Pubdate: Fri, 01 Jun 2007
Source: Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine
Contact:  http://www.kmcmag.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4527
Author:  Jamie Bliss
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

UP IN SMOKE

A Century Of Legal Subjugation Of The Kootenay's Famously Illicit Lifestyle

"I am determined to break up these dens as it is known that a number 
of white men and women have been in the habit of frequenting them." 
-Rossland Chief of Police, Thomas Long, 1901

"I think probably if I were to give a message to the community it 
would be, if you are going to the Holy Smoke to buy a controlled 
substance or if you are at the Holy Smoke to sell a controlled 
substance you be very careful because you are liable to be arrested." 
-Nelson City Police Sgt. Steve Bank, 2006

In 1901, Josie Perkins arrived in the Kootenays, leaving behind a 
life turned tragic on Vancouver Island following the death of her infant child.

One month later, she lay dead in a local Chinese opium den. That 
evening, Rossland police dutifully arrested the small contingent of 
Chinese merchants who sold opium, primarily to other Chinese. Chief 
Long's comments indicated the mixing races under a cloud of illicit 
smoke was not a lifestyle that would be tolerated in the Kootenays.

A century later, Alan Middlemiss, co-owner of Nelson's Holy Smoke 
Culture Shop, stood naked in the Nelson City Police detachment, 
having voluntarily disrobed during his arrest for trafficking marijuana.

His business partner, Paul DeFelice, was arrested a month earlier 
during a police search of the store. Unlike the region's first drug 
busts, the second raid of Holy Smoke in less than 10 years was not 
motivated by the immorality of mixed race drug indulgence. Instead, 
Sergeant Steve Bank maintained the matter was a law enforcement issue.

Holy Smoke's supporters saw it as a random and unwarranted legal 
suppression of a lifestyle they perceive to be relatively harmless, 
spiritual, or as the store will argue in court, necessary.

The rise of marijuana culture in the Kootenays is largely associated 
with the hippie lifestyle that flourished in the late 1960s -one 
bolstered by the influx of Americans avoiding the Vietnam draft.

A recent study by the Fraser Institute suggested that more marijuana 
is produced in the Kootenays per capita than anywhere else in the province.

In late 2005, a story in Rolling Stone Magazine about a multi-million 
dollar Idaho marijuana smuggling operation observed, "Nelson's 
remoteness makes it ideal terrain for pot growers... Overlooking the 
main street is the Holy Smoke Culture Shop... in Nelson, it functions 
more like a second city hall. Hikers, snowboarders and potheads come 
to Nelson from all over the continent to openly smoke weed and to buy 
one of the various strains of BC Bud..."

Nelson's stellar recreation lifestyle and the perceived link between 
drug tourism was hardly the sort of publicity city officials sought 
to attract. The undercover investigation that resulted in the Holy 
Smoke raid started shortly after the appearance of the magazine article.

The link between the 19th century Rossland opium dealers and the Holy 
Smoke proprietors is lifestyle: an engrained culture of smoking, 
sharing and selling a narcotic and the consequent attention from police.

Our society's ideal of law is that it's created and enforced in a 
universal manner. Historically, however, the creation and enforcement 
of drug laws have been shaped largely by society's perceptions of the 
drug lifestyle rather than by any objective justification.

Chinese workers came to British Columbia in the late 19th century to 
work in the mines and on the transcontinental railway.

Soon, their cultural traditions of gambling and opium use attracted 
public concern and police attention almost immediately. The notion of 
Chinese drug users corrupting the morals of innocent Caucasians was 
the motivation for the raid on Rossland opium dens following Josie 
Perkins' fatal overdose.

The fact that Perkins was a prostitute who had sought out opium at 
her own volition was less problematic than the symbolism of a white 
woman dead in a Chinese opium den.

Such social perceptions were instrumental in the parliamentary debate 
that outlawed the sale of opium in 1908 for non-medical purposes.

Canada's first law criminalizing recreational drug use was sponsored 
by future Prime Minister Mackenzie King after he discovered a 
flourishing Chinese opium industry the previous year in Vancouver, 
patronized by white women whom King characterized as morally degraded.

Further condemnation of Chinese opium use was popularized by the 
writings of Edmonton police magistrate and judge Emily Murphy, who 
was shocked to learn of the illicit traffic in narcotics, of which 
the Canadian public was unaware. Her anti-drug treatise, The Black 
Candle, first serialized in Maclean's Magazine under the pen name 
"Janey Canuck", was widely acclaimed and influential. Murphy 
characterized drug use as an epidemic propagated upon unwitting white 
Canadians by foreign fiends, and she found support with lawmakers. 
Over the next 15 years, a series of changes to the 1908 law resulted 
in drastically stricter penalties for possession and trafficking in opium.

Under the revamped law, the Chinese faced a disproportionate level of 
legal scrutiny, compromising over 60 per cent of the convictions. In 
1923, Chew Yung, a 25-year resident of Cranbrook, had the dubious 
distinction of being the first from the Kootenays to be imprisoned 
and deported under the new law. Shortly thereafter, the Nelson Daily 
News editorialized that the flogging of drug dealers was a sentence 
supported by public opinion.

However, by 1930, the deportation provisions and international events 
effectively diminished the Chinese-run opium trade in Canada.

During this period of crackdowns, a seemingly minor amendment was 
passed in 1923 without public comment or political debate.

Added to the schedule of illegal narcotics was a drug specified as 
"Cannabis Indica (Indian Hemp) or Hasheesh." An early account of the 
effects of marijuana appeared in Murphy's writings, in which an 
American police chief described users as "raving maniacs, liable to 
engage in violence using the most savage methods of cruelty." 
Similarly, the 1936 film Reefer Madness, financed by a small church 
group, depicted the marijuana lifestyle as leading one from wild jazz 
dancing to vehicular homicide, suicide and insanity.

Despite such outrageous assertions, the number of marijuana 
possession convictions did not exceed 100 on a nation-wide basis 
until 1966. In time, a negative depiction of the marijuana lifestyle 
resulted in increased efforts at eradicating a perceived social problem.

As police began to turn their attention to the non-conformist hippie 
lifestyle, marijuana convictions reached nearly 1,500 by the end of 
the 1960s. Through the 70s and 80s, possession convictions increased 
exponentially each year to its present level of approximately 30,000 
per year (Canada arrests approximately 70,000 per year for 
marijuana-related offences, i.e. possession, cultivation, and 
trafficking), as drug policymakers adopted the enduring metaphor of a 
war required to protect the public.

Holy Smoke's owners seek the reform of Canada's drug laws. They 
intend to fight pending charges using the legal defence of necessity 
(their trial is expected to take place during the latter part of this 
year or early next year). The origins of the defence lie in a 19th 
century British murder case in which two shipwrecked sailors 
unsuccessfully argued that it was necessary for their survival to 
kill and eat the cabin boy. A difficult defence to assert, Canadian 
law recognizes there may be certain emergency situations where 
self-preservation or altruism impel disobedience of a law. Holy Smoke 
is expected to argue that provision of marijuana in a safe 
environment at a fair price is necessary to eliminate the social harm 
caused by street trafficking, more harmful drugs or marijuana laced 
with impurities.

Historically, drug use was criminalized in an era when no distinction 
was made between the physical harm associated with the drug itself 
and the lifestyle accompanying those that used or supplied it. A 
particular lifestyle exhibits a set of external symbols that convey 
how a person or place is perceived.

For those that govern and police Nelson, the popular perception 
publicized by continental media of a lawless drug mecca is unwelcome.

For those that celebrate the Kootenays as a place synonymous with the 
marijuana lifestyle, the recent arrests of the owners of the Holy 
Smoke Culture Shop is an important reminder that the negative 
connotations associated with the drug lifestyle have resulted in more 
than 100 years of legal crackdowns.