“There is a new drug in the schedule”: The Criminalization of Cannabis in Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 458-480
Author(s):  
Nathan Ruston
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Racial Minorities ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Documentary Source ◽  
New Drug ◽  
Canadian Population ◽  
Recreational Use ◽  
Addiction Drug

Canada has recently concluded its prohibition on the recreational use of cannabis, which lasted for nearly a century. However, when cannabis was first criminalized in 1923, there was effectively no use of it in Canada at that time, and scholars have struggled to identify the specific reasons for which cannabis was added to the schedule of prohibited drugs. When situated within the drug discourse of the time, the lack of an explanation for criminalization becomes less surprising; the contemporary links between addiction, drug use, and racism likely transformed any prohibitive drug control measures into the kind of policy that did not require debate or analysis on the part of Parliament. Drugs and racial minorities were presented as connected threats to the integrity of the white Canadian population and to moral order, and moral reformers capitalized on this connection to support the criminalization of drugs. While the documentary source of the criminalization of cannabis remains unknown, these discursive conditions are of far greater import in understanding why cannabis was criminalized.

scholarly journals Definition and classification of drug addiction and drug misuse issues

Sociologija ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Dragan Radulovic
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Optimal Strategy ◽  
Similar Case ◽  
Drug Misuse ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Soft Or ◽  
Drug Classification ◽  
Addiction Drug ◽  
Paper Author

In the paper author points out conceptual and terminological inconsistency of drug vocabulary and influence of value and moralistic elements. Most illustrative example for this represents term narcomany, which is still widely used by domestic authors to refer to drug use, in spite of its obvious insufficiency and impreciseness. Similar case is with terms toxicomany, habituation and addiction. Drug classification issue has been also analyzed in totality of viewing of drug use as a social and individual phenomenon. Author emphasizes that optimal strategy of drug control have to aim to differentiated approach to specific drugs, but also points out to unjustified referring to any drug as "soft" or harmless.

Social Benefits and Social Costs of Drug Control Laws

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Social Costs ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Black Markets ◽  
Control Laws ◽  
Benefits And Costs ◽  
Levels Of Control

While drug control laws tend to reduce the incidence of drug use, their enforcement is not without cost to society. Among the most obvious costs is the development of black markets in drugs and the criminalization of users. Modest control laws can substantially reduce drug use without incurring serious social costs. However, increasing the severity of control laws adds less and less to the benefits achieved and more and more to the costs to society. Ultimately the costs outweigh the benefits. We should aim for optimum levels of control by weighing both the benefits and costs of our drug control laws.

The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred W. McCoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
Control Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
White House ◽  
National Drug ◽  
The U.S

The current war on drugs being waged by the United States and United Nations rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the global nar­cotics traffic. In 1998, for example, the White House issued a National Drug Con­trol Strategy, proclaiming a 10-year program “to reduce illegal drug use and avail­ability 50 percent by the year 2007,” thereby achieving “the lowest recorded drug-use rate in American history.” To this end, the U.S. program plans to reduce foreign drug cultivation, shipments from source countries like Colombia, and smuggling in key transit zones. Although this strategy promises a balanced attack on both supply and demand, its ultimate success hinges upon the complete eradi­cation of the international supply of illicit drugs. “Eliminating the cultivation of il­licit coca and opium,” the document says in a revealing passage, “is the best ap­proach to combating cocaine and heroin availability in the U.S.” (U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy 1998: 1, 23, 28). Similarly, in 1997 the new head of the United Nations Drug Control Program, Dr. Pino Arlacchi, announced a 10-year program to eradicate all illicit opium and coca cultivation, starting in Afghanistan. Three years later, in the United Nation’s World Drug Report 2000, he defended prohibition’s feasibility by citing China as a case where “comprehensive narcotics control strategies . . . succeeded in eradicat­ing opium between 1949 and 1954”— ignoring the communist coercion that al­lowed such success. Arlacchi also called for an “end to the psychology of despair” that questions drug prohibition, and insisted that this policy can indeed produce “the eradication of coca and opium poppy production.” Turning the page, however, the reader will find a chart showing a sharp rise in world opium production from 500 tons in 1981 to 6,000 tons in 2000— a juxtaposition that seems to challenge Ar-lacchi’s faith in prohibition (Bonner 1997; Wren 1998a, 1998b; United Nations 2000d, 1–2, 24). Examined closely, the United States and United Nations are pur­suing a drug control strategy whose success requires not just the reduction but also the total eradication of illicit narcotics cultivation from the face of the globe. Like the White House, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) re­mains deeply, almost theologically committed to the untested proposition that the prohibition of cultivation is an effective response to the problem of illicit drugs.

POSTER BOARD F47: NEW DRUG USE IN PATIENTS WITH SPINAL CORD AND TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

2006 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 276
Author(s):  
Mark B. Mycyk ◽  
Daniel S. Heller ◽  
Martha Vungkhanching ◽  
Eric Larson ◽  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
New Drug

New Drug Use Among Agricultural Workers

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (8) ◽  
pp. 956-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith V. Bletzer
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
New Drug

Malaria: drug use and the immune response

Parasitology ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 105 (S1) ◽  
pp. S61-S70 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. T. Targett
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Drug Resistance ◽  
Plasmodium Falciparum ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Vector Control ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
Parasite Populations ◽  
Anopheline Mosquitoes

Malaria is a controllable disease, yet the resources required - human, technical and financial - are massive, and are currently beyond the vast majority of the 96 countries where the disease is endemic. The control measures most widely applied are vector control through spraying or use of insecticide-impregnated bednets, and chemotherapy. The biological problems to add to the resource issues are well known; increasing resistance of anopheline mosquitoes to the most widely used insecticides, and the progressive development of drug resistance in the parasite populations, especiallyPlasmodium falciparum.

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