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
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.
“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.” 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.
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.Still, 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.
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.
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