Vancouver\u2019s first 420 event of the post-legalization era in Canada is, paradoxically, turning into a fight over free speech. City authorities claim the event has gotten out of control and must come to an end \u2014 or at least be significantly reined in. Organizers, in turn, are asserting their right to hold the event without a permit, just as they always have.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s\u00a0Vancouver 420<\/a> will be the 25th time the festival has been held since the event began as a pro-legalization rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. Since 2016, the event has been held at Sunset Beach<\/a>, a waterfront park, where it attracts tens of thousands of revelers, with some 40,000 attendees congregating during the peak at 4:20 p.m. and up to 100,000 over the course of the eight-hour bacchanalia.<\/p>\n But the\u00a0Vancouver Park Board<\/a> is saying the unpermitted fun must come to an end and has thrown up a multitude of bureaucratic obstacles. In the most recent development, at an April 15 meeting, Park Board commissioner John Coupar raised a motion to ask event organizers to cancel the planned performance by hip hop giants Cypress Hill<\/a>. That motion\u00a0passed<\/a>, and the organizers are now on notice.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCancel Cypress Hill, because that\u2019s a big escalation,\u201d Coupar warned organizers, speaking to Vancouver\u2019s\u00a0CityNews<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like they\u2019re saying, \u2018OK, you think it was big last year? We\u2019re going to really make it bigger and there\u2019s nothing you can do about it.’\u201d<\/p>\n David Malmo-Levine, longtime Vancouver cannabis activist and one of the event organizers, struck a defiant tone when reached by Cannabis Now \u2014 and he was particularly enthused about Cypress Hill. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the first time we have a major act performing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s on a Saturday, so we expect a massive turnout. The parks board is the right wing of Vancouver<\/a> politics and they\u2019re losing their sh*t over the fact that they can\u2019t shut us down and we refuse to pay for policing.\u201d<\/p>\n That demand from the city, for event organizers to pick up the tab for policing, has also placed them at odds with authorities. The city additionally wants a halt to illicit-market sales of cannabis products on the site. Some 300 unpermitted cannabis-product vendors are expected at the event \u2014 and the park board has threatened to shut them all down.<\/p>\n But Malmo-Levine believes authorities will be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. \u201cThey like to pretend that cops can shut it down,\u201d he says. \u201cThere aren\u2019t enough cops and jails and paddy wagons in Western Canada to shut it down. Realistically, this could be the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, and possibly a demonstration of the strength of the black market to assert its right to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Parks Board commissioner, Tricia Barker, is openly saying that this year\u2019s 420 event will be the last to be held in a city park. And ironically, she is pointing to cannabis legalization as one of the reasons why. Both city police and British Columbia\u2019s\u00a0Community Safety Unit<\/a>\u00a0are gearing up to wipe out the illicit market. <\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is getting used to the new laws; with another year under their belt they just won\u2019t be allowing all the illegal sales that happen\u201d at 420, she told the\u00a0Vancouver Sun<\/a>. \u201cBy next year they will be ready and there will be no permitted seller of cannabis at this event.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the controversy hinges on whether 420 is a \u201cprotest<\/a>\u201d or a \u201cfestival,\u201d with the event\u2019s website splitting it down the middle by calling it a \u201cprotest festival<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Organizers say that as a protest, the event is not on the hook for covering the costs of its own policing. But the parks board says the event is no longer a \u201cprotest,\u201d even if it began as one way back in 1995.<\/p>\n Barker said plans to bring in Cypress Hill are actually working against the event. \u201cIt\u2019s gone now from being a protest to a festival, and I think they were foolish to do this because it makes our point stronger, that it\u2019s not a protest,\u201d Barker told the Sun<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n She also asserted that the fact it is no longer illegal to smoke cannabis in Canada weakens the event\u2019s claim to be a protest, protected under the\u00a0Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms<\/a>. \u201cThe bottom line is it\u2019s legal now and you can\u2019t smoke in a park. They\u2019ve run out of arguments.\u201d<\/p>\n British Columbia\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth weighed in on the side of the Park Board. He told Vancouver\u2019s\u00a0CityNews<\/a>: \u201cThis is an annual thing and we\u2019ve seen it the last number of year and my expectation is, you know what, it really should change to meet the times. The fact [is] that we now have legalization in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n The Park Board last year billed organizers $64,870 for the clean-up and other costs related to the event \u2014 and despite having signed no permit, they paid up most of it (minus a retroactive permit fee and some other contested items). However, organizers refused to pay an additional $170,796 the city has demanded to cover the costs of policing the event. <\/p>\n Organizers are likely to be hit with similar sums after this year\u2019s 420 \u2014 to similar results. \u201cProtests do not pay for policing costs,\u201d organizer Dana Larsen told Canada\u2019s Global News<\/a>. \u201cThe idea that you can\u2019t hold a protest in Vancouver unless you give a huge amount of money to the police kind of goes against the idea of a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Even some outside the bureaucracy aren\u2019t buying 420 Vancouver\u2019s argument. \u201cProtests don\u2019t have booths,\u201d Kris Sims of the\u00a0Canadian Taxpayers Federation<\/a> told Global News. \u201cThey don\u2019t have commerce tents, they don\u2019t sell t-shirts, they don\u2019t have cookies for sale. This is a festival, and it should be treated as a festival, and by that I mean taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this.\u201d<\/p>\n Between the costs controversy and the pledged illicit-market crackdown, the Park Board is adamant that this year\u2019s 420 will be the last to be held in a Vancouver park. \u201cWe do not allow smoking in parks [and] we will never, ever permit this event,\u201d commissioner Barker told the\u00a0Canadian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Malmo-Levine, for one, says the event remains a protest despite Canada\u2019s legalization of cannabis. \u201cIt is still quite illegal for the young to use and the poor to grow and deal,\u201d he says. \u201cThey only legalized half our community. Until it\u2019s as legal as coffee beans, it\u2019s a protest.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you ever been to a cannabis protest?<\/p>\n The post Inside the Free Speech Battle Over Vancouver\u2019s 420 Festivities<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Vancouver\u2019s first 420 event of the post-legalization era in Canada is, paradoxically, turning into a fight over free speech. City authorities claim the event has gotten out of control and must come to an end \u2014 or at least be significantly reined in. Organizers, in turn, are asserting their rightContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[480,3867,34,9715,50,3835,90,687,1244,9716,9717],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34635,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34634\/revisions\/34635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Largest Act of Civil Disobedience in Canadian History\u2019<\/h4>\n
Protest or Festival?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Inside the Free Speech Battle Over Vancouver\u2019s 420 Festivities<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"