Project E206: Lock up 20 women for 98 days and make them smoke pot

We are in Canada in 1972. The bridge theory - The Ontario government feared that decriminalizing cannabis would lead to «reefer madness», a cannabis craze created from scratch by the prohibitionist U.S. government of the Nixon years.

A few years earlier, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau convened the «Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs» and invested millions in studying the potential impact of decriminalizing cannabis for personal use. The conclusions were published in 1973 and will find cannabis-related penalties «grossly excessive» and «completely unreasonable» while advising the repeal of the ban on simple possession of cannabis and cultivation for personal use

Back then, possession of cannabis was punishable by up to seven years in prison. If you helped out a buddy, you could find yourself behind bars for life - and the penalties for trafficking were even heavier.

A traumatic experience

In 1971, the Addiction Research Foundation opened a research and treatment hospital where the study by Bill Miles, a British psychologist working in Toronto, Project E206 or Project Venus, would take place.

The research was part of a $1 million program, the latest in a series of experiments designed to answer one of the country's most pressing questions, raised when then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau mooted the idea of legalizing cannabis: what impact would legalization have on Ontario's youth and consumer productivity?

Bill Miles assembles a team including two behaviorists, a physician, a psychiatrist, a social worker and a full complement of nurses. The hospital welcomes 20 women to the service at an official dinner on January 31, 1972.

They will be locked up in the study center for 98 days and divided into two groups. Half of them - the experimental group - will smoke increasingly potent doses of cannabis twice a night, while the other half - the control group - will not consume cannabis.

The two groups could buy as many (relatively light) joints as they wanted for 50 cents each in a store that also sold alcohol, junk food, toiletries, cigarettes and magazines.

A key element of the study was its microeconomics. The women had to cover their living costs for 98 days. They could keep all the money they earned and didn't spend on food, clothing or entertainment. A $250 bonus awaited those who stayed until the end of the experiment. Those who dropped out prematurely lost their bonus and up to 75 % of their savings.

They earned their living with a loom on which they wove colorful, fluffy woolen belts with knotted tassels. For each belt that passed inspection - it had to contain at least two colors and be 132 centimeters long - the women received $2.50.

After a few days of practice, the task became easier. But the experiment didn't end well. The joints became so powerful that some asked for a medical certificate to escape their nocturnal obligations, claiming they were too ill to smoke. Others left, more traumatized than delighted by the experience. In the last week, the women who had remained in the compulsory smoking unit refused to continue.

Mixed evidence

Despite the enormous amount of data produced by Miles' study, it was, for the most part, swept under the carpet. So little was known about the experiment that it wasn't until 2013 that Toronto Star investigative reporter Diana Zlomislic uncovered the fiasco. in a striking report. The results of the study, notes Zlomislic, were never made public.

The behaviors observed during the study, however, provided mixed evidence on the effects of cannabis use. The most motivated subjects, for example, woke up at 4 a.m. to get a head start on weaving and earn extra money. In a smaller experiment previously conducted on men, subjects even went on strike to demand a pay rise, which, once accepted, boosted the group's productivity.

John Kagel, professor of economics at Ohio State University, who worked with the study data, perhaps best sums up the experiment's failure.

«If you legalized cannabis, were you going to get a bunch of stoned people who would just smoke cannabis all the time and not do any work? [The study] is pretty convincing evidence that that wasn't going to happen,» he said.

Did the conclusions run counter to a desire to persist in the prohibition ? History doesn't say.

A film based on this experience

Directed by Craig Pryce (Good Witch, Dark Oracle), who bought the rights to the story, the Canadian film The Marijuana Conspiracy looks back on this strange experience, which disappeared without a word.

«Among the doctors, behaviorists and psychologists who were trying to prove their assumptions about pot were true, everyone [in the study] had an agenda,» says Pryce, «except the girls. This film is about what they went through and how they came together and overcame their circumstances.»