PROHIBITION HAS RACIST ROOTS

Dear Editor,

Russell Barth offered many cogent arguments [Drugs: Effective
arguments abound, May 7 Letters, www.langleyadvance.com], however he
was not exhaustive.

Yet another reason to consider re-legalizing cannabis is the way in
which it was made illegal in the first place.

The campaign to make drug-use illegal was not a public health
campaign. Much like the movement to ban alcohol, prohibition was
forced upon the nation by religious zealots who thought that they had
the right to control the private behaviour of others.

It was said that smoking two puffs of marijuana made one a homicidal
maniac, and this was often attributed to demonic possession.

Another important factor was race. Drug prohibition was supported by
religious fundamentalists, but the main reason that it was brought in
was to allow the police to round up all of the Chinese-Canadian
immigrants and throw them out. In 1922, three-quarters of those
jailed for drug offenses were of Chinese ancestry.

The first drug laws in this country were large taxes on opium dens,
which when combined with the "head tax," were supposed to drive the
Chinese to financial ruin.

To this day, First Nations youth are disproportionately affected by
our prohibitionist policies.

The prime minister apologized for the head tax, and he should
apologize for prohibition. It was a racist policy that had no basis
in fact. It is the most egregious assault on individual liberty and
does not belong in a so-called "free" society.

Travis Erbacher,

Langley