The Case of the Marijuana Museum

published on January 17, 2025 by Jen St. Denis in The Tyee

To get into the Vancouver School of Drug War History and Organic Cultivation, would-be cannabis buyers had to first answer a skill-testing question that showed they had taken part in a one-hour walking tour.

“The cops… tried getting access to the school just by tapping on the window like everyone else did, and they were asked for a drug war history walking tour fact,” said David Malmo-Levine, once referred to as a “prince of pot” in a Vancouver Sun article. Malmo-Levine worked at the school in the early 2000s.

“They couldn’t come up with one and we were like, ‘Oh, gotta go back and go on the tour. It happens every day at 3 o’clock.’”

For decades, the two-storey building at 123 E. Hastings was just one of the many retail stores lining a busy part of Vancouver’s downtown.

But as the Downtown Eastside lost its attraction as a shopping destination and became instead the city’s poorest neighbourhood, this small building, located right next to Canada’s first safe injection site, took on a different significance — home to protest and illicit commerce as activists fought against drug prohibition…