Democracy: free smoke in free country
There’s a day in Vancouver will be always cloudy, no matter what the weather forecasts can say: 20th April, or 420, as they call it here. It’s the day they celebrate marijuana and their right to smoke and get happily stoned. No wonder if it is cloudy it’s because of the smoke.
Being myself a non-smoker, I was
curious to have a look at this kind of “alternative” event they hold every year
on 20th April in downtown in front of the Art Gallery.
As soon as I got out of Vancouver
City Centre Skytrain Station my nose was literally attacked by the violent
smell coming from the crowd of pot lovers.
It was something unbelievable: I had never seen so many people at a time in Vancouver, probably not even on Canada
Day. I knew already in the city the weed culture is deeply rooted and at some
extent tolerated, at the point you can hear Vancouverites boasting as the best in the world the quality of their harvest, nevertheless I could not imagine such an amount of people being
involved in this celebration.
The event itself looked like a
village market, a local fair of trip where you could get pretty much everything
to get stoned: special cookies, weed, and even joints ready for use. A chap was
showing with pride his 2 plants of hemp. Inevitable to hear people shouting in unison
“Legalize!” at 4:20.
But probably the most incredible
thing to my European eyes was to see at a short distance policemen doing
absolutely nothing but to keep an eye on the event in a very discreet way.
When I left to take the Skytrain to
go for my weekly shopping I had to show my monthly pass to the cops at the
station. This is Vancouver: you can smoke what you want, but don’t even dare to
break more serious rules, like smoking too close to buildings or travelling
without tickets. There’s no room to play smart here or to disrespect the
others.
And yes, feel free to burn an inhale
the kind of grass you prefer, but please consider yourself obliged to live a healthy lifestyle, eat organic food
and practice jogging not to get overweight: health is important and a moral
obligation in Vancouver.
Smoky and (out of) ordinary contradictions of a
Canadian city.
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