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FIRST READING: B.C. judge surprised by police actually enforcing drug laws

Decision concludes that brazen illicit drug sales are rampant and nobody ever seems to get punished for it

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FIRST READING: B.C. judge surprised by police actually enforcing drug laws Back to video

While overseeing the case of a man charged with dealing magic mushrooms, a B.C. judge seemed to express his confusion that such crimes were even being prosecuted anymore.

In a Feb. 17 decision, B.C. Provincial Court Judge Peter Whyte wrote that magic mushrooms are still illegal and dangerous. But his decision noted the irony of convicting a man for an activity that is regularly pursued without consequence by businesses operating within an hour’s drive of his Chilliwack courtroom.

“It is difficult to reconcile the logic behind a prosecution for behaviour in Chilliwack when the same or even more blatant conduct appears to be tolerated openly, and on a greater scale, in Vancouver,” wrote Whyte.

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Vancouver is home to more than a dozen businesses openly selling psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug derived from mushrooms that has been illegal since 1975.

The drug is listed in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. As such, the Criminal Code prescribes jail terms of as long as 10 years for psilocybin traffickers, and empowers law enforcement to seize and destroy the drug if encountered.

Nevertheless, Vancouver’s various psilocybin dealers aren’t just selling the drug, but doing so from prominent retail storefronts decorated with cartoon mushrooms and even offering delivery.

Whyte was overseeing the case of Dejan Ivcevic, a Chilliwack construction worker who was found in possession of more than half a kilogram of magic mushrooms when police arrived to arrest him under the Mental Health Act.

In August 2023, officers had been sent to his apartment by a 911 caller describing “people yelling and items being destroyed or thrown about.”

On scene, they found Ivcevic covered in blood from the knees down. In addition to the large amounts of magic mushrooms strewn about the apartment, there was also an unsecured firearm on the kitchen table and journals “indicating Mr. Ivcevic’s intention to market psilocybin via a website.”

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Ivcevic pleaded guilty to possessing the half kilo of mushrooms (as well as equipment to grow more of them), but his lawyer argued to the court that psilocybin couldn’t be that bad if it was simultaneously the subject of a thriving Vancouver retail sector.

Whyte’s decision would end up naming seven of the most brazen examples, including the Kits Mushroom Company, the Shroom House and the White Rabbit Mushroom Dispensary.

“I am invited to conclude that these businesses operate with at least the tacit tolerance of police and city officials in Vancouver. This, it was argued, ought to be taken into consideration when determining the gravity of Mr. Ivcevic’s offending,” he wrote.

Selling psilocybin from a brick-and-mortar location remains illegal, but thrives largely because the Vancouver police have announced they aren’t a priority.

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In 2022, when the city’s storefront psilocybin sector was getting established, a Vancouver police spokeswoman explained that their drug enforcement efforts remained focused on “organized criminals who produce and traffic harmful opioids.”

And while officers would raid three psilocybin storefronts in late 2023, the locations were back in business within hours.

Vancouver’s mushroom sellers are following a template that was first set in the years prior to Canada’s 2018 legalization of recreational cannabis.

There again, Vancouver was filled with more than a dozen dispensaries illegally selling cannabis but allowed to exist simply because Vancouver police had repeatedly expressed their intention not to notice.

“We do have a priority-based approach to policing here in Vancouver, and we do have other priorities,” Const. Brian Montague, spokesman with the Vancouver police, told the National Post at the time.

While raids occasionally occurred, they were only in instances where a dispensary had been caught operating in what police deemed to be an “unsafe” manner, such as selling to children.

And in the case of mushroom dispensaries, in the rare instance that the City of Vancouver actually tried to shut one down, Whyte’s own B.C. Provincial Court would end up squashing the effort.

In a 2024 decision, the court ruled that the City of Vancouver had failed to prove that the Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary had been selling magic mushrooms.

The decision acknowledged that the business had signs advertising the sale of “psychedelics” and other illicit substances, as well as a sign at the counter that said “medicinal mushroom dispensary.” Nevertheless, B.C. Provincial Court judge Aamna Afsar ruled it wasn’t enough.

“It is possible that the mushrooms being sold included illicit substances like psilocybin or psilocin; it is even likely. However, a possibility or a probability does not meet the standard of proof,” she wrote.

In the case of Ivcevic, the existence of a giant retail infrastructure to traffic in illicit drugs would end up partially contributing to his light sentence.

The judge handed him an 18-month conditional discharge and Ivcevic was even assured he would get his guns back, so long as he gave them to a friend.

“The Crown does not seek forfeiture of the firearms that were seized,” wrote Whyte, and left it to prosecutors to have the firearms “returned to an appropriately licensed individual of Mr. Ivcevic’s designation.”

British comedy legend John Cleese has announced he will henceforth be avoiding B.C. lest they target him for speech violations. In a social media post, Cleese referenced the recent B.C. Human Rights Tribunal decision imposing a $750,000 fine on a Chilliwack, B.C. man who spoke out against the policy of gender as a self-identified characteristic. The decision branded him guilty of transgender “erasure.” “What a pity!” wrote Cleese. “I’m arranging a theatrical tour of Canada this Fall, and now I won’t be able to risk doing any shows in British Columbia.”

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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