Pubdate: Sat, 09 May 2015
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Tristin Hopper
Page: A10-A11

BARELY ILLEGAL - WHY VICE STILL THRIVES

A joint might still get you arrested in Iqaluit or rural Saskatchewan,
but in large corners of this country, it is easier to get high now
than it could ever be under legalization

If several thousand people gathered in downtown Vancouver for a mass
light-up of cigarettes, it would be assailed by condemnations from the
city's chief medical health officer. If they came to chug moonshine,
the gathering would be stopped in its tracks by riot police.

But when a mid-sized town's worth of people convene to smoke marijuana
in the heart of Vancouver, it is essentially a civic
institution.

On April 20 - the world's unofficial marijuana holiday - as many as
30,000 people gathered around the Vancouver Art Gallery for the city's
annual "smoke-out." By mid-afternoon, a crushing throng of people
splayed for a block in every direction, all cloaked by a skunky thin
haze.

When this event started in the 1990s, a defiant few roamed the event 
with baskets of joints for sale. Now, it's among the largest open-air 
markets in the city of Vancouver: More than 300 vendors, from slickly 
branded booths selling pot-infused olive oil all the way to dreadlocked 
men clutching hand-lettered signs reading "Dubes $5."

There are no permits, since this is technically a protest. There are
no sales taxes, since these are all illegal transactions. And there
are no age limits, as evidenced by a crowd comprised largely of
glassy-eyed high schoolers.

There are plenty of Vancouver police, of course, but they're only
there to direct traffic and call in paramedics whenever an attendee
drops from over-consumption. Most of the time, they can be seen
leaning on barricades looking bored.

Just after 5 p.m., an emcee summed up the scene from the 4/20 main
stage, "Nobody's this free anywhere on earth!"

Cannabis and all its "preparations, derivatives and similar synthetic
preparations" are effectively banned in Canada, according to the
Chretien-era Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. With a doctor's
note, medical pot users can attain the stuff from an Ottawa-sanctioned
catalogue of commercial growers. But for everyone else, get caught
with a sandwich Baggie of the stuff, and it can technically mean five
years in a federal prison.

But in 2015, there are thousands of people who have lived their entire
lives without the slightest hint that marijuana is illegal. A joint
might still get you arrested in Iqaluit or rural Saskatchewan, but in
large corners of this country, it is easier to get high now than it
could ever be under legalization.

So easy, in fact, that only hours after 4/20 celebrations had petered,
Vancouver city hall announced that it was finally going to start
licensing the city's vastly expanding collection of marijuana
dispensaries - over 80 and counting, more than the number of
McDonald's franchises here.

"The city has no jurisdiction to regulate the sale of marijuana, but
it does have clear jurisdiction to regulate how and where businesses
operate in our city," it stated in a release. Providing pot to
legitimately sick people was how Vancouver's dispensary trade got its
start, but that pretence is now thoroughly out the window.

Many Vancouver dispensaries have on-site naturopaths to give out
prescriptions to any and all comers, even if they forget to fake a
serious illness. Dispensaries have employees stand on the street to
hand out promotional cards to draw in new customers, several now have
marijuana vending machines and at one, customers can obtain their
cannabis by using a claw-crane arcade machine.

Despite whatever licence Vancouver attaches to dispensaries, this all
remains wildly illegal. Yet it persists solely because the Vancouver
police have openly declared they have no intention of doing anything
about it.

"If it's being used in a manner that's unlikely to impact your
neighbours or surrounding community, then it's unlikely police would
become involved," said Sgt. Randy Fincham, spokesman for the Vancouver
police.

"The tallest nail gets hit first," he add-

ed, and in a city with no shortage of drug problems, there are plenty
of nails taller than almost anything marijuana related.

As a result, any Vancouverite under the age of 30 has basically never
known a world in which he or she could be written up for anything less
than a shipping container full of pot.

"If you get charged with possession in Vancouver, you obviously did
something that was over the line," says Nick, a canvasser with
Sensible B.C., a pro-legalization lobby group.

A recent example would be Weeds Glass and Gifts, a dispensary that in
recent years has rapidly expanded to include 15 locations throughout
Coastal B.C. A Weeds location got raided in April, but only after
police got word of a 15-year-old allegedly winding up in the hospital
after buying some Weeds edibles.

Similarly laissez-faire attitudes have taken hold in virtually every
other major Canadian city. The website WeBeHigh.org tracks tolerance
for marijuana around the world, and Toronto, Sudbury and Montreal are
all in the "virtually legal" category, with the likes of Whitehorse,
Regina and St. John's not far behind.

One anonymous Whitehorse resident on WeBeHigh reported being pulled
over by an RCMP cruiser while concurrently speeding, rolling through a
stop sign and smoking a joint. Despite the tripartite of crimes, they
were simply "told to keep the window down for the drive home."

Just across the 49th parallel from Vancouver, of course, marijuana is
legal. Last year, Washington state became one of the few places on
earth to tax and regulate recreational cannabis.

Despite this, it has not spurred the wave of Canadian pot tourists
that one might expect. Washington pot is more expensive, less diverse
and, ironically, harder to obtain.

Last summer, when virtually every week yielded a new dispensary in
Seattle, the city's first recreational pot store, Cannabis City, had
to turn away customers after it ran out of stock in only three days.
Eighty years ago, the roles were reversed.

During the 1930s, it was Seattle where a popular drug - alcohol - was
illegal. Vancouver, meanwhile, was thoroughly "wet" after its own
experiment with temperance fizzled out in 1921.

Despite this, Seattle was a far, far easier place to get drunk. In
fact, say prohibition historians, the city has never again been as
easy a place to get a drink than it was during the lawless 1930s.

"Seattle was virtually an open city," said Daniel Okrent, author of Last 
Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, writing in an email to the 
National Post. Vancouver, by contrast, "actually had laws that regulated 
liquor sale and consumption."

Leonard Garfield, executive director of Seattle's Museum of History
and Industry, says that during Prohibition "you could come to Seattle,
step off your train, and a few steps down the road you could probably
enjoy a drink."

There is a dark side to Vancouver's open-armed acceptance of pot, of
course. Vancouver's 4/20 rally, for one, sent 64 people to hospital
with symptoms ranging from nausea to vomiting.

Seven per cent of drivers injured in B.C. car crashes had consumed pot
only hours earlier, according to a recent report in the British
Columbia Medical Journal. Two years ago, pot was cited in the
derailment of a B.C. train.

Of all the recreational drugs, marijuana is the least likely to kill
its users from an overdose, but studies are emerging showing that it
leaves teenagers with permanently damaged memory - a phenomenon that
many young British Columbians have seen firsthand. And just like
cigarettes, of course, bong hits and doobies still fill the lungs with
tar.

"Marijuana is just not the same benign substance that we knew about in
the '60s," a spokesperson for Vancouver Coastal Health told Global
News last year.

But at a time when tax-free, storefront pot is now available virtually
within walking distance of any corner of the city, it's clear that
Vancouver - with other cities quickly following suit - are in the
midst of a marijuana golden age.
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MAP posted-by: Matt