PENTICTON — Pedestrians in Vancouver boxed in a dark Toyota Camry and took the keys away from a man behind the wheel who appeared unable to stay upright, according to video posted to social media Wednesday evening.
The X and Instagram clip account 604RAW put the footage up just after 5 p.m. PDT with the line, "Pedestrians stop a heavily intoxicated man from driving in downtown Vancouver."
The clip opens inside the car. A man in a black T-shirt and khaki shorts is slumped in the driver's seat with his eyes closed. A Gatorade Zero bottle sits in the cupholder. A hand reaches across him and takes a can from his grip. Another hand appears to take the keys away from the same man slumped over in the vehicle.
Later frames put the same Camry on or around Davie Street near 1722, the block that holds Aspire Clinic and Pharmacy and a Circle K.
The man walks around the car, drops to a knee at the rear door, then ends the sequence face-down on the pavement beside a front tire.
No published Vancouver Police Department bulletin had confirmed an arrest, a roadside prohibition, or even that officers opened a file by Thursday afternoon.
Driving while impaired by alcohol or a drug is a Criminal Code offence — even in Vancouver. Police can also issue an immediate administrative driving prohibition under provincial rules.
One widely circulated reply treated the pictures as a joke about Vancouver's notoriously lenient drug policies.
An X user posting as @rick_doobs wrote that the man "wasn't intoxicated at all," that he had just finished a "30k sprint," and that after rehydrating he "ran another 10k before he went to a safe site drug use centre to do some fentanyl."
The reply tagged another account as a friend. That tag appears to be a part of the gag rather than an actual identification of the man in the Camry.
The punchline is likely aimed at the city's remaining supervised-consumption sites and at a civic habit of treating public intoxication as normal.
BC's decriminalization exemption expired January 31.
Possession outside exempted sites is, again, a criminal matter — even in Vancouver.
