Vancouver’s most well-known protester, anarchist, and “safe supply” advocate Garth Mullins will be speaking in Campbell River Thursday night.
Mullins is being hosted by CRASH Harm Reduction and the Community Action Team at River City Inclusion’s Lions Den Activity Centre on Ironwood Street Thursday night. It’s billed as “an exciting conversation” and “a fundraiser by donation for CRASH Harm Reduction to support outreach and other services.”
The Community Action Team is funded by the province; CRASH is a community-based non-profit.
Mullins is well-known in Vancouver for his activism, which began after he was convicted for hard drug possession in San Francisco at the age of 19. Since then he has been involved with almost every major protest in Vancouver, usually as an apologist for the protesters and his anarchist associates.
That includes the violent 1997 “Riot at the Hyatt,” which resulted in national outrage after former Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked about protesters getting pepper-sprayed. Mullins has also turned up at anti-gentrification and anti-globalism protests over the years.
He spoke extensively about the violent riots after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2011. Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu said the riots were sparked by “criminals and anarchists” who “hide behind the large numbers of people who wanted to watch the game.”
However Mullins, defending his associates, characterized the riots as “more of a drunken holler from the suburbs than a scream from the margins,” and claimed no anarchists or “black bloc” activists were involved in the vandalism and theft.
Mullins has used his website, his “Crackdown” podcast, and his advocacy platform for decades to defend anarchists, push for government-funded hard drugs, and criticize police. He acted as an advisor to the BC government on behalf of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, and encouraged the province to adopt the since-failed drug decriminalization pilot project. Mullins had been working since 1998 towards decriminalizing drugs in BC.
Despite being an advocate for drug use and anarchists, Mullins comes from a privileged background.
“My parents went up there for government jobs and you know you could get up a few rungs higher on whatever ladder you’re trying to climb by going north,” he said in a 2021 podcast, describing his childhood in Yellowknife.
After his family moved to BC his father, Gary Mullins, served as Deputy Minister of Education for the NDP government sometime in the early 1990s. His mother, Doreen Mullins, served as Executive Director of the Federal Treaty Negotiation Office in 1997.
Mullins used hard drugs, mostly heroin, for decades and in a 2025 interview he credits methadone for saving his life, while blaming society for his struggles.
“The problems I was having—overdosing, getting locked up, being broke—were not because of the opioid molecules in my bloodstream, but about the way society organized itself in response,” he said in a 2025 interview with Filter Magazine. “Methadone meant I no longer had to spend all my time and money outrunning dopesickness. I could get on with doing the other things I wanted.”
Admission is by donation, and the fundraising event is open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 pm. River City Inclusion’s Lions Den Activity Centre is located at 1441 Ironwood Street.
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