Dan Malleck, Associate Professor of Health Sciences at Brock, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about the history of Canadian drug policy.

Malleck writes:

Current discussions on the history of prohibition and drug laws in Canada have explored the narrative that Canada’s drug laws were fuelled by racism.

The story goes like this: A 1907 anti-immigration attack on Chinese establishments in Vancouver’s Chinatown brought the deputy minister of labour, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to the city to allocate reparations to businesses damaged in the riots. Some of the submissions came from opium “factories,” small businesses in which raw opium was refined for smoking.

King investigated the issue further, the story goes. In his initial report to Parliament, King noted that opium’s “baneful influences are too well-known to require comment” and urged a law to ban opium for non-medicinal use. In July 1908, King’s boss, Rodolphe Lemieux, presented a one-page Opium Act to Parliament. It passed through the House of Commons with no notable commentary and through Senate with little more than a minor amendment.

Scholars have interpreted King’s initiative as anti-Chinese. The speed at which the Opium Act sailed through Parliament is also seen as evidence of a racist reaction to what may have been conceived to be a predominantly Chinese activity. As well, since restrictions on Chinese immigration to Canada were increasing, this is considered by many scholars to be a further attempt to restrict Chinese immigration.

Continue reading the full article here.