It's the sort of discussion that flares up and then simmers along for ten or twelve years sort of like a coal seam fire.
I read something in today's Times Colonist that got me thinking maybe my island should forget about winning province status and instead look at sovereignty association.
Now here's the deal. We know that Canadians generally support reform of marijuana laws. Some want it decriminalized, others back outright legalization of recreational possession and use. A minority, however, insist that we keep slamming kids behind bars.
What if we compromised? How about making Vancouver Island a free weed sovereign state within the Canadian confederation? Model it along the lines of Amsterdam. Canadians fly in, have a good time, see the sights, smoke a little weed and then back to the mean streets of Calgary or Toronto.
Why Vancouver Island? It turns out this sort of thing is part of our history, it's in our blood so to speak - not for pot but for opium. In fact, as Monique Kieran writes, there was a time when Victoria was the opium capital of the New World, and the government made a killing from the trade.
For almost 50 years, beginning in the 1860s, Victoria reigned as the opium capital of the New World. Fifteen refineries operated between Herald and Johnson streets in the late 1880s, and employed dozens of workers. In one year alone, they refined about 41,000 kilograms of opium. Nowhere near the magnitude of output of B.C. bud today, but significant for the time.
Other parallels exist. The reasons put forth by today’s proponents of legalized pot are increased control of production, distribution and sales, and billions of dollars in increased tax revenues. Conservative think-tank the Fraser Institute estimates these to be worth as much as $7 billion annually.
Federal and local governments of yesteryear recognized and capitalized on the same opportunities. According to Dominion of Canada Trade and Navigation records, in 1891, the Canadian government collected more than $146,000 in duties (about $3.6 million today) on raw opium imported into B.C. from Asia.
Added to that pot of gold were fees from special licences imposed on sellers of smoking opium. According to David Lai, retired cultural geographer and professor emeritus with the University of Victoria, in 1865, these licences were priced at $100 each (about $1,400 today); by 1894, they cost $500.
On top of all that, the opium was taxed at point of sale.
Another parallel with the pot story: Special control and licensing attentions targeted only smoking — that is, “recreational” — opium. Opium intended for use in patent medicines was exempt.
So there you have it. The importer/refiners paid duties. The retailers paid vendor licence fees. Consumers paid opium sales taxes.
Ottawa argues legalization would set Canada up for retaliation from the U.S. and potentially elsewhere. Fine, let Vancouver Island take the heat. Besides, when it comes to setting up this sort of thing and wringing every drop of tax revenue from it, we're the Pros from Dover.
So, Canada, you draw up the paperwork and let's get this thing happening. Play ball and we might just cut you in on the action.
Mound, you want another Quebec. Quebec because of language and cultural differences and Vancouver Island because of weed. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteI have been to Vancouver Island, visited Victoria and Butchart Gardens. Very nice. That is why we will fight such a sovereignty.:)
Maritimes is not that bad. Nova Scotia has the oil and gas reserves and is doing well. On Atlantic level Newfoundland is 'have' province while Ontario has become haven't.
Any province that doesn't want to be sold out to China, had all better get out of Harper's Canada, the country he hates so much.
ReplyDeleteThere are 18 mining permits on the Island. There is the Rain Forest being eyed with greed. To hell with the Island being a province, be your own little country.
The F.N. are challenging Harper on his, evil FIPA deal with China. Seems we will all have to take, a speed course in Chinese Mandarin. Harper is giving the key to Canada's resources and resource jobs to, Communist China.
http://www.cinarc.org/Opium.html#anchor_362
ReplyDeleteThat opium production was sent to China. Opium prohibition in China began in 1729, yet was followed by nearly two centuries of increasing opium use. China had a positive balance sheet in trading with the British, which led to a decrease of the British silver stocks. Therefore, the British tried to encourage Chinese opium use to enhance their balance, and they delivered under British control. In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the East India Company, as a strict monopoly of the British government. For supervising and managing the business, there was an extensive and complicated system of government agencies. A massive confiscation of opium by the Chinese emperor, who tried to stop the opium deliveries, led to two Opium Wars in 1839 and 1858, in which Britain suppressed China and traded opium all over the country. After 1860, opium use continued to increase with widespread domestic production in China, until more than 25% of the male population were regular consumers by 1905. Recreational or addictive opium use in other nations remained rare into the late 19th century, recorded by an ambivalent literature that sometimes praised the drug.
Global regulation of opium began with the stigmatization of Chinese immigrants and opium dens in San Francisco, California, leading rapidly from town ordinances in the 1870s to the formation of the International Opium Commission in 1909. Other Asians say this was the beginning of the end for China...enter communisum. Victoria: The Largest Opium Making Center Outside Asia
域多利 - 加拿大最大的鸦片烟产地
Modern cruise ship passengers find Victoria to be charming, beautiful, and quite British. Few of them suspect that between 1860 and 1908, it was the opium capital of the New World—in fact, the largest opium refining center outside Asia. The most important research on Victoria opium is that of David Chuenyan Lai (see citation below); his advice has been central to our understanding of the subject.
Most recorded opium “factories” (i.e., refineries) in Victoria opened in the 1880s. The number peaked in 1889, when there were 15 on Cormorant, Government, and Fisgard Streets in Victoria’s Chinatown. Opium refining seems to have gotten its real start in Canada after 1880, when a new U.S. law restricted opium refining to American citizens (Culin 1891: 499). This caused would-be Chinese refiners, none of whom by law could become U.S. citizens, to move across the border to Victoria, which then held the largest Chinese community in Canada. The new industry took off and proved to be reasonably profitable (for a new view of opium profits, click here), both for refining companies and for the national and local governments.
The refining of smoking-type opium was not banned in Canada until 1908. Before then, refining and selling the drug in Canada was no more illegal than distilling whisky.
Interesting the tax distinction. I believe "use in patent medicines" such as laudanum, was mostly a white person thing. So for instance Coleridge and his drugged out visions, psychedelic poetry like "Kubla Khan". So they didn't tax drugs for whites, but did tax drugs used mainly by Chinese immigrants.
ReplyDeleteYet another of those clever little racist drug laws that continue to this day (such as in the American powder cocaine use = white = misdemeanor, crack cocaine use = black = felony, bigger sentence, often prevention from voting forever after, thing)
Other Asians say, the use of opium was the beginning of the end of China... enter Communism.
ReplyDelete