Bcapom The British Columbia Association of People on Opioid Maintenance

09/30/2026

An explanation of the DULF ruling:
“BC Court Strikes Down Canada’s ‘Possession for the Purpose of Trafficking’ Offence in theDULF Case”
by Kyla Lee Sept 29, 2026
“Today the BC Supreme Court declared one of the most frequently charged drug offences in Canada unconstitutional.
In R v Kalicum, 2026 BCSC 1855, Madam Justice Murray found that section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), which makes it a crime to possess a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking, violates sections 7 and 15 of the Charter. She declared the section of no force or effect, then suspended the declaration of invalidity for six months to give Parliament time to respond. She then stayed the convictions of Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx, the co-founders of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF).
It is the most significant drug law ruling out of this province since the Supreme Court of Canada kept Insite open in 2011. It is also a detailed, evidence-based account of what happens when governments let politics drive their response to a public health emergency.
WHAT DULF DID
Kalicum and Nyx are harm reduction workers in the Downtown Eastside. Between them they have responded to more than 100 overdoses. By 2021 they had watched enough friends, co-workers and neighbours die from a poisoned street supply of drugs that they designed a program to do som**hing about it.
The DULF Compassion Club worked like this. DULF bought he**in, co***ne, and m**hamphetamine from the dark web. They then had the drugs tested at UBC and UVic for fentanyl, benzodiazepines, and other contaminants, then packaged and labelled them with their contents and health warnings. It sold them, at cost, to screened members who were over 18 and already using those drugs. It bought them on the dark web because no legal source existed. Which is an important part of why the Court ruled the way it did.
DULF knew this was illegal, so it asked permission first. On August 31, 2021, it applied to the federal Minister of Health for an exemption under section 56(1) of the CDSA. That exemption would have allowed them to distribute the drugs lawfully. Health Canada declined the exemption… but it took almost a year to do so. By the time DULF followed up, 1,333 (additional) British Columbians had died from toxic drugs. DULF challenged the refusal in Federal Court. That judicial review was argued in March 2024. As of the last day of the criminal court hearing in July 2026, the Federal Court still had not released a decision.
In the meantime, the province backed DULF. The BC Ministry of Health gave DULF a storefront in the Downtown Eastside at no cost and designated it an overdose prevention site. Vancouver Coastal Health signed a funding agreement worth up to $200,000 a year for DULF’s drug checking and overdose prevention services. The Ministry knew DULF was selling tested drugs to members. So did the Vancouver Police Department. DULF published its results in peer-reviewed journals, gave interviews, and invited officials to visit.
The program worked. In its first year there were no overdoses involving the substances DULF supplied.
THEN THE ECONOMIST RAN A STORY
On September 8, 2023, The Economist published an article about the Compassion Club, with photos of Kalicum and Nyx inside the site. The political reaction was immediate. Pierre Poilievre called it a “disgrace” that the BC NDP would give tax dollars to “illegal drug dealers.” Justice Murray took the time to correct the record. The public funding paid for drug checking and the overdose prevention site, and DULF bought its drugs with money from community donors.
As a result of the political pressure and fallout, the BC Ministry of Health directed Vancouver Coastal Health to pull DULF’s funding and its lease. The VPD drug section, which in the judge’s words “was aware of DULF and the Compassion Club but had turned a blind eye,” opened an investigation.
Six days before the Compassion Club was scheduled to close, police executed a search warrant. They found co***ne, he**in and m**hamphetamine in two locked safes, mostly in DULF-labelled packages of 0.1 to 1 gram. The drugs were exactly what the labels said, with no fentanyl and no benzodiazepines. That was the whole point of the program.
Kalicum and Nyx were convicted of possessing for the purposes of trafficking in November 2025. The provincial exemptions covered testing, packaging and supervised consumption, but not selling. Their convictions were held in abeyance while they brought this constitutional challenge.
THE ISSUE AT THE CENTER OF THE CASE
The Crown’s position was that DULF’s problem was a failed exemption application, not the law. If DULF wanted to operate legally, it should have gotten an exemption.
Justice Murray found that the exemption was never really available. Section 56 of the CDSA lets the Minister exempt a program from the CDSA. It does not exempt anyone from the Food and Drugs Act, which separately prohibits selling any drug that lacks Health Canada market authorization. The only pharmaceutical he**in in Canada is authorized for one purpose, prescribed and supervised injectable opioid agonist therapy. Using it any other way makes it a “new drug” that needs its own authorization, a process one witness called at trial had been working through for more than a decade, at a cost of millions of dollars. The Food and Drugs Act amendment that would allow person-specific exemptions has never been brought into force.
So a program using illegally sourced drugs violates the Food and Drugs Act even with a CDSA exemption, and a program using legally sourced drugs cannot exist because there are no legally sourced drugs to use. The court called the section 56 exemption “illusory” in this context.
The judge also found a second problem with section 56. It is entirely discretionary. It has no standards, no timelines, and no requirement that the Minister prioritize health and safety. Justice Murray described the toxic drug crisis as “a political hot potato” and agreed that the lack of guardrails leaves the exemption power open to political pressure. An 11-month wait during a declared public health emergency, she noted, was not a failure of the scheme. The scheme allowed it.
An exemption no one can get is not a real meaningful safety valve.
WHY SECTION 5(2) VIOLATES THE CHARTER
The Crown conceded that section 5(2) engages the liberty of anyone who runs a program like DULF’s, because it exposes them to jail. The harder question was whether the law also engages the right to life and security of the person of the people DULF served. The court found it does, relying on the Supreme Court of Canada’s reasoning in Bedford, the s*x work case. Drug use itself is not a criminal offence. A law that stops people from protecting themselves against the risks of a lawful activity deprives them of security of the person, even if other factors also contribute to the harm.
The court then found that the deprivation breaches two principles of fundamental justice. The purpose of the CDSA is to protect public health and public safety. A law that criminalizes a program that saved lives and did not harm public safety captures conduct that advances the law’s own purpose, which makes it overbroad. It is also grossly disproportionate. Justice Murray drew directly on Bedford, where the bawdy-house law stopped s*x workers from moving to a safe indoor location while a suspected serial killer was preying on women on the street. Section 5(2), she wrote, keeps drug users from safer supply “while fentanyl and other highly dangerous contaminants prowl the street drug supply.”
The Crown leaned heavily on R v Lalancette, a 2022 Ontario decision rejecting a similar challenge. The court distinguished it on the facts. Mr. Lalancette delivered five kilograms of street he**in to another dealer, and the judge described him as “for all intents and purposes, a drug trafficker who claimed to have good intentions.” DULF was transparent, publicly supported, studied by researchers, and backed by the health authority.
THE CROWN & THE DEFENSE AGREED THAT SUBSTANCE USE IS A DISABILITY
The court found that by blocking any non-medical source of drugs of known content, section 5(2) has a disproportionate effect on people with severe dependencies, who cannot simply stop using, and pushes them back to a street market that exposes them to overdose, violence and exploitation. The Crown argued the right comparison was between drug users with and without a diagnosed disorder. Relying on the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2026 decision in Kanyinda, Justice Murray called that “an outdated understanding of the test.”THE CROWN BARELY DEFENDED THE LAW
Once a claimant proves a Charter breach, the burden shifts to the government to justify it under section 1. The government has spent years telling the public that non-prescription safer supply is dangerous. In this case it had a months-long hearing, with experts on the other side including the former Chief Coroner, a former Deputy Provincial Health Officer, and a member of Health Canada’s own Expert Advisory Group on Safer Supply. The Crown called no evidence to contradict any of them. The judge described that as being “of marked significance.”
The Crown did not plead justification at all in its outline of position. It gave section 1 a single paragraph in its written argument. The court found the law fails the minimal impairment test, because it criminalizes activity that advances the CDSA’s objectives, not activity that undermines them.
So the Government’s case against safer supply is loud at the megaphone and quiet in the courtroom. When it had to put evidence behind the rhetoric, it called none.
THE REMEDY
Justice Murray declared all of section 5(2) of no force or effect. The Crown asked her to limit the declaration to he**in, co***ne and m**hamphetamine. She refused, because the problem the case exposed is the absence of any legal pathway to non-medicalized safer supply, whatever the drug.
The Crown asked for a 12-month suspension of the declaration of invalidity. The court gave only six months. “It has been over 11 years since the toxic drug crisis was declared a public health emergency,” she wrote. “It remains an emergency.” The Crown can apply to extend the suspension if Parliament needs more time.
Relying on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Ontario v G, she also granted Kalicum and Nyx individual stays of proceedings. Their convictions are stayed. The Crown had accepted that individual exemptions would be appropriate if the challenge succeeded.
WHAT THIS MEANS IF YOU ARE CHARGED WITH POSSESSION FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRAFFICKING IN BC
Section 5(2) remains fully in force today. The declaration is suspended for six months, and nothing in this decision makes it legal to possess drugs for sale in the meantime. If you have a charge before the courts, it has not gone away. But the door is open to mount a similar constitutional challenge.
Expect the federal Crown to appeal to the BC Court of Appeal, and to ask that the suspension be extended while it does. This case may well end up at the Supreme Court of Canada.
The declaration strikes down the whole section, but the reasoning is built around a transparent, not-for-profit, health-focused program. The court distinguished the ordinary drug dealer in plain terms. Anyone hoping this decision provides a defence to a commercial trafficking case should read Lalancette’s treatment in these reasons carefully. The decision also leaves untouched the separate offences of trafficking under section 5(1) and simple possession under section 4.
Under the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v Sullivan, a superior court’s declaration of invalidity binds the provincial courts in that province. It does not bind courts in other provinces. For now, this is a B.C. ruling.
If you are facing a drug charge, the details of your case matter more than any headline. Talk to a criminal defence lawyer about how this decision, and any appeal, may affect you.
SIX MONTHS
The court said the current law makes it impossible to run a program that every expert panel has recommended, and that the Charter does not allow that. The judge identified the fixes herself. Parliament can amend the Food and Drugs Act regime, and it can give section 56 exemption decisions real structure.
Kalicum and Nyx did in the open what the Coroners Service, the Provincial Health Officer and Health Canada’s own advisors told government to do. Health Canada’s answer took eleven months. The province’s answer took one magazine article. The VPD’s answer was a search warrant. The court’s answer took months of evidence, and it is the only one of the four that was based on any (evidence).”

09/29/2026

“They were courageous. They were evidence-based.” BC Supreme Court finds. Canadian Drug Policy Coalition
Sept 29, 2026 – “In a landmark ruling that could alter the fabric of drug policy in Canada, the BC Supreme Court has found that the criminal law used to arrest and convict DULF co-founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx is unconstitutional. The Court ruled that section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs & Substances Act violates the Section 7 and Section 15 Charter rights of DULF co-founders and people who use drugs. The Judge declared section 5(2) of the CDSA invalid (of no force or effect), effective six months from today. This delay is to give the opportunity for the legislature to craft a response.
In finding section 5(2) of the CDSA unconstitutional, the Court has issued a “stay of proceedings” against Kalicum and Nyx. This means that no convictions will be entered against them and they cannot be prosecuted again for the DULF compassion club activities that were the subject of this court case.
“They were courageous. They were evidence-based. They pursued their program with no profit, no benefit for themselves at all, always with the sole intention of trying to reduce the terrible rate of death in this crisis,” says Tim Dickson of DULF’s legal team. “Drug policy should not rely on people as courageous as Ms. Nyx and Mr. Kalicum. Governments need to follow the evidence and make the choices to implement programs that…will work to save lives. If we care about saving lives, then we need to follow the evidence. And that is what the Court did in this case.”
Judge Catherine Murray delivered the verdict with oral reasons for judgement, finding that “a non-medical safe supply is urgently needed to save lives” and “the DULF compassion club reduced the harms associated with the toxic drug crisis and did not negatively impact the community or public safety.”
“It’s really encouraging that the court today has recognized some of the harm created by prohibition,” says Aiyanas Ormond of the BC Coalition of Organizations By/For People Who Use Drugs. “We now have an important opportunity to re-think the whole framework of the war on drugs, and consider alternatives, like DULF, that support health, build community, and delink addiction and substance use from the violent harms of criminalization and the black market .”
In court, Judge Murray took time to acknowledge DULF’s co-founders directly. “Mr. Kalicum and Ms. Nyx, you selflessly put yourselves on the line for this cause. I know from watching you through this lengthy process that it has taken a toll…I applaud you for what you have done. You should be very proud of yourselves. Go do great things; I have no doubt that you will.”
“DULF provided life-saving services when no legal alternative was available. This put them on the wrong side of the law: their lawyers argued that given these facts, it is the law, not DULF’s co-founders, that is wrong,” says DJ Larkin, executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. “Today, the BC Supreme Court agreed. We are deeply heartened and relieved that the Court has recognized DULF’s lifesaving and selfless work. Thank you to Jeremy, Eris and the legal team led by Tim Dickson, Stephanie Dickson, and Kaelan Unrau for your remarkable and courageous work.”
In November 2025, Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum – two founders of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) – were each convicted of three counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking because they sourced diacetylmorphine (he**in), m**hamphetamine and co***ne from the dark web, rigorously tested it to ensure purity and determine potency, and sold it at cost to members of a strictly controlled compassion club. In doing so, DULF provided its members with a regulated, predictable drug supply as an alternative to the volatile street drug supply that has killed more than 18,000 people in B.C. over the past decade.
But when political winds shifted in September 2023 and several politicians publicly targeted the club and stirred up moral panic, the same government agencies who had previously supported or tacitly permitted the compassion club’s operation abandoned DULF and the club members whose lives and health the club was protecting. On October 25, 2023, the Vancouver Police Department raided DULF and arrested its co-founders, forcing compassion club members back to the dangers of the unregulated drug supply.
“Moms Stop the Harm celebrates the successful outcome of DULF’s Charter challenge and recognizes the extraordinary courage and determination of Eris Nyx, Jeremy Kalicum, their legal team, and everyone who stood behind them,” says J Stewart of Moms Stop the Harm. “At the heart of this case are people’s lives. Canada’s unregulated drug supply continues to cause preventable deaths, and people who use drugs deserve policies grounded in evidence, human rights, dignity and care — not punishment. We are grateful to DULF for having the courage to challenge the status quo.”
As for the future of Canada’s drug laws, Canada now has six months to craft legislation that upholds constitutional rights. It is expected that the Crown will appeal this judgement, which would delay any legislative changes.”

09/09/2026

“A new B.C. study is looking at one approach to opioid treatment that allows some patients to take their daily m**hadone at home, rather than under supervision at a pharmacy. Study co-author Dr. Paxton Bach says the findings suggest the province’s approach to m**hadone access is costly and unnecessarily restrictive.”

A new B.C. study is looking at one approach to opioid treatment tha...

08/18/2026

“Zurich’s radical response to Europe’s drug crisis tested by surge in use of crack co***ne”
“Three decades after the chaos of the Swiss city’s ‘Needle Park’, supervised drug use and state-backed he**in treatment have cut harm, but crack has posed new challenges”
The Irish Times Jul 20 2026 - 8 min read by Derick Scally
“Pablo is a smiling, 60-year-old ball of energy, charming everyone as he sweeps in with a bag of groceries and crack pipe. It’s just after 9am in what could be a youth club or a doctor’s practice: grey-tiled floors, walls painted in bright pinks and greens, functional chairs and stainless steel tables.
Pablo nods to the counter staff and vanishes into one of three small rooms adjacent, where 20 people are consuming crack co***ne and chatting with each other.
From girls in their 20s to an older man wearing plaster-covered work trousers and boots, there is no typical visitor to this city-run drug consumption room.
People come and go and staff, though watchful, are friendly, greeting many visitors by name as they allocate a 30-minute slot in a consumption room. After that, users have to vacate the room for others but can go one floor up to a lounge area with sofas, a television, books, a PC and a cafe area
Outside the communal consumption rooms are trays with complimentary equipment including tubes, lighters, distilled water, baking soda, sniffing paper and even plastic bottles – for improvised pipes – as well as glass bongs, sold at cost price.
Eight staff are on duty at any one time here. Four such consumption centres operate across the city, open from 7.30am for up to 13 hours. Each day, 21 staff in total work across all facilities. On the day The Irish Times visits, police trainees are being shown around the facility, part of Zurich’s four-pillar approach to reduce drug use and its negative consequences for all.
Half an hour after he went in, Pablo emerges, eyes shining and jewellery rattling. Between mouthfuls of rice pudding, he describes balancing his career as an insurance industry executive with lifelong drug use. Pablo first tried cannabis at 17, co***ne a year later and he**in at 20. He was drug-free for 10 years, thanks to a state-supported therapy, but now takes a cocktail of Diaphin – state-supplied he**in (more of which later) – and crack co***ne he bought on the street and brings here.
“I need both for the balance,” he says, linking his drug use to a lifetime of bipolar mood swings from manic to depressed.
Many people come here to get off the streets and have som**hing to eat, he says. “I have a flat but come here because it gives my day structureand because, sometimes, I can help others.”
Pablo got started on drugs in the 1980s in Zurich’s Platzspitz, a pocket-sized park beside the central train station.
“Five of my friends died back then: four overdosed and one hanged himself,” he remembers, his smile fading briefly. “Back then, the Platzspitz was hell on earth.”
Today the park is a slice of heaven. On a sweaty summer afternoon, couples canoodle in the shade of trees and young men in shorts jump off a bridge into the cool, clean water of the Limmat river below.
Zurich native André Seidenberg nods in agreement with Pablo’s “hell on earth” recollection of this place. The city doctor watched as the tolerated drug scene here in the 1980s drew in ever more people from all over Europe. By the early 1990s, hundreds of daily visitors became thousands and Platzspitz became known globally as “needle park”. The 15,000 syringes collected here daily compounded spiralling HIV and hepatitis crises.
Seidenberg, then a young doctor “and a bit of a hippie”, remembers his frustration at a vicious circle of political helplessness and police crackdowns. Now 75, he points towards a historic, cast-iron bandstand that, back in the early 1990s, was “ground zero” of the drug scene here.
“You always had half a dozen people here, under piles of blankets in terrible conditions, who knew where the drugs were,” says Seidenberg. “This was the lowest level, most of those who ended up here died after a few days.”
For Seidenberg, a crucial turning point was a petition he organised, signed by 360 fellow city doctors, citing evidence-based arguments to demand a radical rethink.
Zurich’s resulting four-pillar drug policy, still in use today, pushes prevention, therapy, harm reduction and law enforcement. Why was that letter a key to change?
“Because we doctors,” he says, “were not state stooges”.
Beat Rhyner, deputy head of Zurich’s criminal police, says many factors were at play back then. But the sheer scale of the city’s drug problem in the 1990s – Zurich eventually ran out of prison space – forced an admission of defeat from even the strongest advocates of repressive measures in the police force.
“A broad public consensus emerged, running through all political parties across the spectrum, that things cannot get any worse so let’s try som**hing new,” says Rhyner.
Ask older Zurich residents about the 1990s drug crises and many shudder visibly. At a city restaurant, guests discuss the appalling human cost, the emotional debates and the growing reputational damage to their city.
Most here think the four-pillar approach is a tolerable solution, if hardly a cause for celebration.
“If you strip out ignorance, fear and disapproval of drugs, and address the issue with facts,” says Burim, a local restaurant owner, “then what we have here is probably the best you can hope for”.
That chimes with the main message of Florian Meyer, city commissioner for harm reduction, in his office two floors above Pablo’s consumption room.
“Trying to play abstinence off against acceptance achieves little,” he said. “A mix of both are needed: to stabilise people in a way that allows them make informed choices.”
Nearly a decade in the job, Meyer’s hands-on work includes overseeing consumption rooms and co-ordinating with politicians and police. As consumption rooms move premises, he has become an expert at convincing wary new neighbours that the new facility in their street will not create new problems. If anything, he argues the opposite is the case: problems leave the street.
“We create attractive rooms where people – many, not all – are happy to come,” he says. “It is much easier to support people here, medically and with welfare, than when they are in the outdoor scene.”
After decades of success, however, all is not well in Zurich. Meyer presents a slide showing drug use last year, categorised by substance. Crack co***ne consumption in Zurich is – literally – off the chart. In the last decade, the highly addictive substance has flooded much of Europe. Waste water analysis in Switzerland shows the drug is everywhere, from big cities with progressive drug policies such as Zurich to rural areas with none.
After years of success, the race is on in Switzerland to adapt and expand urban-based four-pillar policies, with one big challenge. “As yet,” says Meyer, “we have no [synthetic] substitute for crack. We need more innovation in medical research to reduce harm here.”
That Meyer is now a global go-to expert on harm reduction is clear from an office noticeboard thick with business cards, including Gillian Shorter, reader in drug and alcohol research at Queen’s University Belfast’s school of psychology.
Shorter, who visited Zurich in June, has evaluated consumption room services globally and is finalising a review into Dublin’s Merchant’s Quay consumption room, on which she declines to comment.
Replicating Switzerland’s harm-reduction approach on the island of Ireland, she says, is doable but requires sustained public funding and close co-ordination between communities, health and criminal justice authorities.
A final piece of the puzzle is societal acceptance that people, who have often complex reasons for using drugs, remain rights-bearing citizens.
“I don’t think we can arrest our way out of this crisis,” says Shorter. “Locking people up or forcing them into treatment doesn’t work either, wasting a lot of taxpayer money that could be better spent on harm reduction, prevention and treatment.”
Just how much money Zurich spends on harm reduction is clear from the Crossline day clinic. Open 365 days a year and up to nine hours a day, this is not a drop-in consumption room but a legal drug dispensary where all visitors have been vetted by their doctor, health authorities and staff here as addicts, suitable for treatment.
Beyond a long consumption room with metal benches is a room holding three massive safes. Two women check and recheck stock that includes morphine, m**hadone, he**in and its brand name twin, Diaphin.
All in tidy white boxes, these drugs have been manufactured by Swiss pharmaceutical companies and dispensed – legally – under state contract since 1994.
Crossline staff say their clientele ranges from Zurich homeless to city bankers, who collect their seven-day he**in ration once a week. All drug costs are covered by Swiss public health, Crossline chief doctor Mehdi Safavi says, which is still cheaper than the alternative.
“People here are kept stable and we can catch many things early on,” he says. Patients remain functioning members of society, he adds, rather than falling through the cracks and ending up in an intensive care bed “that costs 5,000 Swiss francs [€5,400] a night”.
Abstinence is not a precondition for treatment here, though support is offered to anyone who chooses this route.
Three decades in, the Zurich model has helped foster a broad public understanding in Switzerland of addiction as an illness and not a lifestyle choice. Crossline nursing staff report seeing first-hand the positive effect of having such a stable and progressive system.
“One patient told me he used to only have money for co***ne,” said nurse Marcel, “but now he has found a hobby, flying drones, and goes on holiday twice a year. He told me: ‘I have a life again’.”
As Zurich adapts its lessons from the 1990s to new challenges, experts here say the key to tackling a drug problem – whether personal or at societal level – is acknowledging reality.
“Sometimes societies have to ... have a shock for change to happen,” says Safavi of Crossline. “The question is: do things really have to go that far?”
Speaking from Belfast, Shorter agrees. She is hopeful about growing recognition of how he**in-assisted treatment, as in Switzerland, lifts people out of the illegal drug economy with side effects that include often highly dangerous – or addictive – impurities.
“We have this problem. It doesn’t matter how we got here but what we want to do now,” she says.
“Zurich politicians and public decided: this cannot continue. They took risks, experimented and evolved a robust system over time.”
Back in the Platzspitz park, veteran drug policy campaigner André Seidenberg pauses on a bridge over the Limmat river. As he watches the water below, memories of the dark days past flash across his face.
“I knew many of those who died and they haunt me even now,” he says, tears in his eyes. “It still makes me furious. Above all at how today, once more, we seem to just shrug and accept drug deaths as unavoidable.”

Zurich’s Radical Response to Europe’s Drug Crisis The Irish Times July 2026

08/09/2026

07/28/2026

“DULF Founders’ Drug Law Charter Challenge Ends”
“Compassion club co-founders Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum will wait months to learn if they face prison.”
Michelle Gamage July 27, 2026
The Tyee Vancouver BC
“The Drug User Liberation Front’s constitutional challenge wrapped up Friday, but co-founders Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum won’t know until next year whether their efforts to save lives will land them in jail.
They were in B.C. Supreme Court arguing that the law that convicted them each of three counts of trafficking m**hamphetamine, co***ne and he**in was unconstitutional.
Their lawyers, Tim Dickson, Stephanie Dickson and Kaelan Unrau, called 14 witnesses to lay out a case that by criminalizing DULF’s compassion club the government violated Section 7 and Section 15 of its members’ Charter rights.
Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits the state from depriving people of their rights to life, liberty and security of the person, and Section 15 says all people must be treated equally and have equal protection and benefit from the law.
DULF’s lawyers said Canadian drug laws are mostly fair but fail to protect people amidst the toxic drug crisis that has killed more than 19,760 British Columbians since January 2014, according to the BC Coroners Service.
Canadian drug laws are laid out in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Food and Drugs Act.
The federal health minister can grant exemptions under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow people to violate the legislation in extraordinary cases.
DULF’s constitutional challenge hinges on how accessible exemptions under Section 56 actually are.
Their lawyers argued exemptions are “illusory” and not practically available, which means, they say, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act violates Charter rights.
Crown counsel disagreed and argued the safety valve is available.
The case was heard by Justice Catherine Murray
A compassion club for m**h, co***ne and he**in
Nyx and Kalicum were running a compassion club in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where they bought m**h, co***ne and he**in from the dark web, rigorously tested the drugs for potency and purity, labelled the drugs and sold them at cost to 47 compassion club members.
They were open about what they were doing, regularly speaking with police, all three levels of government and media about the need for this service.
They had tacit support from the Vancouver Police Department and the City of Vancouver, and more-direct support from Vancouver Coastal Health, which provided funding for DULF to run its drug-checking service and a location to run an overdose prevention site.
DULF applied for a Section 56 exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act from Health Canada, asking for permission to buy and sell drugs for their compassion club, but were denied.
They went ahead and opened their compassion club anyway in August 2022.
On Oct. 25, 2023, Nyx and Kalicum were arrested by the Vancouver Police Department and each charged with three counts of trafficking under Section 5, Subsection 2, of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
A little over two years later, on Nov. 7, 2025, the pair were found guilty of possession for the purpose of trafficking by Murray.
Anyone charged with a criminal offence in Canada has the opportunity to challenge the law they’re accused of breaking as unconstitutional.
If Murray agrees the trafficking charges are unconstitutional, then the charges against Nyx and Kalicum will go away.
Laying out the case
Over the several weeks of the trial, heard over several months, DULF’s lawyers laid out the case that the government’s actions infringed on sections 7 and 15 of compassion club members’ Charter rights.
They first established that the government’s own experts agreed there was a need for compassion clubs where members could access tested or regulated alternatives to street drugs without a prescription from a doctor. This is called a non-medical safer supply model.
When the government didn’t act, DULF stepped up. They tried to get permission for their compassion club but were denied, which criminalized their actions.
They opened a compassion club anyway that ran a non-medical safer supply model and generated a small amount of evidence that their compassion club was saving lives.
Because they had not been given a Section 56 exemption to the act, they were arrested and charged with trafficking, and were later found guilty. The compassion club was shut down, ending members’ access to the non-medical safer supply model. Members had no choice but to start using the unregulated supply again, which is extremely dangerous.
Therefore, DULF’s lawyers said, the government’s actions put members’ lives at risk. They also argued that because substance use disorder is a recognized disability, shutting down the compassion club was also specifically putting disabled people at risk of the unregulated drug supply.
DULF lawyer Tim Dickson said there were three main ways the compassion club was not able to access the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act Section 56 exemption.
First, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Food and Drugs Act are closely interwoven pieces of legislation, and a Section 56 exemption applies only to the former, which means DULF would have still been criminalized by the Food and Drugs Act, he said.
Second, the federal health minister would face strong backlash if they gave a compassion club permission to buy and sell m**h, co***ne and he**in, so it’s extremely unlikely a politician would ever actually grant an exemption, he said.
The governing Liberal party isn’t willing to take a strong stance on harm reduction and downloads the responsibility to Health Canada, which leaves the decision-making to a single minister, Dickson added.
Third, there is no way for a compassion club to get permission to source drugs under the Food and Drugs Act, he said.
In its exemption request to Health Canada, DULF proposed to buy diacetylmorphine, or pharmaceutical-grade he**in, from Fair Price Pharma, a non-profit pharmaceutical company.
But in order for Fair Price Pharma to sell drugs to DULF, it would have had to reapply to Health Canada for permission for its drug to be used in a non-medical safer supply model without a prescription, the court was told by Dr. Martin Schechter, founding director of the University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health and a founder of the pharmaceutical company.
Reapplying for permission would likely require a clinical trial, which could take up to a decade, cost millions of dollars and would require a control group of humans to continue using the unregulated drug supply while another had access to a pure, pharmaceutical alternative, Dickson said.
No ethics board in the world would approve that clinical trial, he added.
On the flip side of that, no illicit producer of drugs would willingly spend the time and money to conduct a clinical trial in order to be allowed to sell their drugs in Canada because they can simply sell to the unregulated market, Dickson said.
Therefore, no safety valve was accessible to DULF that would have given them permission to run a non-medical safer supply compassion club, he said.
Crown counsel Oren Bick disagreed. He said the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Food and Drugs Act are related but separate legislation. Therefore, the Food and Drugs Act is outside the scope of the constitutional challenge.
He also said the Food and Drugs Act does not technically block any drugs from being sold and that it is reasonable for the act to require drug manufacturers to prove the safety, efficacy and quality control of a new drug they want to bring to market.
DULF’s lawyers agreed the Food and Drugs Act is mostly fair but added that in the context of an unregulated drug crisis, som**hing needs to change. There is no incentive for a cartel manufacturing co***ne to spend millions of dollars on a clinical trial when they can continue to sell to the unregulated market.
Murray pushed back against Bick.
She told him the court case is not about whether or not the Food and Drugs Act would technically block a controlled substance such as co***ne from ever coming to market, but whether or not there is a current path for harm reduction initiatives like DULF’s compassion club to source regulated drugs in the midst of an ongoing toxic drug crisis.
She added that Bick’s stance, which stuck to the technical permissions of the legislation rather than looking at how it is “not responsive and not practical” to respond to the overdose crisis, was “fanciful.”
Bick also criticized the research DULF did to check the efficacy of their compassion club. The research, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal, found compassion club members were less likely to die from overdose while they were able to access this safer supply.
At the start of the trial Nyx acknowledged there were limitations to the study but said they did the best they could at the time.
Bick said a single limited study was not enough evidence to prove the compassion club was working and therefore shutting it down infringed on people’s Charter rights.
Murray seemed surprised by that argument and again pushed back.
“That’s the whole point of why we’re here,” she said. “They can’t get a good enough study so they can’t break through,” she said, adding, “All of your arguments are so circular.”
Murray said in court that a decision would likely come sometime in January.”
(Michelle Gamage is The Tyee’s health reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.)