The Very Illegal Cafe Where You Can Take Shrooms and Chew Coca

“Cops and raids can’t keep us down,” reads a sign outside of the Coca Leaf Cafe and Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary in downtown Vancouver, Canada. In November last year, the emporium – which sells not just Bolivian coca (from which cocaine derives) and hallucinogenic mushrooms, but all manner of psychedelics – was raided by the police for the first time since opening in 2020, along with two other dispensaries under the same ownership. Thousands of dollars in cash and drugs worth tens of thousands were seized.

Owner Dana Larsen was arrested and held in custody for seven hours, but he reopened the cafe the next day after being released without any immediate charges. Staff at his other two outlets greeted psychonauts, microdosers and the psychedelic-curious once more a few days later. The immediate reopening was a brazen move, even for Larsen, a 52-year-old veteran of entrepreneurial drug law reform activism, who was chewing coca leaves when we first met. His next play was even more audacious.

For Christmas, he sent festive cards to the addresses of all 87 members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, and gifted each of the politicians a coca leaf and one gram of Golden Teacher magic mushrooms. In the card, he wished them “the happiest of holidays”, lauded the plants’ “beneficial therapeutic properties”, and included a membership form for the dispensary. Larsen told local media: “I encourage them to try the mushroom in a safe and responsible setting and to have that experience – it can be very beneficial.” It's unclear whether any of them took him up on the offer; in fact, some of them called the police.

Nevertheless, there’s no shortage of members at Larsen’s cafe and dispensary – more than 20,000 at the last count. On a chilly afternoon in early January, I pay him a visit and become the latest recruit after filling in my details and presenting my ID to an employee behind the counter – the psychedelic version of a budtender. Let’s call them triptenders.

I order a “cocaccino”, a bittersweet concoction combining brewed coca leaves, steamed milk and syrup. It's hard not to be impressed: This is one of the only places in the world where such a beverage, as well as the vast array of mind-bending products on sale, can be found in the same establishment. And it’s without doubt the only coca cafe in the West. “We are here to fight for the legalisation of all psychedelics and to end the war on drugs,” Larsen tells VICE. “As far as I’m concerned, prohibition is the root cause for all the problems they claim are caused by drugs,” he told another reporter.

The cafe and dispensary does not reside in a legal grey area, but it is totally illegal. Coca leaves, considered sacred by indigenous people across the Andes, are Schedule I drugs in Canada. However, thanks to the forward-thinking spirit of Vancouver, there isn’t much appetite among the police to go after the buccaneering Larsen and his peers at another dozen mushroom stores that operate openly – as many cannabis vendors did pre-legalisation. Last year British Columbia decriminalised the possession of small amounts of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and meth (but, weirdly, not mushrooms). And since Canada’s monumental 2018 legalisation, recreational cannabis is available in stores on most main streets.

But the so-called green rush is over: Welcome to the shroom boom. Vancouver is perhaps the best place to soak up a view of the billowing mushroom cloud, outside of the US cities Oregon and Colorado, which have voted to legalise psilocybin therapy. In Larsen’s psychedelic marketplace (rated 4.6 stars on Google, with 183 reviews at the time of writing), there are a spectacular variety of magic mushrooms on sale: From caramel-capped Gold Emperors to the phallic-shaped Penis Envy strain, from Blue Meanie toadstools (a reference to the villains from the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine cartoon) to psilocybin Rice Krispie bars. There is also LSD, DMT, kratom and, perhaps controversially, a staggering selection of pink-flowered peyote cactuses that can fetch more than $700 each.

Beyond simply providing a legit, albeit relatively expensive, source for what many consider to be first and foremost medicines – “People come into my shop every day and tell me how access to psychedelics has changed and improved their lives,” Larsen told Bloomberg in January – the establishment also exists to demonstrate that another reality is possible… One cocaccino at a time.

Each sip of the exotic beverage delivers an ever more stimulating, pleasant high. It’s almost like coffee but more euphoric and less jittery; not dissimilar to cocaine, yet less in the head and more in the body. “I’m kinda buzzing,” I text my girlfriend. Naturally, I begin to take an increased interest in the art on the walls. There is a painting depicting a Quechua woman holding three coca leaves aloft in front of her chest and praying. There are a series of cosmo-visionary pieces, which suggest the interconnection of the plant, human and spirit worlds, and chart a journey towards becoming one with the universe.

Photo: Courtesy of Dana Larsen

A collection of 19th century posters advertise coca products, harking back to a bygone era when their use was legal in North America and Europe, and didn’t involve hiding in toilet cubicles sniffing a set of keys. Coca swiftly entered the western pharmacopoeia in the late 1800s as pharmaceutical companies began exploring Latin America for new medicines. “Cocaine toothache drops,” one ad reads, clearly appealing to children, touting its quick-numbing analgesic effects. “A marvellous restorative,” says another, advertising Hall’s Coca Wine. There is also a picture of Pope Leo XIII (the first in a long line of coca-enthusiast Popes) on an endorsement poster for another type of tonic wine, whose creator he has awarded with a gold medal.

Meanwhile, a TV screen displays the cafe’s extraordinary beverage offering, which in addition to the cocaccinos, hot coca tea and LSD-infused coffees, includes a “coca pop” made with coca brew and Coca-Cola. It is an unsubtle nod to the soda’s original “brain tonic and intellectual beverage” recipe, as it was once promoted, and the origin of the globally renowned brand’s name. The company removed the invigorating ingredient in 1903 as the first wave of anti-drug hysteria began to sweep the U.S., and as cocaine’s addictive nature became clear. But the fizzy drink still derives its distinctive taste from an extract of the bitter coca leaf.

At the height of the war on drugs, the Coca-Cola Company faced some uncomfortable questions about the contents of its product. Today, fears about the perception of cocaine trafficking are what Larsen believes got him raided. He had not long before been quoted in the media saying he was in favour of the white powder’s legalisation. “Then I was shown on TV with a bunch of coca leaves,” Larsen says. “It created the impression that we’re selling cocaine.”

Larsen's arrest. Photo: courtesy of Dana Larsen

Just a week before, the headquarters of Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) – which Larsen has supported to the tune of around £4,500 – had been raided and its two founders, Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx, were arrested and now face trial. For the last two years, the group had been giving away tested supplies of heroin and cocaine to people dependent on drugs, as a way of reducing the spiralling number of fatal drug overdoses in the city from toxic substances, such as those contaminated with fentanyl. “I think they are doing incredible work and I would like to continue that,” Larsen told the Microdose newsletter. “I’ve been trying to figure out how we can open some kind of heroin club or safe access point.”

Pushing the boundaries is nothing new to Larsen. He was one of the first people to open an illegal medical cannabis dispensary back in 2008; that same year he was forced to stand down as a federal political candidate for the progressive New Democratic Party after videos emerged of him “lighting a mouth full of joints, taking hallucinogenic drugs and driving while stoned” according to one report. He later made news for giving away 2.3 million weed seeds in an attempt to “Overgrow Canada”. Now he’s taking his law-bending social activism to the next step.

Around £900,000 from the cafe and dispensaries’ proceeds have been used to fund the Get Your Drugs Tested program in Vancouver, which has conducted more than 60,000 drug tests since 2019, Larsen tells me. “We're the busiest free street drug analysis centre in the world. If you can find a way to make money being an activist and doing civil disobedience, that's a very successful model.”

Back in the busy store, the blissful buzz from my cocaccino is tailing off, so I queue to purchase some coca powder to make my own at home. One of the triptenders passes me a ten gram bag with a “coca leaf user guide” that waxes lyrical about the much maligned plant’s benefits but warns its consumption can cause a positive drug test. “You can optionally add a very small amount of baking soda while brewing for maximum effect,” the guide reads. “Don’t use too much!”

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