It is said of the 1960s, “If you can remember them, you weren't really there.” For those who need a refresher course, this book is an alternative to time travel. For the younger, post-1970s generation who literally were not there, this book tells them all they ever need to know about the history of Canada's marijuana laws and why they have been so resistant to change. Considering that nearly three quarters of this current crop of young adults has tried marijuana, according to the Canadian Addiction Survey of 2004, perhaps they should be asking why the drug of choice for so many is still illegal. Martel's detailed snapshot of this crucial 15-year period sets out the actors, forces and political pressures that are still very much a part of the ongoing and unresolved debate on drug policy reform in Canada.

Perhaps if Canada had actually moved ahead on the various reform bills that have been discussed and discarded since 1975, up to the demise in 2003 of Bill C-85 (that would have removed the possibility of criminal records for cannabis possession), this book would seem like a quaint anachronism. However, the spirit of the war on drugs is alive and well and currently reincarnated in the Harper's governments plan for an “anti-drug strategy.” Martel's book encourages us to examine the key interest groups of this earlier era—students, police, the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry—when legislative change to reduce penalties seemed possible and ask what new players and influences have emerged to account for the current return to a more punitive approach.

Martel covers this formative period meticulously, providing a wealth of detail about how the “reefer madness” image of cannabis inherited from the 1930s was contested in the media, in Parliament, across provinces and between generations, to emerge as a somewhat more benign “recreational” drug. He first reviews the journalistic reporting of drug use in the media, noting that the exaggeration of scares (e.g., injuries, suicides) attributed to LSD and marijuana helped to create a moral panic over an emergent social problem. He also details the rise of the drug surveys which provided, for the first time, scientific evidence of the nature and scope of the new epidemic of drug use among young people. The not-always-welcome findings, that tobacco and alcohol still predominated and led to the most harm, helped to place the issue in broader context. The media, and politicians, also began to take notice of the potential widespread social harms that could result from labelling many young persons with a criminal record for the use of cannabis.

With the advent of the Commission on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (1969–1973), a channel was opened to the government of the day, Pierre Trudeau's Liberal party. It quickly became crowded, however, with contradictory advice and interpretations of both the harms of marijuana and the deterrent effects of the legislation. University students demonstrated for legal pot and were told by the Prime Minister, “If you have a joint for your own use, you shouldn't be hassled.” The police and especially the RCMP cautioned against liberalization of the laws with variants of the “it will open the floodgates” argument. The Canadian Medical Association could not agree on a policy recommendation, and a new body, the Council on Drug Abuse, jumped on the bandwagon of the “insidious threat to youth” posed by these illicit substances, an argument familiar to drug policy historians. No one was neutral, and the outcome, despite a majority report from the Le Dain Commission advocating repeal of the marijuana possession offence, was that the law did not change, then or in the next 30 years. Many of these themes recur in current debates.

The analysis of the differences evident among the provinces in how to respond to drug issues also resonates today. Although the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over the criminal law, health and education are provincial matters. All are grist for the drug policy mill, and Martel shows, for example, how the more tolerant political culture of Quebec contrasted with the more hard-line approach in PEI. The Ontario government worked closely with the federal health bodies, while the BC government partnered more closely with the RCMP in opposing marijuana liberalization. The latter is an interesting contrast to the current standoff between the Harper government's distaste for the Vancouver Safer Injection Site and desire among the mainly united front posed by the BC provincial government, local policy officials, scientists, health professionals and community groups for the continuation of this harm reduction program.

Martel concludes by raising many contemporary issues that have further complicated the marijuana issue, including the medicinal use of cannabis, international treaties, US influence, the Canadian Senate report in 2002 recommending legalization, proliferation of grow-ops and widespread use. In sum, this book offers a wealth of detail to the student of Canadian drug policy and its politics, and to the social historian who wishes to understand how some of our “disreputable pleasures” become legal while others do not. It is to be hoped that someone, perhaps Professor Martel himself, will pick up where this story leaves off, and continue to analyze this ongoing saga. Perhaps, some day, there will be a “this time.”