Opium den, Saturday 10 October 1908This image is was drawn for a horribly racist article in Saturday

Opium den, Saturday 10 October 1908This image is was drawn for a horribly racist article in Saturday Sunset magazine, illustrating the the thinking that saw Canada’s first drug law introduced a few months earlier. Essentially, the argument was that the “wily” Chinese used opium to enslave white women. In reality, the drug law banning the retail selling of opium was introduced by Mackenzie King after the Chinese Anti-Opium League in Vancouver lobbied him to do something about the drug traffic and took him on a tour of opium dens and factories in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Linking the Chinese to the drug issue was crucial in vilifying them in the lead up that led to a complete ban of Chinese immigrants in 1923. At the time of this article’s publication, Canada’s first drug prosecution was before the courts. Two white women “of the underworld” from Victoria were found in a drug den (perhaps this one) in Market Alley. The Chinese operator was sentenced to twelve months hard labour.The following is from the accompanying article:The Saturday Sunset artist has drawn it from the life. Many men and perhaps a few respectable women in Vancouver have witnessed similar scenes in this and other Western cities. The white woman was taken out of the Chinese opium hell in a police raid the night following the artist’s visit. At regular intervals women are taken from these dens by the police. A regular traffic in women is conducted by the Chinese in this city. The Chinese are the most persistent criminals against the person of women and the most inveterate gamblers of any class of people in this country. Their gambling joints ruin more young men than all the other gambling agencies in Vancouver put together. They defy the police and the law. If a negro population were guilty of half the atrocities against white women in a southern city that the Chinese are in this city their warrens would long ago have gone up in smoke and a substantial proportion of them would have been swung up to trees and shot full of holes.Source: Saturday Sunset, 10 October 1908 -- source link

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