Canada: Nelson, British Columbia, Head Shop Busted for Marijuana Sales

The Holy Smoke Culture Shop and Psyche-Deli in Nelson, British Columbia, was busted Saturday night and one of the owners, Paul DeFelice, was jailed on marijuana and psilocybin distribution charges.

As a Nelson resident for much of the past four years, this writer has been aware of Holy Smoke, but has never published articles about the activist-oriented establishment. Nelson police have never seemd to have an issue with them.

But it was Nelson City Police who raided Holy Smoke on Saturday, and DeFelice told the Nelson Daily News he was not surprised. Since the change in federal government, he said, police have been given marching orders to make "small-time" busts. "It's pretty screwed priorities when there's murders and violence and robberies, home invasions that they make the priority in something where there's no victim and no complainants," said DeFelice.

Still, the bust was "all good," DeFelice said. "The idea is in the long run we want to be left alone because we're not hurting anybody but at the same time, if they want to come after us, plenty of arguments that we want to make in court, plenty of answers to legal questions that I want to hear. I want to hold the powers that be to account," he said. "I want to educate the public, and if they're going to shine a spotlight on me and give me a platform, I'll definitely use it."

Police are promising more arrests, but the Holy Smoke bust is already a symbolic blow to the Nelson area's burgeoning marijuana community. The area and the nearby Slocan Valley are notorious pot-growing zones -- while hard numbers are hard to come by, one indication of the size of the local industry is the four marijuana grow equipment shops in Nelson. The Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area has two.