Vancouver marijuana bust breaks up protest for 'pot people'

A member of a Vancouver protest calling for human rights for "pot people" says that the city and police overreacted when they closed the two-week makeshift camp down Thursday.

"We were protesting for equal rights for pot people, the human right to smoke marijuana where we want," Nick Tremblay told CBC News as the police moved in to dismantle the tents erected outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.

"We were trying to have a peaceful protest here, garden a couple of plants, help some patients get their medicine, protest for the legalization of marijuana..."

Tremblay said the activists were given no notice to leave, alleged that one man was injured in the melee, and that private property was being removed.

But Tobin Postma with the City of Vancouver says what had begun as a peaceful protest that police were simply monitoring on a daily basis since the first tent was erected May 21, had since mushroomed into a public nuisance and safety issue.

"Over the days [a] single tent grew to two and then three," Postma wrote in an email Thursday.

"Police recently began receiving noise complaints from loud music being played late at night. Police also received information [someone] was giving away not only the plants but marijuana products as part of the protest."

Postma said the organizer had become increasingly unreasonable, and so city workers were sent to dismantle the camp.

They removed four truckloads of items from the site which are being stored and can be retrieved at a later date, Postma said.

With files from Bob Keating.