ACTIVIST OFFERS CASH AND CANNABIS

Vancouver Marijuana Dispensary Manager Offers to Help Revive Langley
Operation After Raid

The manager of a Vancouver medical marijuana dispensary has offered
help to the people trying to resurrect a similar dispensary in Langley.

Well-known marijuana activist Dana Larsen said assistance from the
Vancouver Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary could include loans of money
and marijuana on credit to re-establish the Langley Medical Marijuana
Dispensary that was closed down following a July 19 raid by the
Langley RCMP.

"Our dispensary has donated medicine and cash to other dispensaries
that get into legal trouble," Larsen told The Times.

The Vancouver dispensary has also offered help to the recently-raided
North Island Compassion Club dispensary in Comox.

The Vancouver Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary has been operating since
2008

Like the Langley dispensary, the Vancouver facility has far more
clients than the two-per-legal-grower limit allowed under current
Canadian law.

But unlike Langley, the Vancouver dispensary has been able to operate
without police interference.

Larsen said Vancouver authorities are generally more "enlightened"
about marijuana and other drug issues than other Lower Mainland
communities.

"We [the dispensary] have a very good relationship with the Vancouver
Police Department and the mayor," Larsen told The Times.

He believes municipal police forces like Vancouver have more
flexibility when dealing with pot dispensaries than communities where
policing is provided by the RCMP, which operates as a federal police
force.

"The RCMP have no middle ground," he said.

"They can only come in and arrest people."

Larsen was in the audience when Langley dispensary founder Randy Caine
told a public meeting on August 2 that the service will be revived,
but not by him.

At that time, Larsen stood up and made a public offer of
aid.

"Those are the kinds of things we try to do," Larsen
said.

He estimates there have been four recent raids on B.C. pot
dispensaries over a one-month period.

Besides Langley and Comox, police have also shut down dispensaries in
Burnaby and Chilliwack, he said.

"People are opening a lot of [medical marijuana] dispensaries so
there's some push-back," Larsen said.

"This is an issue whose time has come."

Larsen is a founding member of both the Marijuana Party of Canada and
the BC Marijuana Party.

In 2008, he ran as the federal NDP candidate for West
Vancouver--Sunshine Coast--Sea to Sky Country, but resigned after videos
he recorded for web-based video channel Pot-TV in 1999 surfaced
showing him taking LSD and smoking marijuana.

He also ran for the NDP provincial leadership earlier this year, on a
platform centred on ending the war against marijuana. He received 531
votes on the first ballot.