Pubdate: Wed, 24 Nov 2004
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: Kevin Potvin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

ATTITUDE TOWARD 'BUD' EMBARRASSINGLY PROVINCIAL

In the 11 years between 1909 and 1920, legislators in Victoria appealed 
directly to the people on three separate occasions to learn which way they 
should go on laws dealing with a popular drug. In this case, it was alcohol.

Though the questions put to the people varied over the course of those 
tumultuous years, there is no doubt change had washed over them. There can 
be no argument that the change was a result of the hugely altered outlook 
of a people suddenly awakened to the wide world outside the province.

In 1909, a majority of 54.4 per cent of the province, along with 53.6 per 
cent of Vancouverites, voted in favour of their municipalities taking 
control over the sale and distribution of alcohol away from the province. 
The question was whether the provincial legislature in Victoria or the far 
more locally controlled city halls should decide whether and how alcohol 
could be sold. The government ignored the results and continued to allow 
the distribution of alcohol throughout the province.

By 1916, a stronger majority of provincial voters favoured a complete 
prohibition of alcohol - 56.4 per cent of the province, and an even larger 
56.8 per cent of Vancouverites, voted to ban alcohol entirely. This time 
the government acted and put into place legislation to prohibit alcohol.

But by 1920, now on the other side of the First World War, a different tilt 
in attitudes appeared. Now the government asked the people whether they 
wished prohibition to continue, or if they wanted alcohol back, under tight 
provincial government control. A huge majority of the province-62.4 per 
cent-voted for alcohol to be brought back. The option was greeted even more 
enthusiastically in Vancouver.

In the official published results of the 1916 prohibition referendum, votes 
by soldiers were separately broken out from those cast by civilians, 
providing key evidence to the change that later came over the province. 
While the civilian population of B.C. voted 56.4 per cent in favour of 
prohibition, soldiers voted a whopping 72.4 per cent against prohibition.

The dramatically different result cannot be explained by the fact that the 
armed forces population would have been mostly young males who could be 
expected to be in favour of drinking. The official results provide a 
further breakdown between soldiers at home and those overseas. These two 
groups would presumably be composed of much the same demographics. The 
soldiers at home voted 52 per cent for prohibition, pretty much in line 
with the larger civilian B.C. population. But those soldiers who went 
overseas to Europe voted nearly 82 per cent against prohibition.

Four years later, nearly two-thirds of the province, obviously influenced 
by those soldiers returning from Europe, now voted against continued 
prohibition, marking a dramatic swing in public opinion on the subject 
amounting to nearly 20 points.

One might be tempted to argue that the more relaxed attitude toward alcohol 
among soldiers serving overseas was a result of the trauma they experienced 
in the awful trench warfare of the First World War. But only a minority of 
those soldiers serving overseas saw such action directly. By far the more 
obvious factor in their changed opinion was their exposure to different 
places besides the stuffy confines of small town British Columbia, and 
specifically to the eye-opening thrill of huge European capitals, even if 
it was during wartime.

It is remarkable to note that even during what we look back upon as an 
insufferably uptight period of social constriction, the people and their 
government were open-minded enough to conduct several referenda on such 
huge questions as alcohol prohibition. Compare that attitude to our 
situation today regarding the continued prohibition of marijuana. True, 
marijuana is a federal matter where alcohol is a provincial matter, but 
it's still revealing to note how far away we are even from the idea of a 
public referendum on whether marijuana should continue to be prohibited.

Before 1916, not many B.C. residents had been outside the country, and they 
showed themselves to be very closed-minded to liberal social policies as a 
result. But after widespread exposure to the wider world, led by soldiers 
shipped to Europe, B.C. rapidly became more liberal.

Today, we are again mired in closed-minded social policies, most starkly 
evidenced by our laws prohibiting marijuana. We may not know it, but what 
we are suffering from in this province is a deep poverty of experience with 
the outside, wider world. We may have become embarrassingly provincial all 
over again.
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