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Pot Lovers Fight for Their B.C. Sea Weed
By Hempology | August 9, 2002
From The Globe And Mail, August 9th, 2002
By Brent Jang
Armed with homegrown, scented spray, the B.C. Marijuana Party is retaliating against police who board West Coast ferries with their drug-sniffing dogs. For two days this week, activists sprayed ferry decks with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, party president Marc Emery said yesterday.
The action came a week after undercover police officers with Labrador retrievers netted seven kilograms of marijuana on the ferry run between Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
In an effort to thwart the next police search on ferries, several party members used a special solution that left THC oil residue on the car decks located below the passenger levels, Mr. Emery said.
As well, volunteers sprinkled marijuana-laced cayenne pepper around. “The heartbreaking part was grinding up an ounce of pot and mixing it with cayenne pepper and realizing that it will never get smoked.”
The intent of the two-pronged counterattack against police is to thwart their searches by confusing sniffer dogs that are trained to sit down when they detect hidden pot.
“We sacrificed some good pot for the cause,” said Mr. Emery, who garnered 905 votes in the Vancouver-Burrard riding in an unsuccessful bid to win a seat in the B.C. Legislature last year. He is seeking to become Vancouver’s mayor in the civic election scheduled for fall.
Corporal Tim Dean of West Vancouver police played down the party’s tactics, saying that neither the spray nor pepper stymied any dogs because no drug searches were conducted on any of the sailings boarded by the B.C. Marijuana Party.
Police certainly won’t be tipping their hand as to when they will do searches under a program dubbed Operation High Seas, he said.
He defended the July 30 searches that led to eight arrests. Three people face trafficking charges, but five others caught smoking marijuana cigarettes were released.
“We didn’t search any vehicles on board. All we were doing was walking police dogs up and down the car decks.”
It was only after police seized two cars and obtained search warrants that the trunks were opened on police property, he added.
Deborah Dykes, a spokeswoman for the ferry fleet owned by the B.C. government, said her main concern was that the party distributed political pamphlets that urged people to join for $10. “We’ve asked them to cease and desist.”
Ferry staff won’t be taking special measures to prevent future spraying campaigns, but car decks will be patrolled and cleaned as a matter of routine, Ms. Dykes said. “If we had the need to phone the police, we would. We haven’t felt the need.”
Police said they have no plans to launch an investigation since the party didn’t obstruct any officers and the amount of THC involved wouldn’t be enough to trigger possession charges.
Mr. Emery said party members plan to carry out their “pot protest” many more times over the next two weeks on three ferries used between West Vancouver and Nanaimo’s Departure Bay.
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