By Erika Dyck and Lucas Richert
In 2001 Health Canada approved the use of medical marijuana for a strict list of health complaints ranging from different pain applications to seizures from epilepsy. During the last federal election in 2015, Justin Trudeau boldly promised to go further down the path of legalization, suggesting that he will decriminalize possession for recreational use.
A month after this election promise, The Economist showcased the blurry future of Canadian pot and suggested, “converting a medical-marijuana industry into a recreational one will not be easy.” While legalization is probable under the newly elected Trudeau Liberals, many questions will have to be addressed and the transition could be rocky. As a Colorado marijuana enforcement official told the National Post, “It’s going to be a lot harder to implement than you think. It’s going to take a lot longer to do it. And it’s going to cost more than you think…”
The Liberal campaign promise of legalization has invited a new host of critics. John Ivison has reconceived of Canada Post as Canada Pot, the major domestic system of distribution throughout the country. Sylvain Charlebois deems marijuana a “gateway” drug with high upside. Dan Malleck has argued that liquor control boards should control recreational marijuana, whereas Ronan Levy has suggested that the recent Allard ruling will create regulatory uncertainty at a most inopportune time.
Regulating marijuana use remains highly contested and the path forward is anything but obvious, but historically there are some insights into drug regulation that may prove helpful in informing the public debates over the next chapter of ‘reefer madness’. Historians have a vital role to play in these debates, particularly for their capacity to weave together a big picture narrative amongst the cacophony of players from policymakers, journalists, physicians, researchers, interest groups, recreational users and the pharmaceutical industry, each of whom have been investing in their own particular messages about the pleasures and pitfalls of pot. Continue reading
On March 2, the history community lost a major figure, great scholar, and terrific colleague when John Long passed away in North Bay, Ontario. Born in Brampton on December 18, 1948, Professor Long’s career as an educator and researcher took him across the country, but the Mushkegowuk people and Treaty 9 territory had a special place in his life and work.
In 2010, he published his groundbreaking book Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905. The book shows how the government omitted and misrepresented central elements of the treaty in its conversations with the Mushkegowuk people. In its description of the book McGill-Queen’s Press says that that it “sets the record straight while illuminating the machinations and deceit behind treaty-making.” In a review, historian J.R. Miller writes “Dr. Long has done the First Nations of far northern Ontario an enormous service, and shows scholars of Native-newcomer relations how ethnohistory should be done.” Long’s research inspired award-winning filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s latest documentary – Trick or Treaty.
“Before I had my two children, I had a miscarriage.” This is how Alicia Yamin starts her new book Power, Suffering, and the Struggle for Dignity: Human Rights Frameworks for Health and Why They Matter. By introducing the book in such a personal manner, Yamin, the Policy Director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, prepares the reader for what is to follow. In interweaving personal stories, Yamin demonstrates how health should be situated as a human right and, in doing so, represents a major turning point in the struggle for dignity.