Banned in six words: the real history of cannabis in Canada
Six words in 1923, no debate, no evidence — and the four hundred years of receipts around them.
April 23, 1923. Late session in the House of Commons. Canada's Minister of Health rises to explain why cannabis is joining the schedule of prohibited drugs. Here, in its entirety, is the parliamentary case that made cannabis illegal in this country: "There is a new drug in the schedule."
Six words. No debate. No evidence. Then a century of arrests under that law.
Our Special Report, The History of Cannabis in North America, reads the four hundred years of receipts around those six words: the crop the Crown ordered colonists to grow; the 1930s reefer panic imported wholesale from the United States; the Le Dain Commission of 1972, which recommended ending criminal penalties for possession — and was shelved for 46 years; and the arithmetic of the pardon program that promised justice to as many as half a million Canadians and delivered 260 pardons in its first year.
Marie-Andrée Bertrand — the only woman at the Le Dain table — described something remarkably close to the 2018 legalization framework in 1972. Canada waited two generations to listen to her. Every date in the film is primary-sourced; when we get one wrong, the correction gets printed where everyone can see it.
News, not promotion. Nothing here is for sale, and nobody funds the verdict. 19+ (18+ AB, 21+ QC). Educational journalism under s.16 of the Cannabis Act.