Pubdate: Mon, 01 Oct 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Mark Bourrie
Note: Mark Bourrie is an Ottawa author and journalist. He is author 
of Hemp, published by Key Porter in 2003 and about to be re-issued as 
an e-book under the title Weed. His latest book, Fighting Words: 
Canada's Best War Reporting, was published Sept. 15 by Dundurn.

A PIONEER IN THE WAR ON POT

Emily Murphy is often hailed for her ground-breaking work on women's 
rights. Few realize she was also a trailblazer in another area: 
stirring up anti-drug hysteria

'The Famous Five were a group of strong-minded, trail-blazing Alberta 
women who challenged the status quo and created lasting and positive 
change for every Canadian woman." That's how federal cabinet minister 
Rona Ambrose recently described the five legendary Western feminists 
whose appeal to the British Privy Council won women the legal status 
of "persons" in 1929. Ambrose was speaking in Edmonton, unveiling a 
giant piece of street art honouring the group. "These women are an 
important part of our country's history," Ambrose said, "and I am 
delighted that, through this mural, they are now a permanent part of 
our city's visual landscape."

They are indeed important to our country's history. Emily Murphy, who 
spearheaded the Persons Case in her bid to be appointed to the 
Senate, made Canada the first Western country to launch a war on pot. 
She convinced the government to ban cannabis by writing a book that, 
if it came on the market today, would certainly fall under the hate 
crimes provision of the Criminal Code.

Her anti-drug, anti immigrant manifesto, The Black Candle, was 
published by Thomas Allen in 1922. It was a best-seller in its day 
and was reprinted in the 1970s by Coles Bookstores, so it's not hard 
to find a copy now.

Murphy had a theory that she concocted and passed off as truth: 
Africans, African Americans, Chinese, Middle-Easterners, Greeks, 
Mexicans and other non-white people had banded together into an 
international conspiracy called The Ring.

The Ring had a plan to corrupt the "purity" of the white race. They'd 
flood the streets of European and North American cities with drugs. 
The Chinese would run the opium trade. Cocaine would come from South America.

The effects of this conspiracy, she claimed, could already be seen on 
the streets of Edmonton, where Murphy was a police court magistrate. 
Opposite page 30 in The Black Candle is a photo of a white woman with 
an opium pipe. The caption reads: "An open-eyed insensate in the 
dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug."

Below, another picture shows the natural progression of The Ring's 
victims: a fully-clothed white woman reclines with shirtless black 
man. The caption reads: "When she acquires the habit, she does not 
know what lies before her; later she does not care."

Opposite page 49, there's a picture of a dark-skinned man and white 
woman, posed together, with opium paraphernalia in front of them. The 
caption says: "Once a woman has started on the trail of the poppy, 
the sledding is very easy and downgrade all the way."

The Ring was said to have its claws into Saskatoon, Calgary, Montreal 
and other Canadian cities where young women - "teenage drug-slaves," 
who were "forever maimed for virtue," were sent out into the streets 
to recruit new addicts and sex slaves.

Murphy claimed a Canadian girl boasted that she got a $25 commission 
for every boy and girl she initiated into the drug habit. "It is a 
commission soon repaid, for the victims always find the money for the 
daily dope," Murphy wrote. "They cannot do without it. In one bank, 
four young bank clerks were found to be cocaine-fiends and, 
doubtless, similar conditions exist in other financial institutions."

The answer, she wrote, was to get rid of the people of colour.

"The Chinese, as a rule are a friendly people and have a fine sense 
of humour that puts them on an easy footing with our folk, as 
compared with the Hindus and others we might mention. Ah Duck, or 
whatever we choose to call him, is patient, polite and persevering. 
He also inhales deeply. He also has other peculiarities such as 
paying his debts and refraining from profanity....

"Still , it behooves the people in Canada and the United States, to 
consider the desirability of these visitors - for they are visitors - 
and to say whether or not we shall be 'at home' to them in the 
future. A visitor may be polite, patient, persevering, as above 
delineated, but if he carries poisoned lollypops in his pocket and 
feeds them out to our children, it might be wise to put him out."

There was no point confronting individual Chinese opium dealers about 
their plans for race debasement, according to Murphy. Only the top 
people in The Ring knew the real goal of the plot.

"It is hardly credible that the average Chinese peddler has any 
definite idea in his mind of bringing about the downfall of the white 
race, his swaying motive being probably that of greed, but in the 
hands of his superiors, he may become a powerful instrument to that 
end. But Canadian officials wouldn't be fooled.

"In discussing this subject, Major Crehan of British Columbia has 
pointed out that whatever their motive, the traffic always comes with 
the Oriental, and that it was their desire to injure the 
bright-browed races of the world."

But it wasn't just the Chinese who were pushing drugs and entrapping 
white women, Murphy said.

One detective "found a Negro smoking the drug in a wardrobe with a 
white woman on either side of him," Murphy reported. "Over their 
heads they had a thick tartan which our detective calls a 'pled,' and 
into this the Negro blew smoke which the women inhaled. By this means 
the three persons became intoxicated on one pipe."

The stakes were high. People had to be warned "that in Great Britain, 
in 1919, for the first time, the deaths have actually exceeded the 
births ... in a generation or so, these prolific Germans, with the 
equally prolific Russians and the still more fertile yellow races, 
will wrest leadership of the world from the British. Wise folks ought 
to think about these things for a while."

Canada's banning of marijuana and hashish is perhaps Murphy's lasting 
legacy. And because of her writings in Maclean's magazine, Canada 
became the first Western country to ban cannabis since Orleanist 
France went after bohemian dope smokers in the 1840s.

Smoke pot, Murphy warned, and you'll not only fall into the clutches 
of the Mexican elements in The Ring. You'll also go crazy.

In The Black Candle, she quoted Charles A. Jones, the Los Angeles 
chief of police, who wrote her a letter saying "persons using this 
narcotic, smoke the dried leaves of the (hemp) 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.

"When coming under the influence of this narcotic, these victims 
present the most horrible condition imaginable. They are dispossessed 
of their natural and normal will power and their mentality is that of 
idiots. If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in 
the untimely death of its addict."

Murphy also quoted Hamilton Fyfe, author of the book The Real Mexico: 
"They (the Mexicans) madden themselves with a drug called Marahuana. 
This has strange and terrible effects. It appears to make those who 
swallow it do whatever is uppermost in their thoughts.

"At El Paso, a peon came across the International Bridge firing a 
rifle at all and sundry. Much talk against the Americans and a dose 
of Marahuana had decided him to invade the United States by himself. 
The bridge-keeper quickly put a bullet in the poor wretch."

And Murphy had a quote from a Dr. Warnock in The Journal of Mental 
Sciences for January 1903, who wrote that "acute mania from hasheesh 
varies from 'a mild, short attack of excitement to a prolonged attack 
of furious mania, ending in exhaustion and even death.'" Users of the 
drug "are good-for-nothing lazy fellows who live by begging or 
stealing, and pester their relations for money to buy hasheesh, often 
assaulting them when they refuse the demands.

"The moral degradation of these cases is their most salient symptom; 
loss of social position, shamelessness, addiction to lying and theft, 
and a loose, irregular life makes them a curse to their families."

Murphy, based on her expertise as a drug researcher, warned there are 
only three ways to get free of a marijuana addiction: insanity, death 
or abandonment.

In 1923, the federal government, prompted by Murphy, banned cannabis. 
Two years later, Murphy took crates full of her book to the first 
League of Nations drug conference and nominated herself for a Nobel 
Prize, hoping that her message of racial threat and drug menace would 
scare the rest of the world into following the Canadian lead.

Fourteen years later, the U.S. government passed the Marijuana Tax 
Stamp Act, banning cannabis. A few months later, William Lyon 
Mackenzie King's government, which seemed to have forgotten that it 
had already banned marijuana in 1923, pushed a bill through 
Parliament to ban it again.

This time, the ban stuck. The reasons for the prohibition would be 
forgotten and Murphy's reputation would be edited to make her a 
progressive far ahead of her time. But 20 days after Ambrose unveiled 
the Edmonton mural, thousands of pot smokers rallied on Parliament Hill.

A blue cloud of smoke wafted over the Famous Five statue that sits 
just east of the Senate doors. No one seemed to be going insane or 
looking like they were about to personally invade the United States. 
There were people of all colours in the crowd, but if any of them 
were members of The Ring, they hid it well. The peaceful 
demonstrators were, however, breaking the law, smoking a banned 
substance that could in theory have landed any one of them in prison. 
Emily Murphy's legacy lives on in more ways than most care to remember.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom