POT CAFE HAS CLOSED ITS DOORS, BUT DEBATE STILL RAGES AMONG SUPPORTERS AND
CRITICS ALIKE

The pot cafe is closed, but the debate rages on.

With Carol Gwilt's re-arrest for possessing more than a kilo of marijuana,
the experiment she, Donald Briere, and others engaged in by opening the
street-front Da Kine Smoke and Beverage Shop has probably come to an end.

All that is left now is the Vancouver city-council hearing Oct. 6 to lift Da
Kine's business licence, and the raid Vancouver police are expected to
conduct on the Commercial Drive store next week in search of more evidence
for the hearing and their criminal investigation.

On Friday morning the shop remained locked, empty of the large volumes of
pot that had flown off its shelves in recent months.

It was Gwilt's second arrest, after being picked up when police raided Da
Kine Sept. 9 in a raid involving 40 officers. A day later the store was open
again, furiously selling pot at the rate of as much as $30,000 a day,
despite the advice of Gwilt's lawyer John Conroy, a long-time pot activist.

Gwilt had been released on a promise to stay away, and to not be found in
possession of pot. But the police treatment rankled her, and she was
determined to push her agenda of forcing the legalization of pot, according
to associates. She made no attempt to obey the court order and fought openly
with even her most ardent supporter, Donald Briere, her store's benefactor
and her one-time lover.

On Sunday Briere, a convicted drug trafficker who was still on parole from a
2001 grow-operation conviction, was arrested with three kilos of pot and a
large wad of money after heading out on a run to restock the shelves. When
he was busted in 1999, Briere had what police said at the time was the
largest growing-operation in B.C., with 35 grow houses and 80 employees.
When he was paroled in 2003, he'd bragged that he wanted to open a string of
pot cafes.

Briere, who ran for the B.C. Marijuana Party and who founded the Canadian
Sanctuary Society, backed the opening of the Da Kine. He, Gwilt and several
others, contemplated setting up the store both on West Pender and in the
Collingwood area, but eventually settled on a shop on Commercial Drive.

One of the backers, Anil Bidessie, backed out at the last minute, and
Sanctuary Society members agreed to put Gwilt up as the owner of the store.
The society would provide the pot through purchases made from local growing
operations, according to associates.

From the moment Briere was arrested, Gwilt apparently redoubled her efforts,
funnelling as much pot into the store as she could find. Friends apparently
fought with her to close the store and not take the police and courts on any
further, but she ignored them.

When she was arrested by two undercover police officers Thursday at the foot
of Victoria Street at Powell, she was in the company of her store manager,
Michael Boudreau. Not only was she carrying more than a kilo of
carefully-prepared bags of pot, but also had $10,000 in cash, the keys to
the shop and a walkie-talkie.

In order to close the shop after her latest arrest, Lorne McLeod, a loyal
friend of Briere, but one who says he eschews the drug, negotiated through
lawyers to get the keys back so he could lock the doors.

As far as McLeod is concerned, that's the way the shop will stay until he
has instructions otherwise. And even then, he's not happy to be involved in
an experiment he says ended in a "colossally stupid" way.

"I don't have instructions from the owner to open the store, and if I open
the door, there's not going to be any pot," an unshaven and edgy McLeod said
Friday as he waited at Vancouver Provincial Court for Gwilt to make a court
appearance. "I'm not going to jail because I'm stupid."

McLeod says he has told the "volunteers" who have operated the store after
Gwilt was first arrested not to go back to the building. "My suggestion to
them was 'Don't put yourself in the line of fire'," he said.

That line of fire isn't coming now from just one direction. Vancouver police
clearly have the Da Kine and its owners in their sights for what spokeswoman
Const. Sarah Bloor says was a "flagrant and blatant" attempt to traffic pot.

But others who have worked for years in the cause to legalize cannabis, say
Gwilt and Briere have harmed them.

What irritates some pot activists is the Da Kine's attempt to hide behind
the argument it was a "compassion club" that dispensed pot for medicinal
purposes.

In the months after the Da Kine was granted a city business licence to sell
food and beverages, the store sold pot to anyone who asked for it. It
required people to sign a declaration that they needed pot for medicinal
purposes, but the reasons weren't challenged. There were cases of people
listing "road rage" as an illness for which they needed the drug.

Ted Smith, the founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, a Victoria compassion
club which has more than 1,300 members with a demonstrated medical need for
pot, said the Da Kine may have had a valid political and social agenda, but
certainly not a medical one.

"It is too bad this operation hadn't been smarter," he said. "People who
need pot for medical reasons are going to find it harder now. To have this
group shield its activities behind a group of people in wheelchairs was
wrong. They were being disingenuous about their activities."

Compassion clubs, which provide pot to people who either have a physician's
referral or a demonstrated medical requirement, have not been exempt from
police attention. But they have a more sympathetic ear from police as long
as they aren't flagrant in their activities.

Ironically, the same week that the Da Kine was being busted, Smith was
acquitted of trafficking after Judge Loretta Chaperon concluded he operated
a compassion club "to provide persons with a medical need with a safe,
reliable supply of marijuana."

Smith said Gwilt, Briere and the others behind the Da Kine can't make that
same argument. "This wasn't their intention. It was to sell as much pot as
possible," Smith said. "It's made medical clubs look less secure."

Even Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, an avowed supporter of legalization of
marijuana, says the Da Kine's owners stepped well over the line separating
social activism through illegal activities from pure illegality.

"I am a fan of legalization," he said in an interview from Toronto. "But I
don't think the Da Kine was in this to challenge the laws. It was there to
make lots of money and was a purely commercial operation. This is not how
you go about getting changes to laws you don't like."

The Da Kine was nothing more than an illegal operation that needed to be
shut down, he said.

"People are getting warm and fuzzy about the Da Kine. I don't get warm and
fuzzy about the place. What it was doing was illegal."

Conroy, who at one point acted for Gwilt and Briere, thinks the store went
too far.

"They were flaunting it," said Conroy, an Abbotsford lawyer who had advised
Gwilt to shut down after her first arrest. "The concern is that by
continuing to do it they were placing themselves in real jeopardy."

But Gwilt, Briere and the others were "true warriors" willing to sacrifice
themselves, according to Marc Emery, the leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party,
who has conducted a lifelong crusade to legalize pot.

"Too many people are not willing to pay the price necessary to get this
done," Emery said in a telephone interview from the Saskatoon Correctional
Centre, where he is serving a three-month sentence for sharing a joint with
someone. "Too many people are willing to go to jail as victims for pot
possession, and not as warriors. We need more warriors."

Emery and an associate, David Malmo-Levine, who last year lost a Supreme
Court of Canada argument that smoking pot was a constitutional right, think
Gwilt and Briere are heroes for taking on the establishment in such a
provocative way.

"It is because people don't want to wait for judges to give them their
freedom," Malmo-Levine said Friday. "What Carol and Don are doing is the
right thing. They're paying a price so we can get these laws changed."

In Malmo-Levine's case, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law making it
illegal to possess even small amounts of pot, and unanimously upheld the law
prohibiting possession for trafficking. Prime Minister Paul Martin pledged
to bring back a bill to decriminalize small amounts of pot, with fines to be
levied instead of criminal convictions.

McLeod, who supports the legalization of marijuana, said he thinks the store
was too provocative and may have damaged the legalization argument. The
federal government may not be moving swiftly towards legalization, or even
decriminalization, he said, but city councillors who have said recently they
favour legalization could use the Da Kine business licence hearing as a
watershed opportunity, he said.

"We have to re-establish the rapport with members of council. If they truly
believe there is an argument for legalization of marijuana, then they have
the opportunity on Oct. 6 to do something about that by telling the federal
government they are going to allow a business licence to stand," McLeod
said.

But the mayor says that will never happen. Even if Canada legalizes pot, it
won't permit the unregulated retail sale of it, he said. Pot will, and
should, end up regulated like alcohol.

"If Ottawa legalizes this, these people (like Briere and Gwilt) will be out
of business because this will be regulated and taxed and put behind counters
where it should be, with the money going to health care," Campbell said.

Emery -- who has been arrested 20 times for pot possession in his 34-year
crusade -- thinks the store should stay closed now that both Briere and
Gwilt are in jail.

"It wouldn't be my advice to the young people operating it to go back there
without the management in place," he said. "It was a grand and noble
experiment while it lasted."