DRUG LAWS ROOTED IN CLASS CONTROL

We tend to take the law for granted, but sometimes its origins deserve
a little thought.

For example, it's something of a puzzle why certain narcotics were
seen as dangerous and criminalized in the early 20th century when
before 1908, there were few restrictions placed on the sale or
consumption of narcotics.

For example, tonics, elixirs and cough syrups containing opium were
widely available. As well, cocaine was used as an ingredient in hair
dressing, wine, children's toothache drops and an obscure soft drink
that shall remain nameless.

Did society suddenly discover how dangerous these ingredients
were?

A lot of credit for the opium legislation of 1908 is given to a young
deputy minister of labour, MacKenzie King, who travelled to Vancouver
to investigate the anti-Asiatic riots of September 1907.

Agitators from Washington had organized a parade against Asians and
burned the Lieutenant-Governor in effigy. Some say the tension behind
the 1907 race riots was not directed against all Chinese but mostly
against Asian labourers because of the perception they were taking
jobs away from white Canadians.

The rioters marched to Chinatown and the Japanese quarter where they
vandalized stores and assaulted people. Shanghai Alley, one of the
streets most severely damaged by rioting, was home to an opium
factory, legal in 1907, but not for long.

The eventual result of King's visit was the Opium Act or
1908.

One theory as to why all this happened is that the anti-drug campaign
was motivated by a highly racialized drug panic. Chinese-Canadians
were said to be the victims of discrimination and to have been
disproportionately targeted by enforcement officials. People were
resisting the tide of immigration everywhere, and the consequent
threat to "Canadian" values.

A more benevolent theory is that the debate about drug addiction was
initiated by medical reformers in Victorian Canada.The emergence of
anti-narcotic legislation in the early 20th century was not simply
thinly-veiled anti-Chinese sentiment. Rather, the motive behind the
1908 Opium Act and its unanimous acceptance by Parliament was
initiated by physicians' in their self-prescribed role as protectors
of national health.

Perhaps this is why the act was revised several times to include
various other drugs. There was a lot of concern over cocaine, for
example in Montreal in 1910, where druggists dispensing cocaine were
called murderers.

And in 1923 the act was changed to also include marijuana, the users
of which were called drug fiends.

However, research has looked at the role of opium legislation in the
context of the government's need to deal with an increasingly
difficult labour situation.

Chinese labour constituted both real and symbolic threats within the
British Columbia working class, which was itself being de-skilled and
unionized.

Relations between management and labour were approaching a crisis
situation by the turn of the century, and the government needed a way
to channel class conflict and deflect blame.

The genius of having King deal with the 1907 Anti-Asiatic Exclusion
League riot was that it pinned responsibility on foreign agitators. It
was the Anti-Asiatic Exclusion League that was stirring things up.

Second, the problems of the labour market with its too few jobs, was
transformed into a race problem. It was the Chinese who were taking
jobs away.

Third, by blaming the Chinese for the opium problem, attention was
distracted from the whites who sold, distributed and used the drug.

The opium laws were a momentous change in criminal law in Canada. The
result was the transformation of private drug use into a public
problem. The responsibility was put on the heads of Mongolians, in
King's terms.

This turned people away from socialism as a solution to labour
problems. It also turned them away from seeing the labour crisis as a
class issue rather than an ethnic issue.

In the process the role of the state was preserved as legitimate, the
Chinese were vilified as a threat and drugs were demonized as the problem.

Did the state intend the crisis to further its legitimation? Probably
not.

Did it benefit? Certainly.

Chris McCormick teaches criminology at St. Thomas University. His
column on crime and criminal justice appears every second Thursday.