Dana Larsen was born in 1971 in British Columbia, Canada. An early pro-cannabis activist, author, former politician and social entrepreneur, he is one of the most inventive and tenacious figures in the movement to legalize cannabis in Canada, and one of the least known to the general public despite his considerable impact on the evolution of Canadian cannabis policy.
Dana Larsen has been an advocate of cannabis legalization since the early 1990s. For many years, he co-founded and edited Cannabis Culture Magazine alongside Marc Emery, helping to structure the Canadian pro-legalization movement and give it a national media voice. He has run several times in federal and provincial elections under the banner of the Marijuana Party of Canada and the NDP, using election campaigns as militant platforms.
The action for which Dana Larsen is best known is his Overgrow Canada campaign, launched in 2018 just before the federal legalization of cannabis in Canada. The idea is as simple as it is radical: distribute millions of free cannabis seeds across Canada to enable every citizen to grow their own plant, regardless of the commercial rules of legalization.
Touring the country from town to town, Larsen distributed over a million seeds free of charge, openly defying the authorities and forcing a public debate on the right to self-cultivation in the context of legalization. The action earned him national and international media coverage.
Dana Larsen founds and manages Vancouver's Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, one of Canada's first cannabis dispensaries. In the years leading up to legalization, it operated openly despite the formal illegality of cannabis sales, benefiting from the relative tolerance of Vancouver's municipal authorities, known for their pragmatic approach to drug policy.
Since the legalization of cannabis in Canada in 2018, Dana Larsen has focused some of his energy on restorative justice - the demand for amnesty and the expungement of criminal records for people convicted of now-legal cannabis offenses. He also campaigns against what he sees as overly restrictive legalization, favorable to big business at the expense of the artisanal producers and historical activists who made legalization possible.
Russia has banned a handful of Canadian cannabis activists from entering its territory, as well as a long list of politicians and former politicians,...
Dana Larsen launched his Overgow Tour in April 2016, a Canada-wide campaign to distribute 1,000,000 free cannabis seeds and...
