CHARBONNEAU – Damage caused by criminalization will take years to repair

THE DAMAGE DONE by a century of criminalization cannot be undone quickly but B.C. has taken the right approach in decriminalizing small amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy; opioids such as heroin, fentanyl, and morphine.

And, despite some reservations on my part, B.C. is doing the right thing in prohibiting the use of legal drugs in public places.

The criminalization of drugs has failed completely in reducing deaths caused by drug use, but preventing deaths wasn’t the intent of drug laws in the first place.

The intent of the Opium Act of 1908, and those that followed, was to suppress marginalized and racialized groups and to save good white women from lives of debauchery. The laws were meant to protect the morals of European Canadians from outsiders.

Emily Murphy, a.k.a. “Janey Canuck,” made this clear. She wrote tales of how white women from “good families” were being lured into Chinese opium dens.

Other marginalized groups were not spared in Murphy’s racist rants. In her 1922 book, The Black Candle, she wrote how shady Black Pullman Porters were stretching the limits of their new-found freedom by selling drugs on trains:

“When it comes to railway porters – Ah well! There are some we know of personally whose liberty is more attributable to their good luck than their good behaviour.”

In 1923, cannabis was added to the Drug Act with the simple declaration: “There is a new drug in the schedule.” No debate. Few, if any, white Canadians used cannabis at the time. Its use had been associated with Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians. Cannabis was said to cause madness and promiscuity.

While the criminalization of certain drugs targeted marginalized groups, drugs used by the white European majority, mostly men, remained legal.

Sure, alcohol use was debated and temperance unions were formed by women; many who experienced beating at the hands of their drunken husbands. But alcohol was not criminalized for very long. Other “white” drugs such as tobacco and coffee remained legal.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King was aware of the hypocrisy. When asked why tobacco had not been added to the Drug Act, Mackenzie King replied that tobacco was as much a drug as opium but he was not prepared to admit it publicly. He said that opium could be taken “in much the same way that an Englishman might use a cigar, or spirits (High Society by Neil Boyd).”

In echoes of past drug laws, new legislation that prohibits legal drug use in public places targets an underclass: the homeless, one-half of whom are Indigenous.

And like earlier drug laws, the intent of prohibition of drug use in public places is not to save lives: it’s to spare us the indignity of facing our collective failure to house people where they could privately use legal drugs.

Unfortunately, indoors is where three-quarters of overdose deaths. Only one-quarter occur outside.

I don’t object to the prohibition of legal drug use in public places any more than I object to intoxication from alcohol use in public places. But my motives are questionable; it’s only to spare my day in the park from unpleasantness.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.