Canada’s Drug Laws Face Challenge from Founders of Vancouver Compassion Club

The co-founders of a compassion club trying to legally offer an alternative to the deadly street-drug supply in Vancouver testified Monday that they were denied an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to legally buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies, unless they first had a company lined up to sell the drugs to them.

But Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) founders Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum couldn’t get a company to sell to them without first having the exemption from Health Canada in hand.

This is the administrative catch-22 Kalicum described to a court on Monday. He explained that these impossible regulatory conditions made the pair turn to the dark web to source heroin, meth and cocaine, which they then tested, packaged and sold at cost to DULF’s 47 members, who were already using street drugs and therefore at risk of dying.

“As we were writing this proposal [for the exemption], we knew there would be very significant barriers,” Kalicum testified. “This is something that needed bureaucratic buy-in to figure it out. Nobody was able to figure this out with us.”

• Read more: Founders of Groundbreaking Vancouver Compassion Club Found Guilty of Drug Trafficking

Ultimately, the way that DULF procured and distributed these drugs — from the dark web — was technically illegal. That’s what led to Justice Catherine Murray finding Kalicum and Nyx guilty of drug trafficking two weeks ago, in a ruling that was otherwise sympathetic, with Murray repeatedly pointing out evidence that showed DULF saved lives.

This week, Kalicum and Nyx launched their constitutional challenge to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in response to their criminal verdicts.

They are now asking Justice Murray to either grant a stay of proceeding on their drug charges, or an exemption as a result of their argument that shutting down DULF infringed on its members’ Section 7 right to life and security of the person under the Charter, as well as their Section 15 right to equality on the grounds of disability — with substance-use disorder being considered a disability.

During opening statements, one of DULF’s lawyers, Tim Dickson, said both Kalicum and Nyx would be testifying in this trial, as will almost a dozen other experts, including former BC chief coroner Lisa Lapointe and former BC deputy provincial health officer Dr. Brian Emerson.

Nyx and Kalicum started DULF in 2020 to address the growing toxic-drug crisis, a public health emergency in BC that has claimed over 18,600 lives in the last decade.

Their convictions on Nov. 7 have been suspended until a decision is reached on the constitutional challenge.

‘Like trying to bail out a boat with a thimble’

While Kalicum was taking the stand at the Vancouver Law Courts, recounting all the ways he and Nyx informed every relevant authority — from Vancouver Police to the provincial health ministry, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority to Health Canada — about their plans each step of the way, BC Premier David Eby was in Victoria telling another story.

Asked about DULF at a press conference on Monday, Eby said he supports the prosecution and conviction of Nyx and Kalicum.

“When we learned that this organization was engaged in drug trafficking, we directed Vancouver Coastal Health to immediately terminate the funding,” he said, referring to an agreement between VCH and DULF in which the latter received $200,000 in 2022 to run drug-checking and harm-reduction services.

As Justice Murray pointed out during the verdict, DULF used the government funding for only drug-checking and harm reduction, while Nyx and Kalicum have specified they bought the drugs using public donations. Eby made no mention of this.

• Read more: The BC United Party Claims BC’s Government Is Funding Drug Dealers. No, Actually They Are Not.

Taking the stand on Monday, Kalicum shared his background as an academic with a master’s degree in public health and, prior to that, as a chemistry and biology undergraduate student who worked with harm-reduction organizations in Nanaimo and Vancouver. He also shared his personal reasons for getting involved.

“My family is one that is deeply impacted by the toxic drug crisis and addiction,” he said. “Watching my brother struggle with addiction and being the person who had to observe when my brother would experience harm including overdose is what… made me look into it and figure out what’s really going on here.”

He spent the summers of 2017 and 2018, when the toxic drug crisis was at its deadliest, in the alleys of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, horrified at the reality that the people whose lives he was working to save could end up dead if they used by themselves the next time.

“People were laying in puddles, and there’s syringes and glass on the ground, and you’re just trying to do the best you can and respond, but it’s like you’re trying to bail out a boat with a thimble,” Kalicum said.

“You feel lost and powerless, because you are.”

The trial is expected to last at least three weeks, with a decision to be delivered in the new year.