Key Parts of Canada’s Drug Laws Found Unconstitutional as Judge throws out Charges Against Founders of Vancouver ‘Compassion Club’

Many in the crowd that had gathered for the verdict in Drug User Liberation Front’s constitutional challenge at BC Supreme Court smiled through tears as Justice Catherine Murray read a short excerpt of her ruling, which found that Section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) violates DULF members’ right to life and security of the person and right to equality on the ground of disability, in this case, substance use disorder.

In finding that the CDSA’s prohibition on the possession of drugs for the purposes of trafficking violates Charter rights, Justice Murray declared those sections invalid. The declaration of invalidity is suspended for six months to provide the legislature an opportunity to amend the CDSA.

The crown has thirty days to file a notice of appeal.

DULF was founded in 2020 and began operating a non-profit, non-medicalized and low-barrier compassion club in 2022, which sold drugs that had been tested at cost to a membership of known drug users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. 

In November 2025, DULF co-founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx were found guilty of three counts of drug trafficking each, one for each of the substances made available through the compassion club. 

However, their convictions were suspended pending the decision of the Charter challenge, which was launched later that month. With their charges now stayed, neither will go to jail unless the crown decides to appeal.

Addressing media outside the courthouse after the ruling, DULF lawyer Tim Dickson called Justice Murray’s judgement “a vindication of what DULF was doing.”

DULF Lawyers outside of the BC Courthouse. Image: Emma Arkell

“It was a beneficial, positive, evidence-based program that they conducted, and that they were arrested and prosecuted for implementing,” said Dickson.

DULF was involved in several peer-reviewed academic studies, along with researchers from the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, to demonstrate the efficacy of the compassion club model in reducing overdose deaths. Notably, none of the club’s members overdosed while using drugs from DULF.

The compassion club operated from August 2022 to October 2023, when it was shut down and raided by police following an article in the Economist that led to political backlash against DULF from both provincial and federal politicians.

All of the relevant authorities — Vancouver Police Department (VPD), Health Canada, Vancouver Coastal Health, and BC’s Ministry of Health — were informed of DULF’s activities from the beginning. DULF had even received $200,000 in funding from Vancouver Coastal Health, all of which was used to cover the costs of drug checking and harm reduction supplies. Only donations from the public were used to buy drugs.

Justice Murray began her ruling by finding that a non-medicalized safer supply program is “urgently needed to save lives,” and that at the same time, there is no legal source of drugs available for such a program, or any legal avenues available to create such a program. 

Further, she found that the DULF compassion club “reduced the harms associated with the toxic drug crisis and did not negatively impact the community or public safety.”

Given the unconstitutionality of those sections of the CDSA, Justice Murray threw out the drug trafficking charges against Kalicum and Nyx.

“This case is about the federal and provincial government’s refusal to implement that life-saving measure, and it is also about how the federal legislation effectively blocks any effort to implement that measure,” said Dickson.

Dickson added that drug policy “should not rely on people as courageous as Miss Nyx and Mr. Kalicum.”

Recent reporting has uncovered that the VPD inspector who at one time enthusiastically worked with DULF was the same person to approve an investigation into the group once political tides had turned. 

Overdose deaths started to rise in 2015 as fentanyl became more common in the drug supply. The Public Health Agency of Canada began tracking drug toxicity deaths the following year.

Justice Murray ended her ruling by addressing DULF’s founders directly, saying they did the public interest a service “at considerable personal cost.”

“You selflessly put yourselves to the side for this cost, and it’s something that most people wouldn’t do,” said Justice Murray. “I applaud you for what you’ve done. I think you should be very proud of yourselves, and it’s people like you who make a difference.”

Almost 17,000 people have died from drug toxicity in BC. Between January 2016 and March 2026, 57,509 people died from opioid toxicity in Canada.