I Visited Winnipeg's First Medical Marijuana Vape Shop, Which Is Run by an Ex-Cop

The 1400 block of Main Street, Winnipeg. All photos via the author.
The 1400 block of Main Street is now home to Winnipeg, Manitoba’s first medical marijuana vapor lounge, and an ex-cop is among the founding partners.

Vapes on Main Medical Marijuana Lounge & Resource Centre opened its doors two-weeks ago. The intention of the space is to provide medical marijuana users in Winnipeg with a safe, social place to take their medicine, while at the same time acting as a resource centre for those who need help navigating Canada’s rather problematic medical marijuana system.

“We’re trying to fill a gap. That’s what we’re about here,” Bill VanderGraaf, one of three partners behind Vapes on Main, told VICE during a recent visit to the lounge. “Teaching people how to access their medicine through the legal process.”

VanderGraaf is a retired Winnipeg Police officer with nearly 30 years experience behind him. For the final years before his retirement, he was staff sergeant in charge of the homicide, major crime, and street gang unit in a city that has plenty of all of the above. VanderGraaf became interested in the medical marijuana issue in 2007, when both his father and daughter came to rely on the stuff to treat various serious health concerns.

Since then, he’s become an outspoken advocate and proud member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). I first met Bill about four years ago, as he was speaking at a 4/20 event in the Osborne Village head shop where I worked at the time, and his passion for the cause seems only to have intensified in the years since.

“Ultimately, we’re fighting for full legalization,” VanderGraaf explained, as a young man in a medical marijuana t-shirt worked on setting up the space, still a considerable work-in-progress. “We’re fighting for legalization, control, and proper regulation of this product, to take it out of the hands of organized crime. I believe after 30 years of police work that people respond better to proper regulation than they do to criminalization.”

Some of the posters on display at Vapes on Mane.
VanderGraaf, and his partners John Tran and Leah Kent, envision Vapes on Main as a private club, where members and guests are welcome to visit, vape or smoke, and socialize. Visitors must supply their own marijuana, and there is a zero tolerance policy for selling on the premises. Alcohol and other drug use are also strictly prohibited.

“It’s strictly a medical marijuana lounge and resource centre,” VanderGraaf repeated. “I will not tolerate the use of alcohol and drugs here.”

Vapes on Main is housed in an unassuming building in Winnipeg’s North End, across from a hardware co-op, and down the street from a 7/11. Inside the front door, a simple wall divider obscures the lounge. Guests are greeted by a desk, with a sign asking guests for $5 donation, while members are likely going to pay a monthly fee for use of the lounge (the cost of which has yet to be determined).

“If you don’t have the money when you drop in, OK,” said VanderGraaf. “We’re not a for-profit organization here.”

The walls of the lounge are painted with pseudo-psychedelic images, and adorned with “Save Medical Marijuana Gardens” and “Save the Head Shops” posters, and images of Che Guevara. Various leafy green (non-smokeable) plants are spread throughout the room, along with a number of water pipes and vaporizers.

“People can bring their own vaporizers, their own bongs,” VanderGraaf explained, with a wave towards a nearby Volcano. “But a lot of medical marijuana users don’t know how to use a vaporizer. They can come and learn how to use them before they buy one, because they can be quite a significant investment. We’ll have someone show them how to use it.”

A long table takes up the front half of the room, where we sit for the bulk of the interview. A bowl full of rolling papers sits in the middle. The back half of the room is made up of a sofas and easy chairs. There is a TV with a PlayStation near the middle of the long room, though VanderGraaf told me Vapes will regularly screen “war on drug videos, marijuana advocacy videos, those kinds of videos.”

Sign greeting guests at the entrance to Vapes on Main.
After seeing the success similar establishments enjoy in Vancouver and Toronto, and witnessing the changing attitude towards marijuana in the United States (particularly in and Washington state) and VanderGraaf, Tran, and Kent felt the time was right to open Winnipeg’s first vapor lounge.

To date, the city’s response to Vapes on Main has been positive, prompting a stirring debate on Winnipeg’s talk radio station CJOB, and coverage from other local media. The word is certainly out. When I was there, early in the afternoon on a Thursday, they had just opened up, and before our interview was over, a young man stopped in, the first of many. When I called back later, to try to reach Tran or Kent (who weren’t around during my visit), the place was too busy for them to take my call.

Support from the local medical marijuana community has also been strong.

“Vapes on Main has the potential to bring the pro-medical marijuana community together in a way that has never before been available [in Winnipeg],” Ryan Lacovetsky told VICE. Lacovetsky is the owner of Shine Glass Works, a smokewear manufacturer based in Winnipeg. He’s been in the business for over ten years. He’d been to the lounge the day before me, in the late afternoon, remarking how “the place was full and buzzing.”

In the past couple years, though, Winnipeg head shop owners have been under increasing scrutiny from some local politicians and the Winnipeg Police Service itself. In February, Jeremy Loewen, a long-time shop owner and member of the business community, had his store raided by police, while others reported increasing harassment by city cops. After a media backlash, the WPS denied that head shop owners were being harassed, and the charges against Loewen were dropped.

VanderGraaf himself has heard of many instances of medical marijuana patients facing what he believes to be undue harassment at the hands of the WPS.

“The police are operating strictly under the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act,” he explained to me. “It’s a tenuous situation for the police, it’s a tenuous situation for medical marijuana users… It’s a hell of a situation when people are forced to make a decision between being a criminal and their own personal health. That is ridiculous. That must stop.”

But VanderGraaf has no fear of becoming a target for his former colleagues at the WPS. When I asked if he had any fears or inkling of the law stepping in to disrupt their business, he just shrugged.

“No,” he said, unperturbed. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

And while their lounge may be just one storefront on Winnipeg’s Main Street, they feel they are part of a larger movement, one whose time has finally come.

“Now’s the time,” VanderGraaf told VICE, hammering his hand on the table in excitement. “We have civic elections coming in Winnipeg, provincial elections and federal elections coming pretty soon. Our goal is to put every candidate that we can committed to a viewpoint. Either you’re with us or against us. If you’re against us, then we’ll support politicians that support legalization, that oppose the criminalization of people in our cities. We’ll come out in full force to support those kind of candidates.”

“If Winnipeg is not ready, we should get ready,” Lacovetsky said when asked if our rather conservative city could handle a vapour lounge. “The future is coming, one way or another.”

VanderGraaf, Tran, and Kent aim to continue to provide their services at Vapes on Main to the community with open doors, whether Winnipeg is ready for them or not.

@badguybirnie