A man prepares heroin to be injected at the Insite safe injection clinic in Vancouver in May, 2011.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
On Jan. 31, 2023, a “three-year experiment” on drug decriminalization began in British Columbia.
Specifically, Health Canada granted the province an exemption under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that allowed anyone over the age of 18 to possess up to 2.5 grams of illicit drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl, as well as cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, for personal use.
While the drugs were still illegal, people could use them in specific locations without fear of prosecution.
The idea was to reduce the stigma that comes with drug use and shift the response to substance misuse away from criminal justice and toward public health.
So, what’s happened since?
Fate of B.C.’s drug decriminalization pilot to be determined
As part of the exemption, regular reports were published. These reports contain a lot of data but not much information. A quick reading of the most recent offering reveals that, when all is said and done, not much has changed.
In the first year of decriminalization, drug possession seizures fell sharply, from 509 to 169 monthly, but they have since crept back up to 403 a month.
That’s largely because the law changed in response to open drug use. Initially, school and child-care premises, airports and motor vehicles were specified as places where drug use was not allowed.
In September, 2023, B.C. restricted drug use in playgrounds, skate parks and other public places used by children. In May, 2024, it banned all illicit drug use in all public places – limiting use to private residences and treatment centres.
Practically, the situation is now almost identical to pre-decriminalization days.
According to the most recent report, use of supervised-consumption sites is up. Use of opioid agonist treatment is down. So is drug-checking. Demand for take-home naloxone kits has fallen, too.
The best news is that overdose deaths are falling, from 2,589 in 2023 to 2,315 in 2024, and the 2025 total will almost certainly be lower still. But mortality (and morbidity) rates remain stubbornly high, with an average of 4.8 overdose deaths daily in the province.
Is the drop in fatal overdoses attributable to decriminalization?
Who knows? What we do know is that street drugs remain toxic, with new challenges springing up regularly, such as veterinary drugs like xylazine and medetomidine.
Extensive surveys of drug users reveal that “stigma has persisted” and that fewer than half of users “feel welcome” in outdoor public spaces. That is hardly surprising.
What has probably changed most markedly in the past three years is public opinion. Since decriminalization, open drug use and public disorder has grown markedly, from the main streets of small towns to Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside. Or at least that’s the perception.
The reality is that open drug use was commonplace before the decriminalization experiment, and it remains so.
But homelessness is more pervasive. People with severe mental illness living on the streets are more visible. Public perception is that crime is worse and the streets more violent. (Data on this are mixed.)
Decriminalization is getting a lot of the blame for this, though that is surely an oversimplification. It’s certainly not to blame for all our social woes, but it is an easy scapegoat.
Decriminalization is still good public policy. It makes no sense to jail people for having an illness like substance-use disorder, or because they want to get high for the pleasure of it, for that matter.
An estimated 225,000 people use illicit drugs in B.C. alone. We’re not going to jail our way out of this problem. But decriminalization of drug possession also shouldn’t result in a free-for-all, where people smoke crack and inject heroin on city streets, in parks and on buses.
That’s where the true failure has been – not recognizing that when we grant people rights, they also have obligations. The social disorder that has accompanied the decriminalization experiment is not an acceptable trade-off.
B.C. Premier David Eby recognized this in recent public comments, saying: “We are not going back to the old policy of decriminalized public drug use in British Columbia. It didn’t work and we ended that.”
But when the decriminalization experiment ends in a couple of weeks, what’s next?
That’s the key question that, so far, has no answer.
With more than 16,000 toxic drug deaths in B.C. since a public-health emergency was declared in 2016, there is clearly more that needs to be done, even if – as the decriminalization experiment showed – the result of making bold public-policy moves might have unintended consequences, and be politically unpalatable.