Less than 24 hours after opening his store, the Vancouver resident who sold heroin, meth, cocaine, and MDMA was taken into custody.
On Wednesday, Jerry Martin launched The Drugs Store, a traveling pharmacy, in the Downtown Eastside, a district decimated by the opioid crisis. He claimed he intended to provide patients with a steady stream of medications that had been examined to make sure they were free of fentanyl.
The Drugs Store
Vancouver police reported on Thursday that they detained a man accused of drug trafficking for his involvement in an “illicit drug dispensary that opened yesterday in the Downtown Eastside.”
In a police statement, the police say that they began gathering evidence after the suspect sold cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, and heroin from a mobile caravan.
- Less than 24 hours after opening his store, the Vancouver resident was taken into custody.
- Police say that they began gathering evidence after the suspect sold.
- The shop had bright yellow sandwich boards with a pricing list for all the drugs.
Constable Tania Visintin said in a news release, “We support harm reduction programs and decriminalizing drugs to improve public safety.” But we remain unwavering in our conviction that enforcement will be concentrated on drug trafficking.
As part of the ongoing investigation, police claimed to have confiscated two vehicles, body armor, and Canadian money. They claimed that as a condition of his bail, Martin is not permitted to go back to the Downtown Eastside. They did not state what offenses they had against him.
The shop had bright yellow sandwich boards with a pricing list for all the drugs, which varied from $10 for a point (one-tenth of a gram) of meth to $250 for 2.5 grams of crack. It was parked close to a police cruiser. Martin, who was selling drugs from behind a plexiglass window inside the store while wearing a stab-proof vest, claimed he intended to keep rates close to those found on the street.
Martin intends to file a constitutional challenge, claiming that the lack of access to drugs has led to a hazardous supply that is killing Canadians.
He already had a conviction for cannabis trafficking, and his stepbrother Gord Rennie, who passed away from a drug overdose last year, served as the impetus for him to launch the shop. Martin was partly motivated by Rennie’s Benzo drug addiction and has a conviction for trafficking in cannabis.
