Pot activists in Canada who took part in the annual “Global Marijuana March” on May 3 demanded the decriminalization of marijuana.
They might also have asked why it became illegal in the first place.
That happened in 1923, and if there was any kind of parliamentary debate, historians have been unable to find a record of it.
When Parliament decided to add marijuana to the schedule of proscribed drugs that year, Canada became one of the first countries to make smoking pot illegal. The U.S. didn’t accomplish that until 14 years later, in the midst of the Great Depression.
In 1923, then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Liberal government introduced an Act to Prohibit the Improper Use of Opium and other Drugs. The federal health minister at the time, Henri Beland, said the bill was a consolidation of other legislation that had been passed over the previous few years, with some changes.
Daniel Schwartz – CBC News – May 03, 2014.
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