By M-J Milloy and Marilou Gagnon
As British Columbia struggles to implement and scale-up safer supply programs to blunt the unprecedented overdose crisis, why is provincial law enforcement shutting down community-level groups providing a safer supply of cannabis to people at greatest risk of overdose?
At the beginning of March, officials from the Community Safety Unit (CSU) operating under Minister of Public Safety Mike Farnworth raided the Blue Door, a dispensary selling unregulated cannabis to people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, the epicentre of Canada’s overdose crisis.
That followed multiple raids on the Cannabis Substitution Project, which hands out free cannabis every week from an RV near Hastings and Main, and two raids at the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club, one of the province’s oldest sources of low-cost medical cannabis for more than 8,000 members living with chronic health conditions, including chronic pain. The club now faces more than $6.5 million in fines.
While differing in location, ownership, and operations, these three groups—and others across the country—face legal jeopardy for allegedly distributing cannabis from producers not licensed under Canada’s official framework for legal cannabis. They have been swept up in the efforts of Canada’s governments to eliminate cannabis profits for organized crime groups, one of the key aims of cannabis legalization.
“We have been very clear that once…
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By M-J Milloy and Marilou Gagnon
As British Columbia struggles to implement and scale-up safer supply programs to blunt the unprecedented overdose crisis, why is provincial law enforcement shutting down community-level groups providing a safer supply of cannabis to people at greatest risk of overdose?
At the beginning of March, officials from the Community Safety Unit (CSU) operating under Minister of Public Safety Mike Farnworth raided the Blue Door, a dispensary selling unregulated cannabis to people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, the epicentre of Canada’s overdose crisis.
That followed multiple raids on the Cannabis Substitution Project, which hands out free cannabis every week from an RV near Hastings and Main, and two raids at the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club, one of the province’s oldest sources of low-cost medical cannabis for more than 8,000 members living with chronic health conditions, including chronic pain. The club now faces more than $6.5 million in fines.
While differing in location, ownership, and operations, these three groups—and others across the country—face legal jeopardy for allegedly distributing cannabis from producers not licensed under Canada’s official framework for legal cannabis. They have been swept up in the efforts of Canada’s governments to eliminate cannabis profits for organized crime groups, one of the key aims of cannabis legalization.
“We have been very clear that once…
