Police are hesitant to arrest the proprietor of a drug club, even though he caters to minors
Not your average pothead, David Malmo-Levine aims to be a drug dealer with a social conscience. So he's started up a smoke-easy, a den in his basement where people can buy marijuana and "smoke their brains out" with friends, strangers and pimply-faced beginners.
"Everyone's welcome," he says, tossing back his orange-and-yellow Rastafarian dreadlocks as he rolls a stogy-sized joint. "But we won't sell pot to anyone under 13."
Why 13?
"Thirteen is when kids start smoking pot, man," he explains, sitting near a bleary-eyed youngster whose major substance-abuse habit seems to involve Clearasil. "The kids can come in here and we can walk them through our step-by-step guide to safe pot-smoking. You know, get them started right - it's our contribution to public safety."
It's all perfectly illegal, of course. But so far the Vancouver police seem flummoxed about what to do with this latest challenge, one of the most brazen yet, to Canada's marijuana laws.
"We're aware of it," says Constable Anne Drennan, who won't say why the drug den hasn't been closed down. "We know the location. We're working on it."
In the meantime, Mr. Malmo-Levine's Harm Reduction Club is growing into a thriving business that could have been lifted from a Cheech and Chong fantasy. During a recent club meeting in the smoke-easy, furnished with sagging sofas rescued from dumpsters, a dozen people sat under an acrid cloud of burnt marijuana, so thick it could be smelled from outside of the East Vancouver house.
"Dude, have you vaporized yet?" a man with a nose-ring wonders, pointing to a device on the coffee table that turns the drug in marijuana - THC - to a nearly pure gas that can be inhaled through a piece of plastic tubing.
"Yeah, try it man!" recommends another. "It'll be like your frontal (brain) lobes are going to explode."
In the month since he screwed a "symbolic green light" into his back porch to direct customers to the Harm Reduction Club, Mr. Malmo-Levine has signed up more than 400 members at $10 a pop. Now that he is selling as much as half a kilogram of pot a day, the 25-year old complains he's having a tough time keeping the boxes and jars around the smoke-easy full of "product."
"What do I do during the day?" he asks, drawing deeply from a pipe that has now appeared in his hands. "I spend my time accumulating vast amounts of marijuana, bagging vast amounts of marijuana and testing vast amounts of marijuana for its potency."
Crash pads to smoke marijuana are nothing new on the West Coast, of course. The twist here is that this one is a political statement as much as a hangout. Proceeds from drug deals and membership dues go into a legal defence fund to bail out any member who gets arrested. And club members must agree to four rules: Pay $10; be over 13; don't drive heavy machinery while impaired; don't disturb the neighbours.
"I think it's hard for the police to bust us when we're being so responsible," says Mr. Malmo-Levine. "We're smoking ganja responsibly."
Most people who see the club openly dealing marijuana with impunity - even to minors - are taken aback by the lack of police action. Even under planned changes to the Criminal Code, trafficking and simple possession can still result in jail time.
"I am surprised by the hands-off approach to such distributing," says Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University. "I suppose that what is going on is the co-ordination of some kind of response by police. But I'm really not sure why there's been such a delay."
The delay, in part, is because police are already dealing with a high-profile case in Vancouver testing marijuana laws. Marc Emery, a pro-cannabis lobbyist who ran for mayor (he received 1,125 votes) has been openly selling marijuana seeds out of a store on the city's east side, arguing that there are no drugs in unsprouted seeds.
Mr. Emery has also opened up a marijuana superstore, selling a cornucopia of bongs, pipes, rolling papers and items needed to grow marijuana at home. He is now planning to open The Cannabis Cafe, in which customers will be able to "vaporize" their drugs and buy foods such as pizza and mozzarella cheese made with oils from marijuana.
With Mr. Emery's drug case going to court in the next few weeks, cracking down on the Harm Reduction Club would seem like walking into another piece of political theatre.
"They're flaunting what they're doing and thumbing their nose at authorities in the hope they will be taken to court, have their say and perhaps have it decriminalized," Constable Drennan says. "All I can tell you is: We know about this."
Prof Boyd speculates the police may also be delaying to let the pro-marijuana movement hurt its cause by advertising that it is selling drugs to minors. "Part of my thinking is that the police are allowing them to discredit themselves. They aren't exactly putting forth a winning image."
The members of the Harm Reduction Club would take umbrage. They see themselves as a tightly knit family, who like to get quietly stoned and mellow out. Often, nights drag into existential debates about what would happen if marijuana was legalized in Canada.
"Can you imagine what would happen to the sales of Chinese food and pizza?" asks one of the members.
"Yeah, sales would go through the roof. Everyone would want munchies."
Taking a puff from his pipe, Mr. Malmo-Levine escorts his visitor to the door: "I can't believe the police haven't busted us yet."