Cannabis: Provided by God, Prohibited by Man: CANNABIS: PROVIDED BY GOD, PROHIBITED BY MAN

Saturday, July 5, 2008

CANNABIS: PROVIDED BY GOD, PROHIBITED BY MAN

CANNABIS:
PROVIDED BY GOD
PROHIBITED BY MAN

©Rev. Bro. W. P. Phillips 2008

PROVIDED BY GOD

CANNABIS: PROVIDED BY GOD, PROHIBITED BY MAN represents a celebration of God and the gift of cannabis according to Scripture (Gen. 1:29, Psa. 104:14, et al). The creating of this art entails incorporating cannabis leaves into a cross-section of media and formats, i.e. paintings, collage, video.

In 2002 a Hamilton Spectator interview included reference to and a photo of these works. The collection was displayed at the Grand Opening of Hamilton’s Up in Smoke Café (2005); my role at the Cafe was resident artist.

According to Scripture, I stand on Rights as inalienable as the air breathed. Anywhere a Bible can be found in a Court of Law, any judge in the land could easily verify this. Scripture also tells me as a creature of God, I am bestowed, as we all are, with aptitudes, talents, if you will, to enhance in some portion that which honours God and benefits others. The reward is commensurate with the doing; the celebration is Gods’ blessings bestowed.

Art is defined (WordWeb) as the creation of significant things. What could be more significant than expressing a proclamation from God by utilizing that which is PROVIDED BY GOD yet wrongly PROHIBITED BY MAN as the very means of repugning the err of prohibition? For me CANNABIS: PROVIDED BY GOD, PROHIBITED BY MAN best exemplifies that which honours Scripture (hence God) by proclaiming a message for the healing of the nations.

PROVIDED BY GOD supporting material will be located at Qâneh Bosm in the Holy Bible

[PLEASE NOTE: Qâneh Bosm in the Holy Bible is A WORK IN PROGRESS and will take up to 2-3 weeks before all material, etc is entered.]

SUBMISSIONS

DSCN1551.JPG - DSCN1557.JPG - DSCN1561.JPG -

On the Third Day - cannabis collage

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

http://www.pot-tv.net/archive/shows/pottvshowse-1930.html

http://realm2.blogspot.com/

http://realm2cannabisart.bravehost.com/

http://www.geocities.com/wphillips_artist/index.html

II.

PROHIBITED BY MAN

If:

1. The Constitution authorizes Parliament to make laws in certain areas of jurisdiction and,

2. Senators and Members of Parliament both study, debate and often amend legislative proposals or “bills” and,

3. Bills are usually proposed by the government and introduced in the House of Commons and,

4. The Senate also initiates legislation; bills collecting or spending public funds must originate in the Commons.

5. Both Houses must approve bills in identical form before they can become law.

6. Bills become law when they receive Royal Assent, on a date specified in the bill or on a date set by Order-in-Council.

7. The Preamble reads Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.

Does the Constitution authorize Parliament to legislate policy that ignores established and relevant conclusions where cannabis is concerned? Not according to the “principles that recognize” in the Preamble (of the Charter).

In light of the Senate Report of 2002 on Cannabis how can the apprehension of harm about cannabis be considered valid when the continuation of PROHIBITION is known to jeopardize the health and well-being of Canadians MUCH MORE than does cannabis itself; how does apprehension (or principle) of harm justify a prohibition that jeopardizes?

What does that say about those who embrace such meretriciousness in order to enhance a pre-existing impression that prohibition is justified? And what of the tens of thousands who are victimized annually because of prohibition? And what of the rest that are left with a perception, now compounded, of those fears already established?

How can lauding a blatant pretense like prohibition as a “step in the right direction” inspire confidence in Queen, Country, Institutions or the System when the residual aftermath of PROHIBITION can already be seen in virtually every city, every town and every province in Canada?

Reinforced drug law is a “step in the right direction” to what? Considering we know that when the establishment of a justification further augments that which compounds all pre-existing jeopardy, that, in and of itself, is all part of a process endemic to that which leads to state orchestrated atrocity which future generations are left to sort out at an even greater cost and our eternal shame, how can that inspire confidence in anything or anyone (involved) except God?

It is time for a moratorium on the inclusion of cannabis in the CDSA until these matters are sorted out. Failing that, cannabis offenses should no longer be recognized by Law.

Thank you

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Emily Murphy

Marihuana – A New Menace

In 1922 Emily Murphy published The Black Candle which included a chapter entitled Marihuana – A New Menace, yet unlike the United States there were no reliable accounts of the non-medical use of cannabis in Canada before the 1930s and unlike California, Canada was not faced with an influx of Mexican workers (who were accused of introducing Americans - women, in particular – to marihuana). Canada did however have a “Chinese problem” and the 1908 Opium Act was in part a response to the aforementioned. Why then was cannabis added to the Opium Act schedule? And who was Emily Murphy?

née Ferguson, [b at Cookstown, Ont 14 Mar 1868; d at Edmonton 27 Oct 1933] grew up under the influence of her maternal grandfather, Ogle R. Gowan, a politician that founded a local branch of the Orange Order in 1830 and two uncles who were a Supreme Court justice and a Senator, respectively (a). Her brother also became a lawyer and another member of the Supreme Court. Her family were prominent members of society and she benefited from receiving formal academic education. Murphy adopted the pen name Janey Canuck and published 4 very popular books of personal sketches: The Impressions of Janey Canuck Abroad (1901), Janey Canuck in the West (1910), Open Trails (1912)& Seeds of Pine (1914).

A self-taught legal expert, in 1916 she was appointed police magistrate, first for Edmonton, then Alberta; she the first woman magistrate in the British Empire. Exposed to a succession of cases involving prostitution & juvenile offenders, she became an unrelenting enemy of opium and cannabis, which she blamed for much organized crime and for victimizing the defenseless. The Black Candle (1922) by "Judge Murphy" was an expansion of articles published in Maclean's magazine describing in lurid detail the evils of the drug trade; her exposé led to laws governing narcotics that remained unaltered until the late 1960s. Like many in the vanguard of reform, Murphy's record is patterned. Her anti-drug campaign led her to attack Chinese immigration and to support EUGENICS.

- adapted from The Canadian Encyclopedia
Author SUSAN JACKEL Rev: CATHERINE CAVANAUGH

(a) Emily Murphy, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although Murphy’s views on race changed over the course of her life[5], the perspective contained in her book, the Black Candle, is considered the most consequential because it played a role in creating a widespread “war on drugs mentality” leading to legislation that “defined addiction as a law enforcement problem.”[6] A series of articles in Maclean’s Magazine under her pen name, “Janey Canuck,” forms the basis of the Black Candle. Using extensive anecdotes and “expert” opinion, the Black Candle depicts an alarming picture of drug use in Canada, detailing Murphy’s understanding of the use and effects of opium, cocaine, and pharmaceuticals, as well as a “new menace,” “marihuana.”[7] Murphy’s concern with drugs began when she started coming into “disproportionate contact with Chinese people” in her courtroom because they were over represented in the criminal justice system.[8] In addition to professional expertise and her own observations, Murphy was also given a tour of opium dens in Vancouver’s Chinatown by local police detectives. Vancouver at the time was in the midst of a moral panic over drugs that was part of the anti-Oriental campaign that precipitated the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923.[9] Canadian drug historian Catherine Carstairs has argued that Murphy’s importance regarding drug policy has been “overstated” because she did not have an impact on the drug panic in Vancouver, but that nevertheless “her articles did mark a turning point and her book … brought the Vancouver drug panic to a larger Canadian audience.”[10]

Race permeates the Black Candle, and is intricately entwined with the drug trade and addiction in Murphy’s analysis. Yet she is ambiguous in her treatment of non-whites.[13] In one passage, for example, she chastises whites who use the Chinese as “scapegoats,”[14] while elsewhere, she refers to the Chinese man as a “visitor” in this country, and that “it might be wise to put him out” if it turns out that this visitor carries “poisoned lollipops in his pocket and feeds them to our children.”[15] Drug addiction, however, not the Chinese immigrant, is “a scourge so dreadful in its effects that it threatens the very foundations of civilization,” and which laws therefore need to target for eradication.[16] Drugs victimize everyone, and members of all races perpetrate the drug trade, according to Murphy.[17] At the same time, she does not depart from the dominant view of middle class whites at the time that “races” were discrete, biologically determined categories, naturally ranked in a hierarchy. In this scheme, the white race was facing degradation through miscegenation, while the more prolific “black and yellow races may yet obtain the ascendancy”[18] and thus threatened to “wrest the leadership of the world from the British.”[19]

Murphy’s ambiguity regarding non-whites is reflected in scholarly debates, but what is not controversial is that the Black Candle was written “for the express purpose of arousing public demands for stricter drug legislation” and that in this she was to some degree successful.[20] This motivation may have influenced her racial analysis by playing to the popular prejudices of her white audiences. On the other hand, she may have deliberately tried to distance herself from those prejudices, especially the ones propagated by the more vulgar and hysterical Asian exclusionists in BC in order to maximize her own credibility and sway her more moderate readers.[21]

The Eugenics Movement

During the early twentieth century, scientific knowledge emerged in the forefront of social importance. Advances in science and technology were thought to hold answers to current and future social problems. Murphy was among the those who thought that the problems that were plaguing their society, such as alcoholism, drug abuse and crime were caused because of mental deficiencies.

In a 1932 article titled “ Overpopulation and Birth Control”, she states: "...over-population [is a] basic problem of all…none of our troubles can even be allayed until this is remedied." As the politics behind the Second World War continued to develop, Murphy, who was a pacifist, theorised that the only reason for war was that nations needed to fight for land to accommodate their growing populations. Her argument was that: if there was population control, people would not need as much land. Without the constant need for more land, war would cease to exist. Her solution to these social issues was eugenics. Selective breeding was considered a progressive scientific and social approach and Murphy supported the sterilisation of those individuals who were considered mentally deficient. She believed that the mentally and socially inferior reproduced more than the “human thoroughbreds” and appealed to the Alberta Legislative Assembly for eugenic sterilisation. In a petition, she wrote that mentally defective children were, “a menace to society and an enormous cost to the state …science is proving that mental defectiveness is a transmittable hereditary condition.” She wrote to Minister of Agriculture and Health, George Hoadley that two female “feeble-minded” mental patients already bred several offspring. She called it: “a neglect amounting to a crime to permit these two women to go on bearing children. They are both young women and likely to have numerous offspring before leaving the hospital”. Due in part to her heavy advocacy of compulsory sterilisation, thousands of Albertans, who were not considered to possess any intelligence, were unknowingly sterilised under the Sexual Sterilisation Act before its repeal in 1971.

The Society of the "Well-Born" say Insane people not entitled to progeny

The term "eugenics" (Greek for "well-born") was “coined” in 1883 to describe the process of improving or impairing "the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." Eugenicists promoted sterilization, marriage laws and segregation of the mentally handicapped. The movement swept much of the globe, including Canada.

The pseudo-science behind eugenics was based on a crude misconception of heredity as "like begets like," which assumed that the "feeble-minded" inevitably passed on their pathology to their offspring. This false biology was an important propaganda device for the movement but the idea found its most fertile ground in Canada in the fears of Protestant Anglo-Saxons, who despaired that they would be "outbred" by degenerate immigrant groups.

Women's suffrage and temperance groups played particularly compelling roles in the eugenics movement. They had their greatest influence in Alberta, where Canada's first woman magistrate Emily Murphy lectured widely on the dangers of bad genes. "Insane people," she proclaimed, "are not entitled to progeny." Another prominent campaigner for sterilization was the suffragist Liberal MLA Nellie McClung, whose promotion of the benefits of sterilization, especially for "young simple-minded girls," was vital to the passage of eugenics legislation in Alberta. Another of the "Famous Five," the Hon. Irene Parlby, repeatedly alarmed the public to the growing rate at which the "mentally deficient" were propagating. Her "great and only solution to the problem" was sterilization.

Cannabis: Provided by God, Prohibited by Man

Saturday, July 5, 2008