Searching for Drug Peace
(Canada, 89 min.)
Dir. Alisher Balfanbayev
Prod. Max Walter Joelson, Alisher Balfanbayev
Programme: World Showcase (World premiere)
“Oh, yeah: You’re old enough for me to sell you illegal drugs,” an employee at the Coca Leaf Café and Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary tells a new customer after verifying her I.D. The team at the East Vancouver dispensary makes a brave, if not downright ballsy, gamble with this documentary. Searching for Drug Peace essentially offers a feature-length exhibit of criminal behaviour should anyone want to charge the café and dispensary’s owner, Dana Larsen, for selling illegal drugs. However, Larsen and his drug-tokin’ crew would likely welcome the challenge. For as much as Searching for Drug Peace offers plain-sighted evidence of criminal behaviour, it also presents an equally compelling argument for the defense.
As Vancouver faces an epidemic amid the opioid crisis, the Coca Leaf hits civil complacency like a bomb on a pipeline. Larsen takes a stand that his business serves an act of necessity. No level of government adequately addresses the opioid epidemic, so he undertakes a grassroots alternative. No matter one’s position on the drug trade when approaching Searching for Drug Peace, this provocative doc should get everyone talking about who benefits from strident regulations when the current practice yields a growing number of preventable deaths.
Director Alisher Balfanbayev goes inside the Coca Leaf café as Larsen happily shows the tricks of his trade. He’s a jovial figure and a good spokesperson who seems to know the law and opposing arguments. Larsen takes the camera through a tour of his café and shop. It’s a well-lit place with street signage, tables, debit machines, and well-marked menus. He’s hardly slinging smack for cash. It’s a perfectly legitimate business, provided one buys what he’s selling.
Larsen explains how his business license categorizes the shop as a party supply and novelties store. That’s technically not untrue, as mushrooms and hallucinogenics could be party supplies for the right reveller. They’re definitely novelties for others. He also sells peyote, LSD, and some other gnarly mind-altering substances. But he also provides leaflets about safe use. His sales people educate buyers about safety and best practices. The difference between a marijuana dispensary, a liquor store, and the Coca Leaf simply seems to be one of legality.
The Coca Leaf also plays a crucial role in the community’s harm-reduction efforts. It funds a neighbouring clinic where Vancouverites can get their drugs tested judgment-free. They bring in samples and a lab technician analyses the drugs to assess its purity and identify potentially harmful additives. With fentanyl and other opioids, the sheer pace of the spread and the volatility of the substances are devastating factors, so this clinic makes life-saving analyses for people experiencing substance abuse. The service just isn’t on offer elsewhere. Larsen simply needs to sell softer substances to help a community at risk from the harder wares.
Shot with stark no frills cinéma vérité, the documentary provides a raw and frequently sobering observation of massive disconnect between street level organization and the institutional frameworks that collectively fail Vancouverites amid the crisis. The doc basically plays like a non-fiction companion to “Hamsterdam” introduced in season three of HBO’s The Wire where authorities decided to simply look the other way regarding drug use, so long as it occurred in a designated area. Larsen offers a store-front comp to a safe-injection site. The film therefore encourages audiences to at least join Larsen in considering alternatives if they don’t agree with his practice.
The doc carefully captures the ins and outs of the business while respecting users’ privacy, gamely keeping Larsen and key players front and centre. Searching for Drug Peace positions Larsen’s rabble-rousing activism within Vancouver’s history at the forefront of Canada’s drug culture. Larsen explains how the legalization of marijuana found roots in similar practices. Folks just set up shop and made the case to the city to let their businesses continue. He endures drug raids and constantly loses supply to the cops, but every action brings a reaction. Policing the business simply fuels his case with free publicity.
The film goes into the streets to observe alternatives that help make the case for the Coca Leaf. For example, Jerry Martin takes a far more brazen approach after losing a brother to an overdose. He sets up shop with a temporary store front, but he sells clean offerings of the harder drugs: cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and MDMA. Trading cash for blow, he operates without a license and invites more scrutiny, both for the nature of the operation and the severity of the goods on offer. Jerry’s trade doubles down on provocation, but it also puts into stark reality the mitigating circumstances of Dana’s business. Sure, mushrooms may be illegal goods, but nobody dies from them, at least in the quantities available through the store. The fatal reach of the drug trade gives the documentary an unexpected gut-punch when a key figure dies in an overdose, and the film makes clear that the alarm bell for action is ringing loud and clear.
Searching for Drug Peace presents perspectives from folks who don’t support further decriminalization of drugs, nor the permitted distribution of them. Talking heads caution a dangerous precipice of addictive behaviour that could lead to further danger, while others bemoan the breakdown of nice society. But Searching for Drug Peace ultimately leaves it to the viewer: Is it better to create safe alternatives or to let people die? The film serves as a necessary conversation starter no matter one’s drug of choice.
