Activist Dana Larsen, operator of Get Your Drugs Tested – a Vancouver non-profit that saves lives by testing street drugs – says the service is being forced to close because of police raids on an unlicensed medicinal cannabis dispensary that funds the project.
The Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, one of the cities oldest unlicensed cannabis shops, was raided on Wednesday, January 29 by members of the British Columbia Community Safety Unit, the province’s anti-cannabis squad tasked with enforcing the Cannabis Control and Licensing Act.
Authorities didn’t make any arrests, but seized all of the stock and cash, including what was in the ATM machine they ripped out of the ground.
Financial losses from the raid, combined with loses from another recent raid on Larsen’s Medicinal Mushroom Dispensaries in Vancouver, have now caused the life-saving drug testing centres to close, at least temporarily.
Cannabis Culture talked to Larsen today about the raids and the closure of Get Your Drugs Tested.
CANNABIS CULTURE: Why are you closing the drug testing centres?
DANA LARSEN: We’re closing down the Get Your Drug Tested centre because we are in the middle of a financial crisis. The immediate concern is the recent raid against The Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, in which they emptied both locations and seized all the stock.
We had a raid on the medicinal mushroom dispensary last November that was very expensive and financially challenging as well. These raids not only result in the police seizing everything in the store, all the product, all the cash, including our ATM machine, which they tore out and took all the money out of, but there’s also a lot of legal fees that come after the raid which only increase our financial challenges.
Get Your Drugs Tested has been very expensive over the last five years. Since we founded it in 2019, we have invested about $2 million in providing the service, buying FTIR machines to do the checking, paying rent, and paying the staff salaries so they can do their work. I consider this a wonderful investment in our community and in our future, but right now we simply cannot afford to continue paying our staff to do the testing without first stabilizing our dispensary businesses.
CC: What makes the Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary different from licensed cannabis stores?
DANA LARSEN: The Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary is the last of the old-school truly medicinal legacy cannabis dispensaries in the city. We were founded in 2008 and despite legalization, there continues to be a strong demand for our products and services. That is because we provide the truly medicinal products that are simply not available on the legal market.
For instance, we sell higher potency edibles, which many medicinal users need. We also sell products like suppositories and creams for medicinal purposes that aren’t readily available on the legal market. I also believe our cannabis products are higher quality, lower priced, and come with guidance and information on how to use them for the best medicinal results.
I believe that if the legal system was better, our shops would not be needed. If the government wants to shut down our shops, they should do so by making the legal market better for medicinal users: get rid of the excise tax, allow stronger edibles, and generally fix a broken legal system, which is what is causing our clients to turn to us for what they need.
CC: Where do the profits from The Dispensary go?
DANA LARSEN: I run these dispensaries in a very idealistic fashion, and all of the profits from both The Medicinal Cannabis Dispensaries, and The Mushroom Dispensaries are used to operate Get Your Drugs Tested, our non-profit society, which runs our drug-checking service.
Since we started in 2019 we have become the world’s busiest and biggest free street drug analysis centre, and we recently celebrated testing our 80,000 sample. Not only do we serve our local community in Vancouver, but we receive samples from all over the province and from all over Canada by mail.
We provide what I believe is an incredibly valuable service so that drug users can be made aware of what they’re taking and what they’re choosing to put into their body. Our work has helped create a new level of accountability and awareness within the drug using community in Vancouver and across Canada.
CC: Why do you think you are being targeted by authorities?
DANA LARSEN: It might sound like we’re asking for a special treatment, but we’re not. The reality is that the Community Safety Unit, which conducted the raids against our cannabis dispensaries, has a lot of leeway and discretion in terms of how they choose to enforce their position. They do not have to undertake these devastating financial raids against us, which ultimately amount to a form of economic terrorism.
At least 20 other mushroom dispensaries in the city also sell many similar products, including psychedelic mushrooms in a very open fashion. Although all of us have challenges with City Hall when it comes to business, licensing and regulations like that, the only dispensaries selling mushrooms and psychedelics that have been raided, that I’m aware of of, are ours – with two raids in the last two years, singling us out.
This seems to be to be based on the fact that I am an outspoken advocate who is often in the news and does provocative stunts, rather than keeping my head down like many other Mushroom dispensary operators. But that political consideration should not be a reason for the police to target us with these kind of ongoing raids.
Get Your Drugs Tested receives no funding from any level of government, but we do work closely with public health organizations like Vancouver Coastal Health and the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use. Both of them offer their own drug-checking services in Vancouver in British Columbia, but at a level far below what we offer.
Get Your Drugs Tested is doing over half of all street drug-checking in British Columbia and over 2/3 of all the drug-checking here in Vancouver. The Province should be doing better and we’re picking up the slack where they are failing.
Here’s more information about how to help from Get Your Drugs Tested:
HOW YOU CAN HELP!
Make a few phone calls!
Please call Mayor Ken Sim at 604-873-7621, and our local Vancouver-Strathcona MLA Joan Phillip at (604) 660-0707, and leave a brief message saying that you support Get Your Drugs Tested and want the raids against Dana Larsen’s dispensaries to stop.
Send a message to Vancouver City Council!
You can please send a message to all of Vancouver’s city councillors at this link. It’s very important that they know Vancouver stands behind us and our work. (On that form, for “neighbourhood” you can put Strathcona.)
Send some emails
If you want have a bigger impact, you can send an email to all these addresses:
Premier David Eby: [email protected]
Vancouver-Strathcona MLA Joan Phillip: [email protected]
Vancouver City Council: [email protected]
Make a donation!
CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW to Get Your Drugs Tested
Read more about this story in an informative article from The Tyee.
