Canada’s ‘Pacific Province’ Wages a Deadly War on Drugs

Two drug users sit at the edge of a parking lot in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area that sees a particularly high incidence of drug-related deaths. Photo courtesy of Ted McGrath.

At least 2,511 individuals suffered drug-related deaths in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) last year—an average of seven deaths per day. Despite having declared drug overdoses a public health emergency as early as 2016, BC continues to grapple with an unforgiving crisis: over 14,000 people in the province have lost their lives to overdose since 2016, mostly from fentanyl.

BC’s most recent drug policy stands to aggravate this crisis. On April 26, 2024, British Columbia Premier David Eby announced that the province would prematurely terminate a pilot decriminalization program that had been scheduled to last from January 2023 to January 2026. The pilot program allowed adults to carry and use up to 2.5 grams combined of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, except near schools and airports. As of May 7, 2024, BC’s new policy recriminalizes the use of hard drugs in all public spaces, equipping law enforcement officers to seize drugs or make arrests when necessary.

The fundamental problem with this policy reversal lies in its inconsistency. While it recriminalizes the use of hard drugs in public spaces, it does not limit drug use in private spaces such as private residences. Alarmingly, data from the BC Coroners Service shows that from 2016 to 2022, the majority of drug-related deaths occurred in private residences. This partial recriminalization incentivizes drug users to return to the shadows, isolating them from loved ones and professionals who could provide aid in the event of an overdose in public. 

BC’s recriminalization of hard drugs also stands to worsen other problems associated with addiction. Labeling drug users as criminals stigmatizes them, discouraging them from coming forward to seek treatment. Having a criminal record as a result of drug use can also damage users’ future employment and housing prospects. In Canada, this particularly endangers Indigenous people and people of color, who disproportionately shoulder the country’s drug overdose crisis. 

In this case, the Legislative Assembly of BC had already failed to pass the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act, which would have recriminalized the use of drugs near certain public spaces including playgrounds, sports fields, beaches, parks, and bus stops. In December 2023, following a legal challenge from the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, BC Supreme Court Justice Christopher Hinkson issued an injunction against the Act on the grounds that it would result in “irreparable harm” were it to go into effect. As a result, the Legislative Assembly of BC was only able to realize its recriminalization plans by requesting that Health Canada act directly. Eventually, Health Canada revoked the three-year exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act it had granted to BC, which had allowed the province to implement its pilot program experimenting with decriminalizing hard drug possession and use. 

It is true that BC’s decriminalization program had been generating mixed results. On the one hand, residents were launching fewer complaints about public drug use. On the other hand, drug-related deaths in the province increased by 5% in 2023 compared to the previous year. However, legislators did not mean for the policy of decriminalization to work in isolation; its limitations stemmed from a lack of necessary supporting measures. BC’s approach to decriminalization had focused on harm reduction, a public health approach aimed at mitigating danger for those already using or addicted to substances. Under this approach, BC constructed an extensive ‘safer supply’ program, which allows individuals at high risk of opioid overdose to receive pharmaceutical-grade opioids prescribed by medical professionals. The intention behind safer supply is to offer an alternative supply of hard drugs, more regulated than what one might find from the underground market. Nevertheless, critics have condemned the program for introducing a greater quantity of dangerous drugs into circulation. 

The reality is that while safer supply programs may have reduced mortalities among those already at risk of overdose, the province needed to simultaneously invest more in services to wean others off of drug usage. A truly comprehensive strategy requires investing more in shelters, rehabilitation services, and mental support programs in order to address the issue of addiction at its root. Such efforts have proven unpopular among taxpayers due to the perception that rehabilitating individuals at risk of relapsing is an inefficient use of resources, leading to a gap in long-term treatments for those wishing to access addiction support services. Yet decriminalization was not meant to work instantaneously. As Brittany Graham, executive director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, argues, the success of decriminalization relies on simultaneously normalizing harm reduction and rehabilitation programs such that people are willing to help, rather than stigmatize, drug users. This change may take time. But in a province where toxic drug use has become the leading cause of death for people ages 10–59, merely arresting the problem away is not a promising solution. 

Drug policy is, no doubt, incredibly complex. However, one thing is clear: British Columbia’s drug policy shift is a step in the wrong direction. BC’s premature abandonment of its historic pilot program mandates those experiencing addiction to fight their own battles, painful as they may be, as long as they do so away from the public eye. The province needs decriminalization to work in tandem with harm reduction and rehabilitation programs to move itself back on track.

Angela Lu (GS ’27) is a staff writer from Vancouver, Canada. She is interested in politics, economics, and Asia-Pacific studies and can be reached at lu.angela@columbia.edu.