Ottawa agrees to BC request to recriminalize public drug use

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Federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks agreed to BC’s request to recriminalize public drug use.

Premier David Eby announced on April 26 that the province had submitted an urgent request to Health Canada to amend British Columbia’s exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The federal government gave BC what it wanted, meaning police now have the power to intervene when they detect illicit drug use in public spaces, including hospitals, bus stops and parks.

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“This is a health crisis, not a criminal one,” Saks told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday. “That said, communities must be safe. “People need to have confidence in it in their own communities to be able to move freely and feel comfortable.”

People will continue to be allowed to use drugs in private homes or places where someone is legally sheltered and at overdose prevention sites and places with drug control services. However, harm reduction advocates have said there are not enough overdose prevention sites across the province and many of them do not allow snorting of drugs, which has become the preferred method of consumption.

It was not immediately clear when the change would take effect.

Eby said in April that the changes are necessary to ensure police have the tools to combat problematic drug use that puts the public at risk.

The radical shift in decriminalization comes after weeks of concerns about drug use in hospitals that the British Columbia Nurses Union says puts its members at risk of exposure to toxic drugs.

Fiona Wilson, deputy chief of the Vancouver Police Department and president of the BC Police Chiefs Association, told a House of Commons Health committee last month that the BC NDP’s decriminalization program has tied the hands of the police to respond to problematic drug use both in public and in hospitals.

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Last fall, the BC NDP passed the Restriction of Public Use of Illegal Substances Act in an attempt to crack down on public drug use, but it has been blocked by the BC Supreme Court pending a challenge constitutional.

BC’s appeal to the federal government led to a week of intense debate in the House of Commons over whether the decriminalization experiment should be scrapped entirely.

Last week, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was expelled from the House of Commons after he refused to apologize for a statement calling decriminalization a “crazy policy by a crazy prime minister.”

Poilievre said BC’s decriminalization experiment has been driven by “radical activists, bureaucrats and pharmacists” and accused those groups of profiting from the opioid crisis. BC United and BC Conservatives have also called for the decriminalization project to be abandoned.

Saks said she is frustrated to see the Opposition engaging in “dehumanizing” rhetoric that further stigmatizes people who use drugs.

On January 31, 2023, British Columbia became the first province to decriminalize possession of 2.5 grams or less of some drugs, including heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine. The province required an exemption from Health Canada to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for the three-year pilot project.

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However, critics of decriminalization say that, a year into the experiment, it has not been effective in stemming the tide of drug deaths.

Data from the BC Coroners Service shows that 2,511 people died from toxic illegal drugs in 2023, an average of seven people per day. It is the highest number since a public health emergency was declared in 2016.

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