Prof. Catherine Carstairs was featured in the Huffington Post and on MSN.ca on Nov. 2 in articles about the history of racism and marijuana prohibition.

Carstairs, a professor in the Department of History at U of G, talked about how Canada’s criminalization of cannabis could have been an attempt to tie the product to certain immigrant communities and had little to do with real public welfare concerns. She said that Canada wanted to position itself as a moral leader on cannabis and decided to add it to a schedule of prohibited substances.

Her research includes the history of drug use. She has published articles on cannabis prohibition and published the book Jailed for Possession.