Jeremy Kalicum, one of the operators of the Drug User Liberation Front, outside a courthouse in B.C., in November, 2025.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has struck down a provision in Canada’s federal drug law that prohibits possession for the purposes of trafficking, ruling that it violates the Charter rights of people who use drugs by preventing access to safer alternatives to toxic street drugs.
The Tuesday ruling was in response to a constitutional challenge by Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx, who were convicted of trafficking for operating a compassion club in Vancouver that provided drug users with such unadulterated alternatives for more than a year.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray declared Section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) to be “of no force or effect,” finding that it infringes on sections 7 and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantee the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and equal protection under the law.
While the trafficking section of the law was declared invalid, Justice Murray suspended that declaration for six months to allow for legislative amendments. She also stayed the pair’s convictions.
The federal Public Prosecution Service of Canada has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling. Prosecutors are reviewing the judgment and assessing “any potential next steps,” the agency’s spokeswoman Alessia Bongiovanni said.
B.C. man who bought dark web drugs for compassion club says he wanted to reduce overdoses
People in the courtroom gallery cried as the judge read her findings and addressed Mr. Kalicum and Ms. Nyx directly.
“I applaud you for what you’ve done,” Justice Murray said. “I think you should be very proud of yourselves, and it’s people like you who make a difference. And you just did.”
For more than a year, the compassion club founders Mr. Kalicum and Ms. Nyx operated as the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), buying illicit heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine from the dark web and testing the products at university labs for fentanyl and other impurities. They then sold the drugs at cost to their group’s 43 members.
At the heart of the ruling is what Justice Murray found to be a fundamental contradiction in Canada’s drug laws: A prohibition intended to protect public health and safety can also criminalize actions that can reduce the risk of overdose. But a critic of B.C.’s approach to drug use said the decision fails to account for broader societal harms and called the judge’s praise of the pair “insulting” to police combating the criminal organizations behind the illicit drug trade.
During a multiweek trial and constitutional challenge that unfolded over nine months, the court heard that Mr. Kalicum and Ms. Nyx regularly engaged with top health, government and police officials as they pursued legal pathways to operate the club.
Vancouver’s Drug User Liberation Front organizers challenging Canada’s drug laws
Vancouver Coastal Health officials provided letters of support as they applied to Health Canada for an exemption from drug laws required to operate. Mr. Kalicum regularly e-mailed top police brass with updates.
The court also got a window into the pair’s motivations; the two have responded to more than 100 overdoses and described panic and distress from having watched friends and co-workers die from drugs.
Health Canada denied their application in April, 2022, saying that acquiring drugs from the dark web was “not a viable option.” Jennifer Saxe, director-general of the controlled substances directorate, said the department “is committed to supporting efforts to expand access to a safer supply” nonetheless, and conveyed appreciation for the pair’s “willingness to think and act creatively in search of new solutions.”
Despite the denial, DULF began openly operating the compassion club in August, 2022, out of a Vancouver storefront provided by B.C.’s Ministry of Health. The local health authority provided DULF with up to $200,000 in annual funding for drug-checking and overdose prevention services.
The tides turned in September, 2023, when a magazine article on the pair ignited what Justice Murray called “a maelstrom of activity.” Members of the political opposition rebuked the B.C. NDP for supporting the illegal activity, successfully putting pressure on officials to end funding and the site lease.
In October, 2023, Vancouver Police raided the site and arrested Mr. Kalicum and Ms. Nyx. They were each charged with three counts of possession for the purposes of trafficking and found guilty in November, 2025.
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Lawyers Stephanie and Tim Dickson, the married co-counsel for DULF, called 14 witnesses, including five experts, who testified to the causes of the toxic drug crisis, the inadequacy of the current response, the efficacy and limitations of existing prescribed alternatives programs, and the urgent need for expanded access.
In her ruling, Justice Murray said there are “no legally and practically available safety valves in the CDSA to support the implementation of a non-medicalized safer supply program,” which she said is “urgently needed to save lives.” She also found that the compassion club “reduced the harms associated with the toxic drug crisis and did not negatively impact the community or public safety.”
Mr. Dickson called the judgment a vindication.
“This case is about the federal and provincial governments’ refusal to implement that life-saving measure, and it is also about how the federal legislation effectively blocks any effort to implement that measure,” he said outside the courthouse.
CentreBC Leader Elenore Sturko, who as the former BC United addiction critic in 2023 called for an investigation into the public funding of DULF, called the ruling worrisome. She argued that Justice Murray gave insufficient weight to the broader harms of the program, including its funding of criminal organizations through dark-web drug purchases.
Ms. Sturko, a former RCMP officer, supports providing pharmaceutical alternatives to illicit drugs through medically supervised programs, but rejects models that make them available outside of a health care setting.
She said governments should focus on recovery-oriented systems of care and urged Ottawa to appeal the decision.
“British Columbians have resoundingly said that they do not think that the answer to our drug crisis is more drugs,” she said.
John Conroy is a Vancouver-area lawyer who was involved in successful challenges at the Supreme Court against parts of the federal drug law, first in 2011 in the Insite case over supervised drug injection and then in 2015 in the Smith case over medical marijuana. The top court, in both cases, ruled parts of the drug legislation violated Section 7 of the Charter, similar to Tuesday’s ruling.
“This is very good news,” Mr. Conroy said of the latest judgment. “It is going to be interesting to see what the government does to rectify the unconstitutionality.”
In the Insite case, the Supreme Court ordered Ottawa to allow the facility to keep operating. In the medical marijuana case, the court said the government had to provide reasonable access for patients for possession and use of cannabis through a health care practitioner.
Editor’s note: The headline on this story has been corrected to state that the ruling was made by a B.C. Supreme Court judge. The story has also been corrected to refer to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, not the Canadian Drugs and Substances Act, as previously published.