Crowd lights up for annual 4/20 rally at Sunset Beach in Vancouver

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A cloud of thick, white smoke hung over a popular Vancouver beach for the second year in a row as people celebrated 4/20.

#Vancouver420 countdown to 4:20 and the resulting smoke cloud. Despite the rain, thousands of people light up for 4/20 pic.twitter.com/OXNqa2zlep

— Lasia Kretzel (@lkretzel1130) April 21, 2018

It’s an unsanctioned event, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from piling onto Sunset Beach.

This year’s festivities could be the very last one before recreational pot is set to be legalized in Canada before the end of the year.

The rain held off until the very last minute and even once the raindrops started falling, it didn’t dampen the glowing haze.

Dozens of colourful tents blanketed the grass and sand and between them, people were packed tight mingling while eating, drinking, buying souvenirs and of course purchasing the plant of the day.

Following last year’s debacle of the grass being destroyed at the beach, this year, plastic mats were put down ahead of time in an effort by organizers to ease any potential damage. The 4/20 celebration in 2017 closed the park for several weeks and it cost thousands of dollars to fix.

Dana Larsen on legalization legislation and whether it is cause for celebration #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/7QU61jMrR1

— Lasia Kretzel (@lkretzel1130) April 20, 2018

Pot activist Jodie Emery says pot users across the country have a lot to celebrate, given it’s expected to be legalized this year, but she also thinks the legislation doesn’t go far enough.

“This sort of event is what we’ve had to do to make legalization possible. This is an enormous act of peaceful civil disobedience where people are openly breaking the law and demonstrating that they should not be illegal. The upcoming legislation actually makes all of this still illegal.”

Darren Grieve in the NEWS 1130 Air Patrol was high over the crowd and says it looks like this year’s crowd was bigger than years previous.

“It’s not that they weren’t busy last year but this year there was considerably a lot more people. The whole grass area at Sunset Beach was absolutely full of people, especially around the live stage area, but even the rest of that lawn area — it was very, very busy and then spilling out onto the beach this year, which we didn’t see a whole lot of last year.”

Earlier Friday, NEWS 1130 Meteorologist Russ Lacate predicted the rain would fall around 4:20 p.m., and Grieve says it didn’t change anyone’s mood. “It was probably about 4:16 p.m. when I saw the first couple of raindrops hit the windshield of the airplane, but it didn’t really seem to dampen anybody’s spirits.”

Vancouver Police kept a watchful eye over the crowd and members of their traffic unit were brought in to handle the detours and road closures while guiding people out of the area.

The Vancouver Police Department estimates 40,000 people made their way to Sunset Beach.The department says there were no major incidents. Two people were arrested in total, including a teen for assault and weapons charges and another man for breach of his release conditions.

Eight people had to be taken to the hospital and there were 10 overdose calls.