III
PROHIBITED BY MAN
THE EFFICACY OF PROHIBITION:
THE CAPACITY & POWER TO PRODUCE A DESIRED EFFECT
©Rev. Bro. W. P. Phillips 2008
all rights reserved
It's a tragic state of affairs when Crown representatives, Parliamentarians, and the judiciary, rest their laurels upon bigotry, systemic discrimination and the pretense of getting “tough on crime” in order to realign Canadian law to coincide with a foreign power and its' global agenda
1. The aforementioned seem to believe that if they enforce a mantra of counterproductive lies with harsher sentences Canadians will better protected; hence feel safer. Nothing could be further from the truth! This agenda, both in its' entirety and as it relates to the prohibition of cannabis, is a blight upon and a betrayal of Canada, Canadians and the nations' international reputation; all to ride on America's coattails.
The gist of the “Speech from the Throne”
2 - concerning how a National Anti-Drug Strategy giving law enforcement agencies powers to take on those who produce and push drugs on our streets would enhance principles of peace, order & good government - would be laughable if not for the damage this prohibitionist manifesto will continue to wreck upon Canadian society. One has only to look at the other side of the border to see the devastation and corruption the War on Drugs has wrought in America. Canadians feel less safe today and worry more about the security of their children, their neighbourhoods and the country because anti-drug strategies to date have not worked. Getting “tough on crime” will not prevent an increasingly younger set (from gaining) access to a wider variety of drugs including cannabis. It will cause gangs, guns, grow ops, drug labs, crime, the sex trade and violence to prevail; none will be deterred by increased enforcement or anti-drug strategies. There is an alternative model that government could adapt, according to the recommendations of the 2002 REPORT OF THE SPECIAL SENATE COMMITTEE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS: CANNABIS; Parliament simply won't.
It is no wonder that this National Anti-Drug Strategy is being denounced across the nation. It ends up only further escalating problems as it feeds into the perception of the need for more enforcement as the only viable solution to the problem. This happens because of the insistence on maintaining a bias aimed at the substance (in this instance, cannabis) instead of looking at the appropriateness of criminalization; at over two billion dollars annually and rising – inflation not included. Meanwhile, organized crime continues making tax free profit and the state gets to engineer criminal proceedings against a church and its' aging founders as a demonstration of what getting “tough on crime” is all about.
In November of 1998 Diane Riley, PhD prepared for the Senate of Canada a paper entitled Drugs and Drug Policy in Canada: A Brief Review & Commentary. Riley states in the Executive Summary:
“...Canada has instituted a new, thoroughly prohibitionist drug law. The levels of penalties exacted by this law are in conflict with Canada’s own legal protections of civil liberties, as well as of the international legal protections of human rights...”
So clearly in 2008 a National Anti-Drug Strategy based on getting “Tough on Crime” is neither a less problematic and costly approach or a more effective means of control. The trouble is the issue of criminalizing of cannabis users has never been resolved nor has the question of the compromising of civil liberties in relation to the level of penalties exacted been addressed even as the financial and human costs of criminalizing cannabis use continued to rise (from back in 1998). The solution, a decade later, is to re-dress the issue with a “Speech from the Throne” that includes a National Anti-Drug Strategy, that gets “Tough on Crime” based on legislation which did not pass previously. Not only does this blantantly ignore the previously incurred deficits accumulated over the past decade and beyond, it demonstrates this government is incapable of grasping the fact that in a democracy the meaning of peace, order and good government cannot be seen to be compelled by a boot on society's throat by government and still be respected.
How Canadian ...???When the powers of state willfully engineer a ploy to establish a precedent by attempting to destroy a Church
3 and its' aging founding fathers
4 to further the aims of a suspect Drug War, yet crack cocaine is so available on the streets that kids have easy access to it, something is horrifically amiss within Parliament and the Courts of Canada. As it stands, the circumstances of the Rev. Bro.'s trial and subsequent ruling were so high-handed and so contemptuously abbreviated
5 in an atmosphere that spared no legal latitude or consideration of the Rev. Bro.'s inalienable rights. The jury was only allowed to hear basically what the Crown & presiding judge wanted them to hear. In and of itself, this ruling demonstrates just how far the Courts will go to apply a willful agenda of state orchestrated larceny – all according to the rule of law; so we are told.
But is it?
Making Canada’s Laws
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/house/guide/making_laws-e.asp
When you fly in an airplane, visit a national park or buy a product in a store, you are doing something that has probably been touched by a law made in Parliament.
An idea to make a new law or to change an existing law starts out as a “bill.” Each bill goes through several stages to become law. At first reading, the bill is considered read for the first time and is printed. There is no debate. At second reading, Members debate the principle of a bill — Is the idea behind it sound? Does it meet people’s needs? If a bill passes at second reading, it goes to a committee of the House.
Committee members study the bill carefully. They hold hearings to gather information. They can ask for government officials and experts to come and answer questions. The committee can propose amendments, or changes, to the bill.
When a committee has finished its study, it reports the bill back to the House. The entire House can then debate it. During report stage debate, Members can suggest other amendments to the bill.
Once report stage is over, the bill is called for third reading debate. Members who voted for the bill at second reading may sometimes change their minds at third reading after seeing what amendments have or have not been made to the bill. After a bill has passed third reading in the House of Commons, it goes through a similar process in the Senate. Once both Chambers pass the bill in the same form, it is given Royal Assent and becomes law.
The chart shows the usual path followed by government bills introduced in the House of Commons.
IV.
PROHIBITED BY MAN
LEGISLATIVE CONTEXT:
THE PRETENSE BEHIND THE EFFICACY
©Rev. Bro. W. P. Phillips 2008
all rights reserved
The REPORT OF THE SPECIAL SENATE COMMITTEE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS: CANNABIS, of September 2002 in Chapter 12 (page 245, Vol.II : Part III) entitled THE NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE CONTEXT reveals some startling facts, not only about the origins of cannabis legislation but also about the climate of hysteria that key individuals with influence and media connections attempted to inspire (over cannabis). Chapter 12 acknowledges, where cannabis is concerned, the usual path followed by which government bills are introduced in the House of Commons NEVER HAPPENED! The democratic process by which we are governed and, under which hundreds of thousands (if not millions) have been criminalized and subjected to the “wrath of the state” since, simply did not take place!
It was during a sitting of the Committee of the Whole in connection with a review of the 1923 Opium Act, minister of Health Henri-Séverin Béland simply said about the substance (cannabis) that, “There is a new drug in the schedule.”
6 AND THAT WAS IT! That is how cannabis ended up in the schedule to the Act. According to Giffen,
7 the circumstances leading to the decision remain obscure because, until 1932, the issue of the effects of cannabis on people's physical, psychological or mental health had never been raised in Parliament
8. Giffen described the criminalization of the drug as a solution without a problem.
The fact that there was no debate in Parliament (or adjacent committees, etc.,) regarding this specific arbitrary decision by the Minister of Health to add cannabis to the Opium Act schedule in 1923 suggests the extraordinary lengths every Government since 1923 has gone through to vilify cannabis has more to do with the inappropriate and illegitimate manner in which it (cannabis) was undemocratically added to the schedule in 1923 than with any harm or apprehension of harm attributed to the plant; the issue of proper legislative procedure has never been adequately explained or addressed. Efforts between 1923–1932 were spent augmenting and propagating drug-crime relationships so as to leave the nation with the perception that those alleged fears were legitimate; that would go unchallenged until the 60's but unfortunately once this modus operandi was entrenched it only needed to be tweaked to be kept current. Between 1936 and 2005 a string of exploitation films around the theme of the dangers of cannabis use was all the tweaking necessary.
Cannabis was improperly –therefore illegitimately- placed in the Opium Act (in 1923) as the rationale for harm was developed until 1932 when cannabis was actually mentioned by name. Even then it was not until 1937 before a single individual is charged with cannabis possession. Hardly grounds for the extraordinary way in which cannabis had been added to the schedule yet between the years 1937-69 3,122 persons were charged with possession of cannabis. What good is a law if unused, eh?
“...There was no objection to the use of it...” While the Conclusions of Chapter 12 of the Report of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs: Cannabis state:
Early drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment and a notorious lack of debate.
When compared to the Opium Act of 1908 the notorious lack of debate in which cannabis was “entered” in 1923 in spite of the Section 14 addition to the 1911 Opium and Narcotic Drug Act - which provided that the Governor in Council had the power to order any alkaloid, by-product or drug preparation added to the Schedule when its addition was deemed necessary in the public interest (a power which still exists today) – was s so out of step with legislative procedure that it is telling that an MP had to ask, “What is cannabis sativa?”.
Apparently between 1923 and 1932 even though a cannabis & crime scenario was being concocted the addition of cannabis would not have been deemed necessary in the public interest and had it been presented in a forthright manner in 1923 there would have been no objection to the use of it as is indicated by the Minister of Health in 1932! (It may well be that had the Minister presented cannabis in a forthright manner in 1923 he would have been made the laughing stock of the House!)
In 1932 “during parliamentary debate on the introduction of this statute, the discovery of the existence of this drug* appeared to elicit the interest of certain parliamentarians. During Committee of the Whole, MP Ernest Lapointe asked the Minister of Health, “What is cannabis sativa?” and the Minister replied, “Hitherto this was a drug which was not included in the list which might be used. It is one form of the drug used in India which, I believe, goes under the name of hashish. There is no objection to the use of it ...”
Neil Boyd (Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser U.,) points out (the problem) to the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs on Oct. 16, 2000: “Imagine, today, the idea of illegal drug legislation coming forward from the Minister of Labour because he or she is seeking to get some good out of a labour crisis on Canada’s West Coast. The situation in California was similar.” Nevertheless as the following points #1 and #2 show the manner in which the two situations were expedited.
1. In the House of Commons on July 10, 1908, the minister of Labour proposed the adoption of a motion prohibiting: “the importation, manufacture and sale of opium for other than medicinal purposes. The motion was adopted without debate. The Minister introduced Bill 205, An Act to prohibit the importation, manufacture and sale of opium for other than medicinal purposes (Opium Act, 1908). Report of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs: Cannabis, Chapter 12, page 252.
2. During a sitting of the Committee of the Whole in connection with a review of the 1923 Act, Minister Henri-Séverin Béland simply said about the substance that, “There is a new drug in the schedule.” Report of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs: Cannabis, Chapter 12, page 256.
If the idea of drug legislation coming forward out of a labour crisis is problematic what does that say of the criminalization of a substance as a solution to a problem that did not exist other than in pulp fiction?
Drug legislation often contained particularly severe provisions, such as reverse onus and cruel and unusual sentences.
One of the objectives of the Senate Report of 1955 Special Committee of the Senate on the Traffic in Narcotic Drugs in Canada was to establish a relationship between crime and drug dependency after it determined “drug addiction” was not a disease in itself; that it was a symptom or manifestation of character weakness or personality defects in the individual. Between 1970 and 2000; approximately 1.3 million charges were laid for cannabis possession based on the entrenchment drug-crime relationships of a substance that was never properly debated at its' inclusion in the 1923 Opium Act.
The July 9, 2007 article which appeared in the Hamilton Spectator states possession of cannabis arrests rose by over 1/3. This rise is a further indication of just how out of step with 21st century realities the law is when an overwhelming majority of those arrested otherwise have no encounters with police.
Drug legislation as it is implemented in 2008 is a tool of control gone awry; reverse onus and cruel and unusual sentences are but a few examples. Drug legislation is an instrument (of social control) engineered to be more inclusive [read: socially & legally acceptable] than either eugenics or racism to control that which is deemed undesirable by a status quo who by no means reflect the practices, customs and the realities of 21st century Canada in its entirety.
- The work of the Le Dain Commission laid the foundations for a more rational approach to illegal drug policy by attempting to rely on the research data.
Although recommending a regulation (of sorts), the foundation laid by the Le Dain Commission, as with the 2002 Report of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs: Cannabis, sought to present a legitimacy to the idea Government has a clear and present need to sanction cannabis. It does not; nor did it ever have. That foundation does present a clearer anatomy of how the criminalization of cannabis based on a pre-existing cannabis-crime relationship developed.
- The Le Dain Commission’s work had no legislative outcome, except in 1966, in certain provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, particularly with regard to cannabis.
- No action was taken on the reform proposals introduced in the 1970s, particularly for the decriminalization of cannabis.
- Thirty years after the Le Dain Commission, the legislation and its’ application have had no notable effect on the supply and demand of cannabis.
The lack of notable effect on the supply and demand of cannabis fails to distinguish those “notable effects” from the negative impacts of PROHIBITION. The holistic implication9 of cannabis criminalization highly suggests that the (nurtured) climate of fear in which “cannabis/marijuana” was criminalized serves as an explanation for not only why cannabis was added to the Opium Act schedule in the manner that it was - sans the legislative process including any discussion or debate, whatsoever – but also why the issue of criminalization has never been meaningfully addressed.
Thirty years after the Le Dain Commission PROHIBITION is still not considered a factor of concern. Prohibition's inverse affects are still blamed on cannabis as Parliamentarians willfully ignore the systemic discrimination inherent in maintaining cannabis = crime posits. Even as organized crime continues to reap phenomenal profits, the Government of Canada and Canadians still acknowledge no return and a significantly criminalized population where a hostage society is told to “just say no” then left vulnerable (as if intended to substantiate and further vilify cannabis when 12 year olds start getting into it, etc.)
Six years after the release of The REPORT OF THE SPECIAL SENATE COMMITTEE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS: CANNABIS in September of 2002, Canada languishes amid this new tyranny of a National Anti-Drug Strategy as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) audaciously perpetrated as a Speech from the Throne. Even as the judiciary across Canada routinely dismiss possession of cannabis charges as NOT RECOGNIZED BY LAW - because while a “medicinal marihuana policy” does exist it has never been legislated into law - glaring inconsistencies are made even more apparent. Canada's National Anti-Drug Strategy defines a type of Parliamentary dysfunction which the Constitution was designed to rebuke; such dysfunction cannot legitimately be recognized by law because it is (a) the antithesis of peace, order and good government - it indirectly enables "crime", (b) it further perpetuates systemic discrimination and stigmatization, (c) it fails to acknowledge and remedy recognized failings even though solutions have been recommended which (d) would serve to strengthen the integrity of a National Drug Strategy rather than diminish it.
CARRYING ON THE LUNACY: A FOREGONE CONCLUSION NO MORE
The National Anti-Drug Strategy also presumes "the argument of freedom or right of the individual can no longer hold good where the welfare of the state and society is concerned” yet in light of the Senate Report of 2002 on Cannabis when the issue of prime concern is the welfare of the state and society, how does the apprehension or the principle of harm “hold good” a prohibition (of cannabis) which is irrefutably known to jeopardize the welfare of the state and society much more?
Re-introducing previously failed attempts to legislate this “strategy” as a National Anti-Drug Strategy for getting “tough on crime” in a Speech from the Throne simply shows this government to be as evasive as its' predecessors in this regard. Repositioning a failed and misanthropic ideology for social control as a solution merely continues the process of making a mockery of our national agenda of peace, order and good government. It is no wonder Canada's drug laws are considered preposterous. Cannabis prohibition is absurdly contradictory because cannabis is recognised as both a medicine and as a comparatively16 safe euphoriant which is connected to the sacred. Government archives show precisely what the 2002 Senate Report (on Cannabis) states and this presentation depicts. For government to choose to abdicate reason and responsibility to carry on with that which is the issue of contention at the heart of the matter is constitutionally unacceptable, morally reprehensible and injurious to Canadians and Canada alike. To disregard any harm which prohibition is known to incur demonstrates that the health and well-being of all Canadians cannot be addressed with any integrity whatsoever as long as social controls are garnered for the sake of partisan political advantage. It also demonstrates that not only does partisan advantage trumps the health and well-being of all Canadians, it demonstrates how partisan advantage can undermine Canada itself when that advantage trumps national accountability, reason and responsibility.
In a truly civilized democracy partisan advantage of this nature is hardly an advantage a truly autonomous people would ever entertain or be expected to entertain. Therefore, in light of the aforementioned considerations I call on the Federal Government to enact a moratorium on the inclusion of cannabis in the CDSA until these matters are resolved. Failing that, cannabis offenses should no longer be recognized by Law.
Thank you for your time and consideration of these matters.
July 27th, 2008
Hamilton, Ontario
Rev. Bro. W.P. Phillips,
Member – Missionary, North Point Missions of God,
the Assembly of the Church of the Universe.
Footnotes1. Regarding
the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)
2. http://www.sft-ddt.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1364
3. which has validated documentation that qâneh bosm of Scripture is cannabis
4. Founding Fathers of the Assembly of the Church of the Universe Rev. Bro. Walter Tucker and Rev. Bro. Michael Baldasaro
5. by ruling inadmissible that which was most relevant to their defence
6. In the REPORT OF THE SPECIAL SENATE COMMITTEE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS: CANNABIS of Sept.2002 this is indicated as footnote #35. It reads Hansard, House of Commons, April 23, 1923, page 2117.
7. Giffen, P.J., Endicott, S. And S. Lambert. 1991. Panic and Indifference: The Politics of Canada's Drug Laws, Ottawa: Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. This entry is found in the Bibliography on pg 635 [note: page is not numbered] the last page indicated is #627.
8. So-called physical & psychological harms of cannabis remains meretricious 76 years later. Curiously, the physical & psychological harms of alcohol were never considered an issue after Canada's encounter with Alcohol Prohibition.
9. Emphasizing the functional relationship between parts and the whole
10. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/319/7207/435
11. This article in its entirety was accepted July 1, 1999 as part of the Education and Debate Series featured by The BMJ which is published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association.
12. Buck v Bell [1927] 274US 201-7
13. Christian T. The mentally ill and human rights in Alberta: a study of the Alberta Sexual Sterilisation Act. Edmonton: Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, nd: 27.
14. McLaren A. Our own master race: eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.
15. Eugenics and the welfare state: sterilization policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In:Broberg G, Roll-Hansen N, eds. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996.
16. When compared to alcohol and the fact that though it is recognized as a substance of abuse it is controlled.
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