B.C. tosses trafficking convictions, tells Ottawa to rework drug legislation

VANCOUVER — A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has stayed trafficking convictions and ruled part of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is invalid after two activists were convicted of possessing drugs to sell to people in order to reduce the harms of toxic drugs.

Justice Catherine Murray ruled Tuesday that a section of the act is unconstitutional, tossing out convictions against Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx who founded the compassion club known as the Drug User Liberation Front.

Murray found the act infringes on the rights guaranteed under Sections 7 and 15 under the Charter, although she has suspended the invalidity finding for six months to give Parliament time to implement a plan that would allow for a non-medicalized safer supply program to operate.

Kalicum and Nyx were convicted of possession for the purposes of trafficking last year after buying pure drugs on the dark web, then selling them to the club’s members at cost.

They had sought a legal pathway from Health Canada to run such a program, but were never granted an exemption.

“This challenge is about the lack of ability to obtain an exemption,” the judge wrote.

Kalicum and Nyx found there was no such “pathway” to permit a non-medicalized safer supply program.

They were charged with possession for the purposes of trafficking and convicted in November 2025, but the judge put the convictions on hold to hear their constitutional challenge.

“After losing countless friends, colleagues, and neighbours to the crisis, they resolved to take action to address the problem of the unpredictability of the drug supply,” Murray’s ruling says. “Their mission was to save lives by offering a non-medicalized safe supply of drugs.”

Murray found that such a program is “urgently needed to save lives” in the face of the toxic drug crisis, with thousands of deaths since the British Columbia government declared a public health emergency in 2016.

The ruling said that running such a safer-supply program was precisely what the applicants were doing and that formed the basis of the criminal charges against them.

Kalicum and Nyx, the judge found, “have borne the burden of bringing a successful constitutional challenge, doing a public interest service at considerable cost to themselves.”

“I think you should be very proud of yourselves, and it’s people like you who make a difference and you just did. So, go do great things. I have no doubt that you will,” Murray told Kalicum and Nyx during the brief hearing on Tuesday.

Murray said the defect in the legislation needs to be addressed with some urgency.

“It has been over 11 years since the toxic drug crisis was declared a public health emergency. It remains an emergency,” her ruling said.

The compassion club reduced the harms associated with the toxic drug crisis and didn’t negatively impact the community or public safety, the decision said.

There is no legal source of drugs available for the non-medicalized safer supply program, it said.

It said the government should be given “full opportunity to craft its own response to the issues identified in this ruling.”

The existing legislation is capable of a range of responses that address the defects, including legislative changes and regulatory reform, Murray said in the decision.

Murray did not read her full judgment in court but concluded her remarks by lauding Kalicum and Nyx for the personal risks they took in their work.

Nyx declined to comment after the brief hearing, but Kalicum said outside court that he felt “excellent.”

“That’s all I think I’m going to say, but I think everybody felt really good,” he said.

Tim Dickson, one of their lawyers, said outside the courthouse in Vancouver that the ruling was a “vindication of what DULF was doing.”

“The court found specifically that their compassion club did save lives. It reduced the risk of overdose. It did not cause negative impacts on society at large. It was a beneficial, positive, evidence-based program that they conducted, and that they were arrested and prosecuted for implementing,” he said.

He said the case was about the federal and provincial governments “refusal to implement” a life-saving measure, and how federal law “blocks any effort.”

He said Kalicum and Nyx ran the program with no profit or benefit to themselves and “always with the sole intention of trying to reduce the terrible rate of death in this crisis.”

“This case should never have been brought to trial. They never should have been prosecuted,” Dickson said.

He told reporters that the Crown has 30 days to appeal the ruling.

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Murray’s ruling.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2026.