VANCOUVER BECOMING DRUG MECCA, AND AUTHORITIES FIGHT BACK

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Fame easily finds a place like this, with its climate so embracing, its surroundings so inspiring and its population leavened so liberally with artists and new immigrants.

Yet, as a fortune cookie in one of Vancouver’s countless Chinese restaurants might read, fame is fleeting, and what is fabulous one day can turn very foul the next.

Vancouver is quickly gaining a reputation as a haven for illicit drugs and those who use them. From the brazen addicts shooting up and buying heroin and cocaine around the intersection of Hastings and Main Street to the enormous amount of high-potency marijuana that is raised, sold and openly smoked on streets and in cafes, Vancouver’s tolerance of drugs is attracting attention.

"I heard that you could smoke and nobody bothered you," said Adam, a lanky 19-year-old from Seattle who came with two friends for an overnight trip. They easily bought marijuana on the street around Hastings, then— somewhat shyly—entered the Cannabis Cafe, a marijuana mecca for many West Coast Americans.

While one friend picked at a green salad mixed with a few hemp seeds, Adam took out a joint and, somewhat uneasily, lit it. Soon he relaxed. "It’s a good environment, ‘cause you can’t smoke cigarettes, you can only smoke marijuana," he said. "You don’t have the smokey bar atmosphere, just a pleasant smell."

Other customers casually lit up their joints and the smell of marijuana was as inescapable as popcorn at a movie theater.

"Vancouver is the most tolerant spot in Canada when it comes to different life styles and cultures," said Sister Icee, a 38-year-old Toronto woman once known as Shelley Francis who has owned the Cafe, and the Hemp BC store next door, since April.

Although police have raided the place three times (once since she took over and twice last year under a different owner) the Cannabis Cafe still celebrates marijuana.

On the wall is a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, who stands serenely in her starred gown, surrounded by tall marijuana stalks. The menu put together by the chef, Christopher Anstee, features pasta with hemp pesto, salads with hemp dressing and quesadillas that use hemp tortillas made by a man named Melvin.

"There’s no harm in it," said Sister Icee. Lighting an oversized, filtered joint, she said she lived in the West Indies for most of the 1980s and joined the Rastafarian sect, which gave her her name and introduced her to marijuana, "the weed of wisdom."

"Marijuana is a plant," she said. "You can’t prosecute people for smoking flowers. It shouldn’t be regulated any more than parsley or broccoli." For Vancouver officials, the Cannabis Cafe is a public relations nightmare.

After the last raid in April, police charged Sister Icee with selling drug paraphernalia in the Hemp BC store. On a recent visit, the store carried shoes, shirts and snowboards all made with hemp, along with pipes, bongs and cigarette rolling papers.

Cannabis Cafe is only one part of Vancouver’s problem.

British Columbia marijuana has become so popular that U.S. Customs Service agents have increased patrols to try to slow down the cross-border trade.
(Ed. note: The total volume of BC marijuana is a small fraction of the supply from Mexico.)

The city itself is divided by the drug problem and unsure of what to do next. Owen and Chambers say that prosecutors and judges are just too soft on people convicted of drug charges.
(Ed. note: No mention of any anti-prohibitionists. No mention of Constable Gil Puder. No acknowledgement of any of the locally well publicized dissent. This is completely dishonest. The only question is whether harsher sentences would work. New York’s experience with the draconian Rockefeller laws could have told a New York Times reporter that.)

"We give sentences that we believe are appropriate," said Robert Metzger, chief judge of the provincial court, in response to the criticism. "People like to point to judges because we’re easy targets. But this seems to be a social and political problem."

Libby Davies, the member of Parliament who represents the area around Hastings and Main, calls for more national funds to cope with Vancouver’s drug epidemic. She supports not only providing free heroin to hard-core addicts, but clinics where they can safely inject. Ms. Davies is not concerned that such programs, already tried in Europe, might cement Vancouver’s reputation as the Amsterdam of North America.