Bullies and mobs: Only-in-Vancouver spat between city and 4/20 organizers intensifies

VANCOUVER— It’s one of the last vestiges of this city’s counterculture heyday — the annual gathering of cannabis activists and enthusiasts on 4/20.

Even though city officials have grumbled about the unsanctioned event for years — citing the litter and the nuisance complaints — they’ve always accommodated it.

But now an only-in-Vancouver clash between the city’s park board and 4/20 organizers is intensifying, potentially putting the future of the event, now in its 25th year, in question.

A scheduled performance by American hip-hop group, Cypress Hill, which has a long affiliation with the cannabis industry, has city officials worried that crowds — which already number in the tens of thousands — could become uncontrollable, and the board voted Monday night to send a letter to organizers to cancel the concert.

Organizers, however, are vowing to stick with the program.

“The show must go on and it will and so too will the smoke,” organizer Jodie Emery told the National Post on Tuesday.

“The rhetoric is so inflamed and so unjustified and proves why we’re still a culture that’s discriminated against and suffers from unfair intolerance and demonization.”

The event, which is billed as a protest and a celebration, started modestly in 1995 as a “smoke out” among 200 cannabis activists at Victory Square park on the edge of downtown.

By 1997, it moved to the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery, a popular gathering place for political demonstrations. A few years ago, the event was moved to the city’s picturesque Sunset Beach.

As the event has grown, so too have the complaints about air quality, noise, traffic and damage to the grassy field on which the event is held. Last year, the total bill for policing and clean-up costs came to about $300,000. Event organizers contributed about $63,000; the city paid the rest.

In February, the park board passed a motion to have the city explore alternative venues and to find ways to preclude the sale of cannabis or cannabis products.

“There is a growing frustration from residents that concerns are not being heard or acted upon,” the motion read, citing the city’s own bylaws that prohibit smoking and vaping at parks and beaches.

While the motion passed, it wasn’t without some reservation. Commissioner Camil Dumont said he did not want to see a replay of Vancouver’s darker moments from the 1960s and ’70s when authorities sometimes took a heavy-handed approach to dealing with young people from across Canada who migrated to the city’s beaches and parks during the summers.

“The response from the establishment … was particularly confrontational. It was a violent response at times. We’ve learned lessons from that,” he said.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart told CBC Radio this week he has no intention of sending in riot gear-clad police, if that’s what people are thinking. That said, the city has “significant concerns” about the commercial nature of the event and associated costs, city spokesman Jag Sandhu said in an email.

The show must go on and it will and so too will the smoke

Some of the most vocal critics on the park board have been ramping up the rhetoric, going so far as to call 4/20 organizers “bullies” for adding Cypress Hill to the itinerary and saying the event has essentially turned into an unsanctioned festival — not a protest.

“This is bullies coming into our parks and saying we are not going to listen to you,” said Commissioner Tricia Parker.

Plus, the legalization of cannabis in Canada has made the need for a protest moot, she said.

“They’ve run out of arguments.”

One-time mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe, now editor of the Business in Vancouver newspaper, was even more blunt, writing in a column this week that the city needed to stop accommodating a “mob that would wish to trample Sunset Beach each April 20 under the pretence of a pseudo-protest.”

“Let’s be clear, protests belong to legitimate grievances about discrimination, inequality, unjust policies or troubling situations.”

In a lengthy rebuttal posted on the 420 Vancouver website, Emery and fellow organizer Dana Larsen wrote that current legislation continues to stigmatize and criminalize cannabis users.

“People are still being arrested and sent to jail,” they wrote, citing recent media reports that a Winnipeg man, Rodney Clayton Felix, had been sentenced to 10 months in jail for possessing 86 grams of marijuana with intent to distribute.

They added: “Medical cannabis patients do not have access to cannabis, and are seeing their medicine being taken over by governments and corporations in a recreational market run by former police and politicians.”

Emery told the Post it’s unfair that the city’s annual Pride parade, which similarly bills itself as a protest and a celebration, receives “civic status” designation, meaning it receives some financial support from the city as well as corporate sponsorships.

“We’d love to get a permit and be included and treated equally,” she said.

Local historian John Atkin says Vancouver, the birthplace of Greenpeace and home to clothing-optional Wreck Beach, has always had a bit of a push-pull tension between its relaxed and uptight attitudes.

He said the current squabble reminds him of the early days of the park board when the Moral Reform League objected to band concerts on Sundays in the parks, certain styles of swim suits, and even hot dog sales.

As in the past, he expects the current fight over 4/20 to resolve itself and does not foresee the city ever taking the drastic step of completely shutting down the event.

“I think 4/20 has just pushed the envelope past the breaking point and as a result the attitudes harden a bit more than should be necessary.”

With files from Postmedia News

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