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Cocaine Use in the Era of Social Reform: The Natural History of a Social Problem in Canada, 1880–1911*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Glenn F. Murray
Glenn F. Murray
Affiliation:
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, York University
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Extract

Current interest in the non-medical use of cocaine in Canada can be gauged by the attention this drug is getting in the various media. Not surprisingly, researchers have now entered the arena in the hope of answering some of the questions posed by this phenomenon. A similar trend occurred in regard to marijuana more than a decade ago when popular concern led to a federal commission that eventually recommended the repeal of the offence of cannabis possession. The wave of concern created considerable scholarly interest in Canada's approach to the control of narcotic drugs, including cannabis, which had been defined as narcotic for legal purposes. Much research followed on various fronts, from studies on the effects of cannabis on health to the social consequences of punishment.

Several studies have examined the origins of Canada's legislative response to narcotic drug use. A principal conclusion from these studies is that legislation became possible because of hostility toward minority groups associated with drug use, specifically, the Chinese who were known for their use of opium. In the present paper, however, we see that drug control grew as much out of a “cocaine scare” as out of concern with opium use. Moreover, cocaine attracted attention in part precisely because its use was not confined to despised minorities, but permeated society as a whole, affecting “young people as well as seniors,” “men and women,” those from “poorer classes,” those from “respectable families” and those “who should and do know better.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 2 , 1987 , pp. 29 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1987

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References

Notes

1. Weber (1947) argued that culture gives meaning to orientation problems. He said that we study things that are relevant to us and the society in which we live. Parsons, T. (ed.), Henderson, A.M. and Parsons, T. (trans.), Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947)Google Scholar. In fact, the present paper is the second study the author has made of the history of cocaine use in Canada. In an earlier study, the phenomenon of cocaine use today was found to parallel the one that appeared a century ago. This finding was reported in Murray, G.F. and Erickson, P.G., “The Second Time Around: Old and New Cycles in the Definition of Cocaine as a Social Problem,” a Paper presented to the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, November 13–17, 1985Google Scholar. A revised version of that paper is presented in chapter one of Erickson, P.G., Adlaf, E.M., Murray, G.F. and Smart, R.G., The Steel Drug: Cocaine in Perspective (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1987)Google Scholar.

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43. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2523.

44. House of Commons Debates, November 25, 1910, 261.

45. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2526.

46. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2526.

47. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2527-2528.

48. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2528.

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53. During this era there was rapid growth in the population of Canadian cities. For example, from 1891 to 1911 the two largest cities–Montreal and Toronto–more than doubled in population. The third and fourth largest cities in 1911 were Winnipeg and Vancouver. They increased more than five and eight-fold, respectively, during the same period. Brown, R.C. and Cook, R., Canada, 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974), 99Google Scholar.

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59. Giffen, P.J., Small, S. and Lambert, S., “Politics of Canadian Narcotic Drug Control,” Unpublished Manuscript (Toronto: Addiction Research Foundation, 1982)Google Scholar. In comparison to the era of social reform, we have less faith in the effectiveness of legal sanctions today. Certainly, as far as non-medical drug use is concerned, it is well known that use burgeoned in the late 1960s and early 1970s in spite of the severe maximum penalties that were available in law. Also, that there are social and economic consequences associated with the “war on drugs” is common knowledge. And it is old news to learn that enforcement efforts are making only a small dent in the problem. Moreover, the public is more aware, today, of the potential of other sources of control, such as education and treatment.

60. See Giffen et al., “Politics of Canadian Narcotic Drug Control,” for a complete presentation of the paper.

61. Sessional Papers, “To an Order of the House of Commons, dated April 23, 1906, for a copy of the Report of A.E. DuBerger on the Drug and Proprietary Medicine Trade of Canada,” Sessional Papers 40(14), No. 125 (1906), 17Google Scholar.

62. For some discussion see, Guest, R.G., “The Development of Patent Medicine Legislation,” Applied Therapeutics 8 (1966), 786–789Google ScholarPubMed; Soucy, P., “The Proprietary or Patented Medicine Act of Canada,” Food Drug Cosmetic Law Journal 8 (1953), 706–716Google Scholar.

63. The development of Proprietary and Patent Medicine legislation in Canada is the topic of the author's Ph.D. thesis.

64. Phillips, J.L. and Wynne, R.D., Cocaine: The Mystique and the Reality, 53Google Scholar.

65. Sessional Papers 40 (14) (1906), No. 125, 16.

66. See, for example, Boyd, , “The Origins of Canadian Narcotics Legislation,” 102–136Google Scholar; Cook, S.J., Ideology and Canadian Narcotics Legislation, 1980-1923, M.A. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 1964Google Scholar; Giffen et al., “Politics of Canadian Narcotic Drug Control”; Green, M., “A History of Canadian Narcotics Control: The Formative Years,” 42–79Google Scholar; Solomon, R. and Madison, T., “The Evolution of Non-Medical Opiate Use in Canada: Part I, 1870-1929,” 237–265Google Scholar.

67. Giffen et al., “Politics of Canadian Narcotic Drug Control.”

68. House of Commons Debates, November 25, 1910, 259.

69. House of Commons Debates, November 25, 1910, 261.

70. House of Commons Debates, November 25, 1910, 260.

71. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2524.

72. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2527-2528.

73. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2524-2525.

74. House of Commons Debates, January 26, 1911, 2525.

75. Gusfield, J.R., The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

76. See, for example, Boyd, , “The Origins of Canadian Narcotics Legislation,” 1984Google Scholar; Green, M., “A History of Canadian Narcotics Control,” 1979Google Scholar; Solomon, R. and Madison, T., “The Evolution of Non-Medical Opiate Use in Canada,” 1976–1977Google Scholar.

77. The contrasting conclusion drawn from the present work is not novel. Giffen et al. (Politics of Canadian Narcotic Drug Control, 1982), also questioned the primacy of the minority group explanation in the development of Canadian narcotics legislation, specifically. Moreover, the present work supports parallel research in the United States (See, for example, Reasons, C., “The Politics of Drugs,” 1974Google Scholar; Starr, P., The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1982Google Scholar; Temin, P., Taking Your Medicine: Drug Regulation in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nevertheless, Hagan (Hagan, J., “The Legislation of Crime and Delinquency: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research,” Law and Society Review 14, no. 3 (1980), 603–628CrossRefGoogle Scholar) reached the following conclusion after reviewing the literature (all but one of the studies reviewed were done in the United States): “There is little doubt that narcotics legislation was partly an expression of hostile attitudes toward minority groups associated with drug use. … It made little difference in Canada or the United States that the ‘evidence clearly indicate[d] that the upper and middle classes predominated among narcotic addicts in the period up to 1914.’ Duster, T., The Legislation of Morality: Law, Drugs and Moral Judgement (New York: The Free Press, 1970), 9Google Scholar.

78. Temin, , Taking Your Medicine, 20Google Scholar.