Unknown Speaker 0:00 It seems like forever ago that weed was illegal in Canada. Now, we hardly even bat an eye at people smoking a joint in the street. It's like smoking a cigarette. But as we know, it's wasn't always like this. Bella Lopez is going to take us on a little historical journey as she talks to people about weed prohibition, and the relationship that it had to racism. This the Same Difference. Unknown Speaker 0:23 [Music] It's first of the way. We go Whoa, Mary, whoa. Unknown Speaker 0:40 Four years ago, in 2016, I was living in Colombia. And my friends back home in Canada would jokingly asked me if I was living with the cartel. I was asked if I was growing weed with them, or if I had plans to smuggle something back, and I thought it was just extremely offensive and weird. When I went to Mexico, the same thing happened. In my mind, I remember thinking like, I didn't get asked this when I was in Spain. So why now? I bring up the story because that was when I first realized I had only heard negative things about weed my whole life. See, I went through years of a mostly white strict Catholic school environment. And on my first high school, I was almost entirely surrounded by wealthy white kids who drank a lot or loved party drugs. When I switched schools in 11th grade, I started to see more kids like me. Kids who came from less wealthy families listened to the same music, and ate seasoned food. It really was the first time that I didn't feel like I was out of place. And though, I was still uncomfortable being around weed, I started to question if it really was a scary drug I had been warned about since middle school. And as I traveled after high school, I met so many stoners or people who use cannabis, and they weren't the scary criminals I expected at all. They were my friends, coworkers, even family. So I questioned if weed was always associated with, and are making air quotes "the hood", because if so, doesn't that make weed prohibition just a form of systemic racism. Around the same time, I had a really good chat with a friend of mine, Nicole Donec, about the stigma around cannabis and her experiences as a Black woman who uses it. Unknown Speaker 2:24 I'm a criminology major at Wilfrid Laurier University, the Brantford campus.The first time I smoked weed was in grade 10 I didn't touch it again until I started University. I kinda want to start smoking after class and then I for some reason felt like really uncomfortable just because in either serial killer docs for like, even in some of my classes, like my criminology classes, they'd talk about criminals like oh, when they were 18 years old, they started smoking weed and hanging out with the wrong crowd and it led them to do this, this and that without really saying it, but like definitely implying it. If you can smoke weed and not be a serial killer. Unknown Speaker 3:05 Nicole's 22 and has a smoking weed regularly for the past five years. After I heard about Nicole's experience, I started looking into the history of cannabis consumption. And that was where I read about Dr. Susan Boyd. Now Dr. Boyd is a professor in the Faculty of human and social development at the University of Victoria. Her publications and research examine topics including the history of drug prohibition, drug law, drug policy, drugs and media and drug culture. I learned a lot from her work, including that prior to 1900, marijuana was actually a common ingredient in various medicines. It was used to treat almost everything from asthma to ulcers in Canada. She says that the criminalization of drugs in general, are a part of racist Canadian policies that mimic the United States. Unknown Speaker 3:51 And in Canada, drug control from the 1900s on has been primarily a criminal justice approach. And we've seen more and more drugs added to the drug schedule, and police budgets and police powers expanding over the years. So law abiding people became criminalized overnight, as we enacted harsher and harsher drug laws over the century. Third, drug laws are not based on evidence of harm. Rather, there are social control mechanisms in large part to profile poor, Indigenous and Black people in Canada. Unknown Speaker 4:34 In the conversation I had with Nicole, she brought up a similar point Unknown Speaker 4:37 Weed is often associated with minority groups and kind of showed in a negative light blue sea people who spoke as lazy or unproductive or like part of, I don't know the wrong crowd, whatever this wrong crowd is, even though I think, weed, I don't know I think it's great. Unknown Speaker 4:55 adding on to what Dr. Boyd spoke about. I learned that pretty much everything Canadians knew about weed at the time was based on what the American government said. Marijuana was originally spelt with an H and normally referred to as cannabis in English. But white settlers in America took on the Spanish name for the drug as a way to criminalize Latinos for smoking it recreationally. They even changed the spelling of the word to have a J in place of an age to accentuate its Latin roots. After reading this, I curiously reached out to a Latino friend and regular cannabis user. Unknown Speaker 5:27 Hi, my name is Miguel Hernandez. And I started smoking weed when I was about 15 years old. I remember when I was young, sometimes smoking with friends, there were times where we would get paranoid and run away thinking that the cops were coming. Unknown Speaker 5:42 He says though cannabis is now legal, he and other people of colour are still impacted by the stigma. Unknown Speaker 5:48 I grew up in the northwest of Toronto, which is super, super diverse. And I invited some of my white friends from school to a party. This was right before COVID. And they didn't know anybody there but they came. And for some reason, the fact that there was a bunch of people of colour and everyone was smoking weed, they felt threatened. Like they were in a hood, kind of situation. But it really wasn't like that at all. No one there was a hood man and everyone was just hanging out. But they they said that to me and made a comment that they wanted to leave Unknown Speaker 6:18 That happened this year in 2020. But how long has there been a stigma around cannabis and where did it come from? I'm going to walk you through a brief history lesson starting in 1930. Unknown Speaker 6:36 In 1930, Harry Anslinger became the director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He is responsible for the criminalization of marijuana in the United States. And a leaked internal memo circa 1935, Anslinger said and I quote, the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effects on the degenerate races, Blacks and Hispanics. Here's another quote. Unknown Speaker 7:00 I might say that we find this teenager addiction in certain segments and in certain neighborhoods. Most chocolate down this way. You are without Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans. Unknown Speaker 7:24 At the time that Anslinger said this. Anyone in America would have known these communities were primarily home to people of colour. A year later in 1936, a propaganda film was released supported by the American government. Unknown Speaker 7:38 High school boys and girls are having a hot at the local soda fountain. Innocently they damn, innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. Marijuana, the burning weed with its roots inhale. Unknown Speaker 7:56 A year after the film was released, cannabis was made illegal in the United States under the 1937 marijuana Tax Act. Though Canada had made it illegal years prior in 1923. The first ever conviction related to cannabis was in 1937. Shortly after the introduction to the act. Unknown Speaker 8:15 This bill and you will see the ease with which this vicious plant can be grown in your neighbour's yard. Rolled into harmless looking cigarettes. Hidden in an innocent shoe. Unknown Speaker 8:25 Anslinger then reassured congressman that the crackdown on cannabis would not affect the good musicians but the jazz type, obviously targeting the Black community as he said this. Ssoon after the mayor of New York Fidel LaGuardia said that he stood with the Black and Hispanic communities being targeted by these raids and was against the prohibition of marijuana. Unknown Speaker 8:49 They cannot be in court for the simple reason that the majority of American people do not want it in foreign and are resisting its enforcement. That being so the orderly thing to do, under our form of governance is to abolish a law which cannot be enforced. A law which the people of the country do not work in force. Unknown Speaker 9:19 Basically, LaGuardia was skeptical of the government's claim that marijuana was the main cause of destruction among American youth. So he commissioned a study of 31 scientists in 1937. And after six years of research, the commission found that smoking marijuana did not lead to violent or anti social behaviour did not cause uncontrollable sexual urges, nor did it alter a person's basic personality structure. The report went on to disprove every negative effect claimed by Harry anslinger. And in response Anslinger had the press discredit the study and recommended every copy published to be destroyed. But do you know what's crazier? Nothing has changed. According to a 2018 study by the New York Times, Black and Hispanic people in New York are arrested for low level marijuana charges at eight to 12 times rate of white people. Even Nicole, who travels to visit family in the states says she feels the need to take precautions when smoking there. Unknown Speaker 10:20 When I smoke weed here, I'm not really concerned about getting caught or, you know, getting in any sort of trouble. But when I smoke in the States, say New York, you know, the people I'm with are a little more cautious and aware of like, where they are where they're smoking. Unknown Speaker 10:42 But not all Canadians feel carefree smoking weed here. I talked to someone who has been using cannabis since 1988. For a little more perspective. Unknown Speaker 10:50 Hi, my name is Jay. I am in the IT world. And I'm higher up in management and I am a stoner. I know it's legal now. But you know, I'm 50 years old. I've been used to hiding and smoking for years. I don't feel comfortable just because it's now regulated to smoke anywhere. I still feel like I need to hide. I feel like I'm from the 70s man. I just it doesn't make me feel comfortable. Unknown Speaker 11:14 What were your smoke spots like when you were a teenager? Unknown Speaker 11:17 Oh man, we used to hot we would go to parks or alleys. We'd smoke but there was always somebody watching for the cops. If anybody screamed, pig, everybody ran. We just threw the joint whatever we everybody ran. You know, we're all terrified. You know, the last thing you want to do is get caught. Forget it. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 11:33 And who did you smoke with back then? Unknown Speaker 11:35 I had a couple of really good girlfriends in high school. And my one friend was Indian. And the other one was a Black girl and both smoked. But we all did it in secret. But if there was any cops, especially my friend who was Black, she was terrified. But I mean, of course she's terrified. You know, it's a cop, but I found her more terrified than I was. Everybody would split up because they'd have to chase if they're going to come after somebody. Hopefully it wasn't you. None of us ever got caught. Thank God. But Unknown Speaker 12:00 Do you think that the stigma around cannabis has changed from when you were a teenager to now? Unknown Speaker 12:05 People judge you people who don't smoke. They automatically have this preconceived notion of what kind of person you're going to be. I'm a professional and they would die. Most people who know me would never ever look at me and think I get high because I'm a professional in my field. Unknown Speaker 12:19 Aquasi Osubampfa a sociology professor and criminologist at the University of Toronto has spent a lot of time in his career challenging the racist stigma. In a TED talk called the untapped promise of cannabis legalization, he speaks about what steps should be taken now that cannabis is legal in Canada. Here's a clip. Unknown Speaker 12:38 As a first step, we should ensure that our governments erase the criminal records for people who've been convicted of crimes that are no longer illegal. What we need is expungement. Expungement completely wipes any trace of that record clean at least federally, and signals that the government was wrong to criminalize behavior in the first place. Cannabis amnesty is a first step forward. Secondly, we must make sure that the very people who are targeted by the war on drugs have an opportunity to benefit from the fruits of legalization to once have arrested and incarcerated a group of people for doing something. And then denying them the ability to benefit from its newfound legal status only adds insult to injury. And these insults are only made worse by the fact that we now have former police officials and police leaders running licensed cannabis companies. The very people responsible for waging the war on drugs get to cash in while the people they targeted are left out. And finally, we should be pressuring our governments to reinvest some of the tax revenues generated from the sale of legal cannabis back into the communities most harmed by prohibition. Unknown Speaker 13:41 There's a long way to go in terms of correcting weed prohibition. But I wanted to note to those who may not understand cannabis culture that even a small change, like being mindful of the stigma is a foot in the right direction. Many stoners like Jay feel safer hanging around other stoners because of the sense of community present. Unknown Speaker 14:01 If people know you're a weed smoker, you're automatically part of their group automatically, you know, because there's a camaraderie right because we're all in this together. We all like to smoke, we're not hurting anybody. I don't feel free to go out and just smoke because I can and neither does my little clique group. Unknown Speaker 14:15 It's taken me four years unlearn the cannabis stigma that once felt so taboo. Though long delayed it's time to challenge the war on drugs that continues to target Black, Latino and indigenous communities. Especially now that cannabis is legal in Canada. Unknown Speaker 14:33 [Music]The kind of stuff that dreams are made this way. Unknown Speaker 14:45 Yes, fella loved that episode. It seems like forever ago that weed was illegal and I think we forgot that it's such a privilege to be able to smoke a joint in the street, and it's not like that for everyone. That was Bella Lopez and thanks to our executive producer Emily Morantz associate producer Manuela Vega artwork by Ben Shelley, theme music composed by John Powers. I've been your host Gracie Brison. And of course, last but not least, shout out to Amanda Cupido, Trinity bellwoods on 420. And remember, fitting in is overrated.