BY SEAN SEURATTAN
Canada stands atop the world in a position to determine the path that all others will follow regarding cannabis. Our progressive nation is home to the innovators and visionaries that will sculpt a successful yet ethical model for cannabis to become one of the most lucrative industries in history. While it is liberating to see the world open its heart to the wonders of this incredible plant, decades of stigma and misinformation are not easily dismissed. Wrongly classified as a harmful narcotic, cannabis has sat in prohibition for decades and was vilified by society at large. However, humans are masters at wanting what they can’t have, so the illicit market for cannabis was born. Ironically, this illegal market, once a high priority target for a failed war on drugs is now the blueprint for Canada’s emerging legal industry.
Prohibition of cannabis began in Canada in 1923 under the Narcotics Drug Act Amendment Bill. It is believed that a suffragist author named Emily Murphy largely influenced this. She wrote a great many articles attempting to alert the nation to the dangers of cannabis by grouping it with truly harmful substances. She used anecdotes from anti-drug reformists and police to form her arguments. She tried to create strong connections between drugs and race and the threat this posed to white women.
She claimed racialized immigrants would use drugs to bring about the downfall of the white race. While some historians disclaim this from being the cause of cannabis prohibition, due to the extremely subjective nature of these articles, the articles were still widely read at the time and fanned the flames of drug panic. The road from legitimate concern to rampant paranoia was short.
This is important because all the mistakes to follow were born from a place of fear and racism. Cannabis prohibition, down to its very DNA, was meant for and used to target specific groups. While society has made hard fought progress since it began, remnants of its original purpose remain. Names like illegal Black Market and legal White Market retain their connotations to this day. This is a stereotype The Heightened Chef was born to destroy. Unafraid to be subversive, we knew cannabis created a rich, colourful community, which led a productive, peaceful lifestyle despite information to the contrary. There is already a long history of good being done with cannabis, and the legacy of this powerful plant is building. Participants in the trade who predated its legality and industrialization will no longer be burdened with a name chaining them to the past. Going forward, the Legacy Market is a much better suited moniker.
In part II of Redefining the Cannabis Black Market into The Legacy Market, we will look at why the government of Canada legalized cannabis, the exclusion of Black cannabis groups, and the true strength of the Legacy Market.
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