By: Olivia Sherman, Peak Associate

In January 2026, the BC government announced their drug decriminalization policy “has not delivered the results we hoped for” and that the province would not seek renewal from the federal government. The three-year pilot program, an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), began in 2023 and allowed adults over 18 to carry a cumulative 2.5 grams of illicit drugs, such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids, without police confiscation or seizures. As drug deaths increased through the province, it was intended to treat substance use and addiction as a health issue and not a criminal one. With the policy repealed, confiscations and arrests for drug-related charges for personal use have resumed in BC starting January 30. 

BC Premier David Eby stated that the policy “didn’t work and we ended that.” However, Dr. Kora DeBeck, distinguished professor of drug policy and substance use at SFU, told The Peak the program “accomplished what it was set out to do,” which was to address, “that criminalizing people who use drugs is a real failure.”

Dr. Kennedy Stewart, professor of public policy at SFU, told The Peak that, in his term as mayor of the City of Vancouver, he would receive weekly emails noting how many people had died in the city of toxic drugs that week. He added, “That’s really what prompted me to have an overdose task force to pursue decriminalization.” Since it was declared a public health emergency in 2016, the toxic drug crisis has claimed over 16,000 lives. It’s important to note that Indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted by substance use. The intergenerational trauma of settler colonialism via institutions like residential schools and the foster care system are partly responsible for Indigenous people dying from toxic drugs 5.4 times more than other BC residents. 

According to Stewart, the drug decriminalization program was not intended to address the toxic drug crisis in the province, but was a tool to allow people leeway to access services judgment-free. Decriminalization “was never intended to fix the entire problem,” he explained, saying the province understood “that it was just going to make a small difference.” He said, when drugs are criminalized, people who use drugs may not seek the help they need in fear of retaliation, arrest, or drug confiscation. This necessary help can include rehabilitation services or more dire medical attention, as well as reluctance to visit drug testing services at the risk of their own safety from toxic and tampered drugs. Since decriminalization, BC has seen an increase in utilization of overdose prevention sites and supervised consumption sites, as well as drug checking services. 

Within the first year of the policy, several amendments were made, which Stewart says reduced the potential for the policy to save lives. Bill 34 prohibited consumption of drugs in public. Shortly after, it was amended to restrict drug use to legal consumption sites and overdose prevention sites, as well as people’s own residences and legal shelters. The Harm Reduction Nurses Association filed an injunction arguing the Bill would lead to more people using drugs alone and in private, which poses a greater risk for overdose. Bill 34 was repealed a year later.

In the context of Vancouver’s ongoing housing crisis, DeBeck noted that many supportive housing facilities are small, have harsh restrictions on guests within units, and often prohibit drug use. Homelessness and the toxic drug crisis are what lead to more public drug use and street disorder like mental health crises, crime, and people sheltering on streets. Debeck noted that despite this narrative that drug decriminalization caused “street disorder,” there is no evidence to confirm this. DeBeck raised concerns about an increased police presence on not just individuals who use drugs, but surrounding communities. “When people have their drugs seized, they’re quite likely to go and commit crime to raise funds to replace their drugs,” she said

“Policing doesn’t stop the trajectory of drug use. It doesn’t stop the trajectory of addiction.”

— Kora Debeck, distinguished professor of drug policy and substance use at SFU

Stewart suggested the policy was reversed due to widespread political pressure following that visibility, and “politicians capitalizing on misery for political gain, which is totally shameful.” 

Stewart, who carried the drug decriminalization policy to the federal government in 2018 noted the province saw a decline in a number of arrests for possession offences in the first year of decriminalization. With the policy repealed by January 30, the BC RCMP claims to maintain “a measured approach” to enforcement efforts against offences to the CDSA and is committed to “working with our partners to find solutions” to mental health and addiction issues. “They caved in to the opposition’s demands and the misinformation that’s been spread,” he continued. “Science really lost to fear.” 

“Police have always been a very poor tool for addressing street disorder and public drug use and homelessness,” DeBeck said. “Those are not issues that we can arrest our way out of. We can’t ticket our way out of them. These are very systemic, structural problems. In the long-term, the key really is housing, making sure people have alternative spaces to be, making sure they have homes, making sure they have other places to be right now.” Stewart added, “Innovation has never come from the RCMP, it has always come from independent police services,” such as safer supply.

Solutions to Vancouver’s drug crisis can’t work independently of each other, as factors such as increasing homelessness, mental health concerns, and toxic drugs exacerbate the substance use and overdose crisis. DeBeck explained that added sedatives in drugs that are circulated in BC often have a “destabilizing effect” on people which strains “their ability to engage with health services, their ability to get housing, to maintain housing, to just function and take care of themselves.” 

Alongside expanded resources and phone lines for help services, BC is also expanding involuntary care in order to provide care to those “so unwell they can’t make decisions about their own safety,” announced Eby. However, drug policy scholars like DeBeck and Stewart say that involuntary care does more harm than good, especially to marginalized groups with histories of institutionalization and incarceration. “As a scientist, I am certainly incredibly opposed to it as a policy,” said Debeck, concerned that the threat of involuntary care will deter people from seeking and receiving necessary help. She also referenced how 300 nurses have signed a petition opposed to the NDP’s expansion of involuntary care. As Thea Sheridan-Jonah, a member of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, told Global News, “involuntary treatment is a traumatic experience that increases someone’s overdose risk and does not support long-term recovery or mental health.”

“I have spent time with people in involuntary care and it’s a pretty horrendous experience,” Stewart elaborates. “You’re restrained, often given treatments against your will. 

“The province really isn’t giving any solutions and just seem content to watch the bodies pile up. And that’s not what a responsible government does.” Stewart claimed this is considered a “state failure.” He added

“If the government can’t solve this problem, this current crop of politicians aren’t up to the job.”

— Dr. Kennedy Stewart, professor of public policy at SFU and former Vancouver mayor

“And yet, today, one person will die in Vancouver and six people across the province will die. That’s the reality we’re in.”