Dispensaries selling illegal magic mushrooms in Vancouver could lead to the legalization of the substance, like they did with cannabis, shop keeper says

• It's not legal to sell psilocybin or "shrooms" in Canada, but one activist shop owner does anyway.
• He's trying to push Vancouver to manage or legalize it, as cannabis sellers did in 2015.

Psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms or "shrooms," is not allowed to be sold under Canadian federal law, but that hasn't stopped some Vancouver store owners from selling it anyway.

"There's not a strong resistance to people doing this kind of stuff. If you're like me, and you're willing to take a risk and kind of push it forward, you find the resistance isn't very strong," Dana Larsen, the owner of the Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary, told Insider.

Larsen told the Vancouver Sun that Canada would not have legalized cannabis without store owners like himself, who sold cannabis before it was legal. And there are likely going to be only more mushroom dispensaries, he added.

The shroom dispensary operates out of the same space as another one of Larsen's businesses, the Coca Leaf Café, and he began selling chocolate and pill versions of the psychedelic in-person in Spring 2021.

Now, he's betting that selling the substance will push the government to go ahead and make it legal.

The gambit has a precedent: store owners in Vancouver have sold cannabis illegally at least since 2015, and the city that year created a licensing system for the stores, even though it defied federal policy.

Canada legalized cannabis in October 2018, but the illegal or semi-illegal market in Vancouver persisted, especially because of licensing issues.

Larsen himself owned one these early cannabis dispensaries, which the city eventually forced him to close, as it was too close to a community center to obtain a license.

He told Insider that his efforts, and those of other business owners in the city, likely helped push along the effort to legalize cannabis in Canada at the federal level.

"Vancouver was a place that seeds sprouted from and grew across country," he told Insider.

As for the latest crop, mushroom dispensaries in Vancouver have popped up like — well — mushrooms.

As of November, there were multiple stores openly selling mushrooms in the city, in one case as a way of making up lost pandemic revenue, according to the Daily Hive Vancouver.

The City of Vancouver told the Sun that it had begun an investigation into Larsen's store and asked it to "cease illegal activity," though the Vancouver Police Department told the publication that shroom prosecution is not a top priority.

Although it is illegal in the US and Canada, psilocybin does appear to have some therapeutic effects, especially when used in larger quantities. Scientists are divided on the effectiveness of microdosing.

There are ways for Canadians to get a medical exception for the mushrooms, but the process is laborious, so many people turn to these types of establishments, a not-for-profit, TheraPsil, told CBC News.

Meanwhile, consumer interest has helped drive a mountain of funding: The first-ever psychedelic-focused exchange traded fund debuted on a Canadian stock exchange in January, and some companies are experimenting with so-called "functional mushrooms."