4/20 event coming back to Sunset Beach, permit or not
Posted March 5, 2018 8:56 am.
Last Updated March 10, 2018 1:20 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Following last year’s 4/20 protest festival that saw Sunset Beach Park damaged and closed for weeks, organizers want the Vancouver Park Board to issue them a permit this year.
Last year’s event drew an estimated 40,000 people, split between the park and the Vancouver Art Gallery. It ended up costing the city of Vancouver more than $245,000, including about $10,000 to repair the damaged field next to Sunset Beach.
Festival Organizer Dana Larsen says the problem was three straight days of rain before the festival, but he says they compensated the city for repairs.
Larsen admits the event will go on this year regardless of whether or not they get a permit, but he would like one anyway.
“We’d like the park board to treat cannabis related events like ours the same way they treat alcohol events or other public events especially with legalization coming on the horizon,” he says.
He adds they currently don’t have a mechanism to apply for a permit this year, because the board voted last year to ban cannabis-related events from city parks.
“For an annual event, or a special public event that’s focused on that, if people want to be able to use cannabis at a cannabis festival one day out of the year, I think the Park Board should accommodate that,” Larson argues.
Two competing petitions have been circulating online; one urging the Park Board to grant a permit for 4/20 has gathered nearly 1,900 signatures, while one calling for the event to be shut down has earned about 250 signatures.
