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Smaller 4/20 event happening in Vancouver as some drug advocates shift focus to mushrooms

A haze of smoke hovers over the crowd at approximately 4:20 p.m. during Vancouver's annual pot protest. April 20, 2017. (CTV/Penny Daflos) A haze of smoke hovers over the crowd at approximately 4:20 p.m. during Vancouver's annual pot protest. April 20, 2017. (CTV/Penny Daflos)
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The organizers of the massive 4/20 event at Vancouver's Sunset Beach are taking a backseat this year, as some drug advocates shift their focus to mushroom legalization.

A message on the 4/20 Vancouver website blames uncertainty around COVID-19 restrictions – which were only recently relaxed in British Columbia – for preventing another waterfront gathering in 2022.

"We need to start organizing it in November or December, and we weren't sure what was going to be going on in the world," Dana Larsen, one of the long-time organizers of the event, told CTV News.

"Who knows what will happen next year. We'd like to bring it back to Sunset Beach, but we're just taking things one step at a time."

An unaffiliated group called Vancouver 4/20 Market is putting together an event outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street next week. While the scale will be somewhat smaller than some previous 4/20 gatherings in the city, there will still be dozens of rented booths representing various cannabis retailers.

The organizers of that event have not responded to interview requests from CTV News.

With recreational cannabis legal in Canada, Larsen said he's pivoted more of his attention to psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics, which remain prohibited in Canada with limited exceptions for clinical trials and other authorized uses.

Larsen has been selling mushrooms through the Medical Mushroom Dispensary, one of a number of psilocybin shops that have opened up in Vancouver. He compared the burgeoning grey market to cannabis pre-legalization, when the dispensaries at one point outnumbered Starbucks locations in the city.

"I expect by the end of this year, there's going to be dozens and dozens of them in Vancouver, probably most of them with no business licence," Larsen said.

"It'll probably end up being similar to how it was with the cannabis shops, where the city lets it go until there's way too many – according to them – and then they try to rein it in somehow with bylaws."

Even though it remains illegal to sell or possess mushrooms under federal law, Larsen said he's had no problems with law enforcement at his Downtown Eastside shop.

He has received a letter from the city threatening him with fines, but has yet to receive any tickets.

"I'm not too concerned with getting shut down in the immediate future. These things take a lot of time, and we have good lawyers," Larsen added.

Even though recreational pot is legal Canada-wide, some activists argue there's still much worth protesting, pointing to the many criminal offences listed under the Cannabis Act, some of which they consider over-reaching.

"People are still being arrested and sent to jail – 10 months locked in a cell, for 86 grams of a flower from a plant! – and losing their housing, children, job opportunities, travel rights, and more," the Vancouver 4/20 Market website reads.

"There's a stigma attached to cannabis, and harm caused by the laws, so that is why we still protest."

Should mushrooms be legalized next, Larsen said he and others will push toward legalizing opiates.

With B.C. continuing to set new records for overdose deaths, Larsen has spent the last few years funneling some of this dispensary revenue into a free drug testing site in the Downtown Eastside.

The website for the Get Your Drugs Tested centre boasts 25,000 samples tested since opening in May 2019.

"We offer it totally free as a community service. I'm very confident we've stopped a lot of overdoses," Larsen said.

CTV News has reached out to the Vancouver Police Department for information on their plans for 4/20, and their approach to mushroom dispensaries in the city.

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