Smoke-filled room at Marijuana Party's Vancouver campaign kickoff 04/21/2005
Associated Press
A smoke-filled room at the Vancouver Art Gallery signaled the opening of the British Columbia provincial election campaign by the Marijuana Party.
Campaign manager Kirk Tousaw told about 1,000 people at the rally Wednesday that the pot party plans to run candidates in 40 of the 79 legislative districts for the elections and asserted that Marijuana is anything but a fringe group.
"The majority of the people in this province smoke marijuana or have smoked marijuana," Tousaw said, "so either they're criminals or we're mainstream."
The party's main platform for the balloting on May 17 is to wrest control of marijuana from Ottawa.
"The provinces need to take over control, take back control from organized crime and begin to regulate and tax the marijuana industry," Tousaw said.
Some of those in attendance said they didn't know the event had anything to do with politics. Pot smoking at the museum has been an annual event on April 20 for about a decade.
Activist David Malmo-Levine began the rally with some advice: "If you're going to smoke pot, do it on the inside of the crowd."
Many in the group of mostly young people nonetheless openly lit joints and passed them freely through the gathering.
