How cannabis is helping Downtown Eastside residents get off hard drugs

published on January 18, 2025 by Mattha Busby in Georgia Straight

Jen Nelson is known as the cannabis angel of the Downtown Eastside. She regularly roams through the area, gifting people with joints, edibles, and weed to aid relaxation and ease devastating drug withdrawal symptoms.

Several years ago, however, she herself was strung out after a series of damaging car accidents that led her to develop a drug addiction. But that all changed in 2018, when she met the late cannabis activist Neil Magnusen and his team, who were running Vancouver’s Cannabis Substitution Project (CSP), a grassroots organization with the goal of helping people ease off of opioids by using cannabis as a substitute. The small but mighty crew operated out of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) on East Hastings, and its queue often went down and around the block. Hundreds—if not thousands—of Downtown Eastside community members used the free weed in attempts to help them get off of heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and crack cocaine. According to organizers, many were successful…