Dan Fumano: Psychedelics still illegal says Vancouver police

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You might have heard this week that Vancouver has legalized over-the-counter sales of LSD and magic mushrooms — but that’s not quite true.

In fact, despite a move Tuesday by city councillors that some have interpreted as an indication the city is set to regulate the psychedelic drug trade, the Vancouver Police Department said the following day that criminal charges could be coming soon for people involved in that business.

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A couple of Vancouver councillors certainly generated significant attention this week by going against a decision of the city’s own legal department and senior officials and reinstated the business licence of a shop on West Broadway that sells magic mushrooms, LSD, DMT, and other psychedelic drugs.

The decision at Tuesday’s business licence hearing doesn’t mean that starting Wednesday, Vancouver has a legal, regulated psychedelic drug trade. It does mean the public conversation around psychedelic drugs is likely to continue and expand, including a fuller debate on the topic expected to come to a Vancouver city council meeting next month.

But the political makeup of the full city council is quite different than the three-councillor group that decided Tuesday to hand back the revoked business licence for 247 West Broadway.

And as VPD spokesperson Const. Tania Visintin said the next day, selling these substances is still illegal, and “the existence of a business licence does not change this reality or the law.”

In November, VPD officers executed search warrants on several storefronts, including 247 West Broadway.

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“Evidence obtained during those searches, and throughout the course of this investigation, indicates that multiple criminal offences were occurring at these for-profit businesses,” Visintin said Wednesday. “The results of our investigation, and recommendations for criminal charges, will soon be forwarded to crown council.”

The storefront at 247 West Broadway has been selling various psychoactive drugs since early last year, and they’re not shy about what they’re doing.

The Broadway shop, which is operated by longtime Vancouver drug activist and entrepreneur Dana Larsen, had its licence suspended last May for “gross misconduct” for selling banned substances and misrepresenting itself on its licence application as a seller of “party supplies” and “novelties.”

The Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary at 247 West Broadway is also far from Vancouver’s only retailer openly selling psychedelics. Some estimates say Vancouver has as many as 20 storefronts openly selling magic mushrooms, a product that has become increasingly mainstream.

On Tuesday, after the Vancouver city councillors voted two-to-one to re-issue the Mushroom Dispensary’s business licence, Larsen told Postmedia News reporter Cheryl Chan: “We are now the only shop in Canada licensed to sell entheogens, mushrooms, peyote, LSD and DMT.”

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That is not really accurate. The wording of what was approved Tuesday did not, technically, licence the shop to “sell” anything, but directed staff to reissue the licence “with terms that clarify the business as education and advocacy regarding entheogens and medicinal psychoactive substances such as psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, LSD and DMT.”

Presumably neither Carr nor her colleague Green Coun. Pete Fry, who also supported reissuing the licence, expect the shop will cease selling the products they have been selling for more than a year now that their licence says are in the “education and advocacy” business.

Asked about the business licence during an unrelated press conference in Port Moody Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said he found the situation “rather bizarre.”

“A store was given a business licence, and then that business licence has been revoked — and now they’ve been given a business licence again. It makes absolutely no sense to me.”

“The products they are selling are illegal in this country and they are leaving themselves open to be raided by the police.”

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Asked about Farnworth’s comments, Carr said: “Well, we’ve done it before in Vancouver.”

Carr compared the situation to 2015, when she was serving on the Vision-majority council that adopted Canada’s first framework to regulate cannabis retail, three years before the drug was federally legalized.

The political dimension of this week’s decision is different: Carr and Fry out-voted Mike Klassen on Tuesday, the only ABC councillor at the hearing. The two Green councillors plan to bring a motion to a future council meeting, probably in April, that would direct city staff to create a system to regulate retail mushrooms sales, similar to what council did in 2015.

This time, that direction is unlikely to have the support of council’s ABC majority, as indicated by Klassen’s comments Tuesday and ABC Mayor Ken Sim’s subsequent public statement blasting Carr and Fry’s decision.

But what will the mayor and his ABC council majority do now about Larsen’s drug trafficking operation a stoner’s throw from city hall?

Zoë Frankcom, Sim’s director of communications, said Wednesday “we are looking at all of our options” and plan to be “very thoughtful” about whatever happens next.

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On Wednesday, Larsen said the shop was busy with customers who said they heard about his victory at city hall.

While he welcomed the decision, he acknowledged “it doesn’t allow everybody else to apply for a licence.”

“It sure changes the scene politically, but it’s not a precedent,” Larsen said. “I don’t know how it’s gonna play out.”

— With files from Katie DeRosa

dfumano@postmedia.com

twitter.com/fumano

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