B.C. judge drops drug charges against Vancouver compassion club, declares law illegal

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dropped a political hot potato in the middle of the B.C. provincial election by ruling a federal law banning possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking is unconstitutional.

Justice Catherine Murray released her ruling on Tuesday, which quashed that specific drug charge against two co-founders of a Vancouver “compassion club” — Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx — that supplied clean drugs to its members.

After failing to receive a legal exemption from Ottawa to buy and sell heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, the Drug Users Liberation Front set up a “compassion club,” which bought the drugs on the black market and tested them for fentanyl before selling them at cost to its 43 members.

Kalicum and Nyx were charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.

About a year ago, after a trial, Murray found them guilty of the charge.

“There is no question that their intentions were and are good,” she said then. “They want to save lives.”

But she delayed sentencing to allow for the constitutional challenge by their lawyers, a challenge she accepted on Tuesday.

Murray declared that the law against possession of drugs for purpose of trafficking “is of no force or effect because it unjustifiably infringes” on two Charter of Rights sections relating to “life, liberty and security” of a person and equal rights and protection from discrimination, according to the judgment.

Murray said her judgment declaring the federal law invalid would be delayed for six months to give Parliament time to change the law to comply with her ruling. The government also has the right to appeal the ruling.

“What happened today is absolutely ridiculous,” Claire Rattée, Conservative candidate for the provincial Skeena riding, said of the court ruling. “The whole thing is absolutely bizarre.”

Rattée said that, as a former addict, she supports harm reduction, but she doesn’t see how providing drugs to addicts is helping them.

“Drug trafficking is drug trafficking and I don’t care if it’s done under the guise of compassion,” she said. “They are better ways of helping addicts than by providing them with drugs.”

NDP Leader David Eby has said in the past that he supported the club’s objective of getting dangerous additives out of drugs, but that his government didn’t support breaking the law to provide the safer supply.

Messages left requesting Eby comment about the latest ruling were not returned on Wednesday.

Murray ruled last year that a partial exemption the two accused received for some other activities of the compassion club did not cover the sale of the drugs to its members.

She said then there is “no doubt” their one purpose was to distribute safe drugs to their members, but an exemption by Vancouver Coastal Health, principally to allow for testing and supervised consumption of street drugs, could not be legally applied to other activities.