Month: June 2018

Video: Sarah Brady Siff at Cannabis: Global Histories

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Editor’s Note: Want more history about cannabis eradication in the United States? Good news – Sarah Brady Siff was interviewed during the Cannabis: Global Histories conference, and the video is available below. Enjoy! Sarah Brady Siff – Global Histories: Cannabis from Points ADHS on Vimeo.

“Babylon Come and Light It Up on Fire”

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dr. Sarah Brady Siff, a visiting assistant professor of journalism at Miami University in Ohio. Siff’s post elaborates on the research she presented at the Cannabis: Global Histories conference held April 19-20, 2018, at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Enjoy!

Recently, like so many others, I found myself searching on YouTube for reggae songs about cannabis. It did not take long to stumble across the age-restricted content of Marlon Asher’s “Ganja Farmer.” I feel I was able to understand this song much better because I participated in the recent conference Cannabis: Global Histories.

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Sarah Brady Siff presents her work at the Cannabis: Global Histories conference at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Photo by Morgan Scott, Breathe Images

Asher was raised Southern Baptist in Trinidad but converted to Rastafari, whose million-odd adherents smoke cannabis as a spiritual ritual. Originating in colonial Jamaica and said to be inspired by black nationalists such as Marcus Garvey, Rastafari is native to the Caribbean. The tropical climate there is ideal for the outdoor cultivation of cannabis, which Rastas call ganja. Thus the lyrics to “Ganja Farmer”’s refrain*:

Yes I’m a ganja planter
Call me di ganja farmer
Deep down inna di earth where me put di ganja
Babylon come and light it up on fire

Babylon refers literally to the ancient Middle Eastern kingdom under which the Jews were said to have been taken captive and to have suffered. Rastas often use it as a metaphor for oppressive Western institutions. In the first verse of “Ganja Farmer,” a helicopter appears “spitting fire” from the sky, and the farmer points out that the eradicators have waited to strike until after his long labors watering and fertilizing the crop. He fantasizes about using a rocket launcher to “dispense the helicopter” in mid-air.

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Video: Matthew DeCloedt at Cannabis: Global Histories

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Editor’s Note: Did you hear? Yesterday, Canada’s Senate passed legislation legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults. Legalization will officially take place in October 17, 2018, in an effort to “take market share away from organized crime and protect the country’s youth,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. Do you think Canada passed the law because they …

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Human Rights Claims and Medical Cannabis in Canada: A View from the Courts

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Matthew DeCloedt, a law student at Central European University and a participant in the Cannabis: Global Histories conference held from April 19-20, 2018, at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. DeCloedt brings a legal lens to the conversation surrounding medical marijuana in Canada, with a specific focus on human rights. Enjoy!

To understand how Canada went from limited access to cannabis for therapeutic purposes to the impending legalization of recreational pot, it is crucial to understand the impact of human rights discourse on the erosion of impediments to accessing medical cannabis.

From the early 2000s, Canadian courts were a crucial forum for taking issue with the federal government’s restrictive cannabis law and policy.

Section 7 of the Canada Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which gives “Everyone…the right to life, liberty and the security of person,” was the most important of the rights invoked by litigants.

The success and failure of human rights claims depended on Canadian litigants’ ability to convince the courts that the threat of criminal sanctions for possessing and cultivating cannabis for therapeutic purposes violated their right to life, liberty and security of person. In other words, they asked whether prohibition was a proportional response to the supposed harms of using cannabis?

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La Droit de la Drogue: Hachichins, Orientalist Imaginings, and Fears of Foreign Drug Use in France’s Legal Code

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Editor’s Note: After bringing Points readers a fantastic write-up of the event itself, Dr. David A. Guba Jr. (Bard Early College, Baltimore) now presents a blog post on the research he presented at the Cannabis: Global Histories conference, held from April 19-20, 2018, at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. In it, Guba explains how, in the wake of the 1968 social uprisings, Orientalist fears and a longing for isolationism worked their way into France’s new drug policy. Enjoy!

On 17 October 1968, the French National Assembly met to discuss the nation’s efforts to combat international drug trafficking and the urgent need to enact new laws within France to address a recent surge in drug-related arrests among university-age youths. Alarmed by the student rebellions of May and June, politicians across the ideological spectrum moved to strengthen the nation’s commitment to the U.N. Single Convention of 1961, and many believed that in such a time of crisis, the French government should go beyond the Convention’s protocols and harden its own legal system against the growing scourge of drug use among the nation’s rebellious youth. After a series of discussions lasting until December of 1970, the Assembly passed the Droit de la Drogue, then the most comprehensive legal measure taken in modern France against the traffic, sale, and use of illicit substances and the basis of French drug laws today.

During the debates leading up to the passing of the 1970 Drug Law, French politicians and consulting medical, public health, and legal professionals described the nation’s social unrest and drug problems as a single, foreign-born “plague,” spread to France by Arab drug traffickers and provocateurs set on undermining the health and moral constitution of the body politic. In his address to the Assembly at the first open debate in October 1969, Gaullist Pierre Mazeaud, a French jurist and professor of law, urged the French government to do all it could to catch and expel “undesirable foreigners” engaged in drug smuggling, including “hippies” and “persons who travel excessively to the Middle or Far Orient.”(1) Daniel Benoist, a socialist deputy in the Assembly, echoed Mazeud, arguing that the student rebellions and the rise in drug-related arrests both stemmed from “the introduction of foreign elements into our country that brought with them radical philosophies and at the same time drugs.”(2) These alien ideas and drugs, Benoist concluded, had duped France’s youth with promises of “artificial paradise” and thus caused the current state of crisis in French society.(3) Driving the point home, fellow socialist deputy René Chazelle reminded the Assembly that the word “assassin” shared an etymology with word “hashish,” both deriving from the name of an ancient cult of cannabis-smoking murderers in the Islamic world, the Hachichins. Pointing to the recent student rebellion and spike in drug-related arrests (and especially hashish-related arrests), Chazelle warned his audience: “This filiation of drugs and crime is not simply assonance, it is today a reality.”

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“Le Club des Hachichins de Paris,” from A Nous Paris

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Video: Emily Dufton at Cannabis: Global Histories

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When historians gathered at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, in April of this year for the Cannabis: Global Histories conference, we were fortunate to have Morgan Scott of Breathe Image there to document the event. Morgan also took short videos of all the presenters, in which we discussed our work and the conference itself. We’re excited …

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Global Histories of Cannabis

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Lucas Richert and James H. Mills, professors at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and the organizers of the Cannabis: Global Histories conference, held April 19-20, 2018. They discuss the importance of developing a “big picture narrative” about the history of cannabis, and, as countries across the world reconsider marijuana laws, emphasize the need for this global approach. Enjoy!

Over the past decade governments in Uruguay, Portugal and the USA have made significant alterations to cannabis policies and other countries, such as Canada, have committed to major change this year. In 2018, Canada will be the first G7 country committed to ending cannabis prohibition at the federal level.

Ninety years after the UK imposed its own 1928 Coca Leaves and Indian Hemp Regulations, the Cannabis: Global Histories symposium at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow addressed a range of historical questions about the origins of attitudes towards, policies on, and markets for cannabis substances.  After all, by understanding how countries have come to the laws and control mechanisms that they currently deploy, and the reasons that consumers and suppliers have often proven to be so resistant to them, contemporary positions and future directions can be clearer, better-informed and free of the prejudices of the past.

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