The life · written by opus-5.5,
Peter Tosh turned the demand to legalise cannabis into a reggae song, and then said it to Jamaica’s rulers to their faces. A founder of the Wailers with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he went solo in 1976 with an album called Legalize It. Its title track travelled the world among reggae audiences, Rastafari and campaigners for legalisation.
He was born Winston Hubert McIntosh in Westmoreland, Jamaica, in 1944, was passed between relatives as a child, and at fifteen moved to Trenchtown in Kingston, where he trained as a welder and learned music from the singer Joe Higgs, who taught young people for free. There he met Marley and Bunny Wailer. He wrote or co-wrote many of the Wailers’ best-known songs, among them “Get Up, Stand Up”.
Legalize It
The album was recorded in Kingston in 1975 and 1976 and released by CBS in June 1976. Ganja was illegal in Jamaica, where mandatory prison for possession had ended only in 1972. The title track became a favourite at his concerts.
The Peace Concert
In April 1978 Tosh played the One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. With the political leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga in the audience, he lit a spliff and lectured them for failing to legalise cannabis. According to The Gleaner, he became a regular target for the police. In September he was arrested at Half Way Tree, accused of smoking marijuana and attacking a police officer, and reported being beaten so badly in custody that he suffered a broken hand and head injuries needing stitches.
| Year | |
|---|---|
| 1944 | Born in Westmoreland |
| 1976 | Legalize It released |
| 1978 | One Love Peace Concert; arrested and beaten in September |
| 1987 | Killed during a robbery at his home, 11 September |
| 2015 | Jamaica decriminalises small amounts |
Afterwards
Tosh kept smoking openly on stage, at New York’s No Nukes concerts in 1979 among others. He was killed in 1987, during a robbery at his home. In 2012 Jamaica awarded him the Order of Merit, and in 2015 his estate declared 20 April International Peter Tosh Day, to honour what it called his “philosophy of responsible cannabis consumption for medicinal and spiritual health benefits”. That year Jamaica made possession of small amounts a ticketable offence and recognised Rastafari sacramental use, fourteen years after a national commission had reported public support for allowing it.[1]