense in December 1997, and found him not guilty of possession and cultivation of marijuana, by reason of medical necessity. He was found guilty of trafficking after admitting he had given buds to other sick friends. The judge even ruled that Parker's pot plants should be returned, although the police failed to do so. The decision made headlines across Canada.
The feds appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal, taking the cast to Ontario's highest court. In July 2000, the judge ruled that Canada's law against marijuana use was unconstitutional, and granted Terry Parker the right to use medical marijuana. The judge also ruled that Parliament had one year to rewrite Canada's marijuana laws to accommodate med-pot usage, or else pot-prohibition law would be completely erased from the Criminal Code.
Meanwhile, Ontario AIDS patient Jim Wakeford was fighting a court battle which ultimately forced Canada's government to grant him the nation's first "Section 56 exemption" to the ban on pot. Section 56 of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act allows the Minister of Health to grant individual exemptions to aspects of the drug laws, for scientific or medical purposes.
Wakeford received his exemption in May 1999, and by early 2001 over 200 other Canadians had also received exemptions for med-pot use. The process remains very slow and bureaucratically complex. Exemptees are not provided with pot or allowed to buy it from others. They must grow their own marijuana, but have no legal access to seeds or clones. They are also strictly limited to cultivating a small number of plants, and face police inspections and possible arrest if they violate any of the guidelines.
Many medical marijuana users buy their pot from an ever-increasing number of cannabis compassion clubs across Canada, which supply marijuana to those with a medical need. The largest of these is the BC Compassion Club, which sells medical pot to over 1500 clients from their clinic in downtown Vancouver. The club was founded in 1997 and has never suffered a police raid, although other Canadian clubs have.
Canada's Liberal government is slowly moving toward access to medical marijuana for medical purposes. New regulations which came into force July 31, 2001, allow patients to designate a caregiver who can grow marijuana for them, and expand the range of illnesses for which marijuana can be used. Although many patients and doctors still have serious complaints about the complexity and invasiveness of the regulations, no one can deny that Canada's prohibition against marijuana, and medical marijuana in particular, is fracturing in the face of increasing public pressure and court decisions.
Canada's marijuana liberation activists have also moved to directly challenge the status quo in the political arena. In 1997 the Province of Quebec saw the formation of a political party called the "Bloc Pot," a play on the name of Quebec's sovereigntist political party, the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc Pot ran in Quebec's 1998 provincial elections and gathered 1.25 percent of the vote.
In 2000, Bloc Pot founder and leader Marc-Boris St-Maurice traveled across Canada working with local activists to create a national political party devoted to cannabis liberation. The Canada Marijuana Party was born, with candidates all across the country running Canada's November 2000 federal election. Most candidates averaged between 2-3 percent of the popular vote, and in some ridings beat out the more established Green, Alliance and NDP candidates.
In January 2001, activists in BC got together and formed the BC Marijuana Party, running in BC's May election. Marc Emery became BC party president, financing the campaign and coordinating candidates, while Party Leader Brian Taylor, past mayor of Grand Forks, BC, traveled the province in the "Canna-Bus" campaigning for local candidates. The BC Marijuana Party has received a special mention in the BC election archives for being the first party in the province's history to run a full slate of 79 candidates in their very first election. The party received about 53,000 votes, 3.5 percent of the popular vote.
Nova Scotia activists have already registered the Nova Scotia Marijuana Party, and other Canadian provinces are working toward forming their own local marijuana parties, so that within a few years there should be a Marijuana Party candidate of some kind running in every single election - federal, provincial or municipal - everywhere in Canada.
Many Canadians hope that continuing activism, protest, and legal challenges will finally break the back of prohibition in Canada, giving all Canadians access to the benefits of the world's most amazing plant.
--------------------
