A look at Canada’s damaging history with marijuana and what legalization might bring. My late father was born early enough to remember mail-order catalogues offering THC capsules to people who were having trouble sleeping or eating.
It worked, obviously. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the active ingredient in cannabis, and while the term “the munchies” didn’t exist in rural Ontario during the first two decades of the 20th century, that’s what the catalogues were selling. That, and a nice buzz.
Anyway, Dad said it was elderly people, farmers worn out by a life of hard labour, who used the capsules, and no one connected the drug to murder, insanity, death or the rape of white women by members of other races.
Then, in 1923, Canada lost its mind, bought the murder, rape and insanity thing, and criminalized cannabis, and for the next 93 years — to this very day — has persecuted heaven knows how many people, ruining lives, ending careers, denying comfort to the ill, and actually sending people to the horror of prison, all for something most smart people knew all along is a piddling, victimless act.
Neil Macdonald – CBC News – Dec 14, 2016.