B.C. Minister of Health Josie Osborne says the province's drug decriminalization pilot 'hasn’t delivered the results that we hoped for.'CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
British Columbia is ending its three-year experiment in decriminalizing personal possession of illicit drugs, a first-in-Canada pilot program that began with broad support from politicians and police but came to be blamed for mounting concern about public drug use and street disorder.
Health Minister Josie Osborne said Wednesday that her government would not seek a renewal of the Health Canada exemption from federal drug laws that permitted the pilot project.
“Our intention was clear: to make it easier for people who are struggling with addiction to come forward and seek help,” Ms. Osborne told a news conference in Victoria.
“From the beginning, this pilot was designed as a time-limited trial with ongoing monitoring built in so we could understand what was working, what wasn’t, and where changes were needed. However, the pilot hasn’t delivered the results that we hoped for.” She did not say exactly how the policy had fallen short.
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Health Canada granted B.C. an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to decriminalize personal possession of up to a total of 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA for people 18 years and older. The exemption came into effect on Jan. 31, 2023, and expires at the end of this month.
In moving to decriminalize, provincial and federal officials said at the time that removing criminal penalties for personal drug possession would lessen the stigma of addiction, steer people away from the justice system toward health and social services and ultimately help save lives.
However, some observers have said that those early remarks oversold the policy change, setting it up for failure.
Complaints soon mounted over public drug use – an issue that police said they had limited ability to respond to under decriminalization, which initially came with few limits on where drugs could be consumed.
The opposition B.C. Conservatives highlighted stories of drug paraphernalia being found at parks, beaches and playgrounds, all of which were not explicitly restricted for drug consumption under the original iteration of the policy.
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The experiment was watched closely elsewhere in the country, including in Toronto, which sought its own decriminalization program but was denied a federal exemption as criticism of B.C.’s pilot project intensified. It was also scrutinized in Alberta, which has taken a radically different approach to mitigating drug harms that focuses on treatment in addiction centres.
B.C. made successive amendments restricting where the policy would apply, its latest changes effectively only permitting personal drug possession inside private residences and some shelters.
Ms. Osborne was asked several times Wednesday to provide specific outcomes that the province hoped to see but didn’t.
“Ultimately, we were not seeing results in the way of a huge increase in self-referral to care, an increase in the use of certain kinds of services and the public awareness and understanding that’s necessary, creating all the conditions for success,” she said.
The province will prepare a final report synthesizing the various data submitted to Health Canada after the conclusion of the program, she said.
Ms. Osborne acknowledged that complaints about public drug use, and feelings about public safety, factored into the decision to end the pilot.
Outside assessments of B.C.’s drug policy have been mixed.
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A study by researchers at Dalhousie University and the Bruyère Health Research Institute, published April, 2025, in the journal JAMA, found that while decriminalization was associated with marked reductions in police-reported, drug-possession incidents, “the findings do not support decriminalization in isolation as an effective policy at reducing drug-overdose harms.”
But Kora DeBeck, a professor at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University, expressed frustration at the notion that decriminalization had “failed,” citing data that showed the policy was doing what it was intended to do.
One study she co-authored, published in the December edition of the International Journal of Drug Policy, found that young, street-involved drug users in Vancouver reported fewer policing-related barriers to accessing harm-reduction services under decriminalization. Another, published in the same edition of the journal, found that the policy led to a significant reduction in criminal-justice encounters for drug possession.
Dr. DeBeck said drug decriminalization is a “very limited intervention” and that objectives around stigma reduction and getting more people into treatment were oversold.
“The only thing it can really do is take away some of the well-documented, known harms of criminalization, and of interactions between police and people who use drugs,” she said.
“It wasn’t, and has never been, set up to be a comprehensive approach to managing the challenges of addiction and substance use and the toxic-drug supply. In that context, we need housing, we need services, and we need regulated alternatives to the toxic-drug supply.”
Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry, who has called for drug decriminalization since 2019, said she was disappointed but not surprised by the decision.
“I believed, and I still believe, that it’s a sound policy,” she told The Globe and Mail on Wednesday. “But the implementation has been fraught. It’s become a touchstone political issue, which is very upsetting.”
Dr. Henry said the policy was intended to break cycles of criminal recidivism as a result of drug addiction, and support those who are afraid to ask for help. She said public messaging was challenging, noting that the policy was brought in on the heels of a municipal election in which crime and safety featured prominently.
“One of the things that we hoped was that people would feel more comfortable accessing social services, that referrals from a police officer to an appropriate social service or counselling would be something that would be beneficial for many people,” Dr. Henry said. “And I think it is, but those things are really difficult to measure.”