Drug user advocates say B.C.’s decriminalization proposal falls short amid ongoing emergency

Advocates say B.C.’s move to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs will leave too many behind in the midst of a public health emergency that has lasted over five years, and killed thousands.

The province is seeking an exemption from Health Canada under the Controlled Substances Act, which would remove criminal penalties for possession of up to 4.5 grams of illicit drugs.

While the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users has been fighting for decriminalization for decades, the province’s proposal isn’t being celebrated. The key criticisms from the group are that the threshold is too low, that it continues to criminalize those under 19, and that there is mention of police having a role to play by offering referrals to health and social services.

RELATED: B.C. pushes to decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs

Garth Mullins attended his first meeting on decriminalization in 1998.

“So many bad things have happened in that time and so many people have died. I don’t know if I’d call it patience, But when you don’t have the power, you have no choice right? You just have to wait,” he says.

“I feel a little disappointed. I was looking forward to all of us having a good news day together and I wish that could have happened. It’s hard because I don’t want to leave anybody behind. We’ve all already lost so many people. I just can’t stomach it.”

Spoke with Brittany Graham with @VANDUpeople. She says the application is a good step forward, but it’s not a big enough one. She says while drug user advocates were consulted, they all urged province to make possession amounts larger than 4.5g.

— Lasia Kretzel (@rhymeswpretzel) November 1, 2021

Mullins and VANDU say the addition of one word into the proposal made it impossible to wholeheartedly support — that word was “cumulative.” The framework proposed would allow possession of opioids (including heroin and fentanyl), powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine. But the threshold means 4.5 grams is the combined total allowed.

“We did spend lot of time working on this with the province. I thought we were all going to be standing up there together, and then they lowered those thresholds so that half of our members would still be criminalized,” Mullins said, noting people who consume more than the allowed amount in a day or who use multiple drugs will not benefit.

‘Those people are still criminals to us.’ That’s what they’re saying. It’s hard for us, it’s hard for us to feel happy about that.”

RELATED: B.C. coroner wants federal leaders to address, take action on toxic drug deaths

Brittany Graham, the acting executive director of VANDU, says people who live in rural or remote areas will also struggle under the proposed model.

“VANDU is very much a ‘Nothing about us without us’ organization, and so we’ve been really pushing during this decriminalization process to ensure that these policies reflect the lived experience of people who are currently using drugs,” she says.

“When we’re thinking about what decriminalization could look like, for the communities that we’re talking about — the only people who truly have something at stake here are people who use drugs.”

Police also unhappy with threshold 

Graham and Mullins say the decision to drop the word cumulative from the proposal came at the last minute, and goes against what drug user advocates proposed, with Gramham saying the only participants at the roundtable pushing for lower limits were from law enforcement.

“It seems the people who should be talking about this are the people who use substances because it’s their lives that will be affected, not the police. Their jobs will change, obviously, but that’s something that they can work through. Being criminalized for the rest of your life, or possibly dying because of the policies that are created, that’s something people can’t live with.”

However, the British Columbia Association of Chiefs of Police (BCACP) is also unsatisfied with the proposal, saying the amount allowed for personal use is too high.

“The BCACP supports the decriminalization of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use. The BCACP recommends a more measured approach that will see incremental increases as required, and supported by evidence,” a statement says.

“However, the BCACP does not support the recommendation to decriminalize 4.5 grams of illicit drugs for personal use.”

Another issue Graham raises is that criminalization of youth will still be allowed, which she says shows a lack of understanding of how and when people start to use drugs.

“It makes it seem like people start using drugs when they’re of age,” she says.

“But realistically, when you talk to people who’ve used drugs for the most of their lives, they started using them younger than 19. If we are not including [youth] in these policies they can be criminalized, and we’re just starting a new generation in that criminalized system.”

VANDU says the proposal does represent a step forward, although it’s not bold enough to meet the urgency of the toxic drug crisis.

‘What is the point of this?’

City of Vancouver Drug Policy Advisor Karen Ward, however, says the announcement is “symbolic at best and harmful at worst.”

Instead of applying for a federal exemption, Ward says the province should have already adopted the province-specific, made-in B.C. model of decriminalization proposed by Dr. Bonnie Henry in April of 2019.

“It’s so frustrating because they couldn’t be doing this for real, could have started doing it over like two and a half years ago.

Henry’s April 2019 special report, Stopping the Harm: Decriminalization of People Who Use Drugs in BC noted Trudeau’s federal government had already made clear it has no intention of changing the country’s drug laws after legalizing cannabis in 2018.

Henry stressed actions that could effectively decriminalize possession without federal approval or intervention. She said B.C.’s solicitor general could declare a “public health and harm reduction approach as a provincial priority to guide law enforcement.” She also suggested the province could amend the Police Act to prevent police departments from spending money to enforce simple possession laws.

Beyond that, Ward says she worries about how the threshold limits will impact the already deadly toxic supply.

“The problem here is that we don’t know what is in the illicit supply,” she says.

“What is the point of this? What’s gonna happen is that suppliers are going to manufacture more potent drugs. My first thought about this was about the supply.”

RELATED: Drug user advocates say B.C.’s safe supply program still inaccessible, inadequate

Another concern for Ward is how police will continue to punish drug users who are found with more than the allowed amount.

“It gives the police more authority in many ways, it gives them more discretion. We know what happens then, they arrest Indigenous people, they arrest people from racialized communities, they arrest poor people — it gives them more power to do that,” she says, adding that arrests and charges for the crime of possessing drugs disproportionately impact marginalized people.

“Criminalization is different from a specific crime. Criminalization is a process.”

With files from Lasia Kretzel, Charlie Carey, Tamara Slobogean, Kelvin Gawley