As British Columbia’s overdose crisis escalated in the second half of the 2010s, Jeremy Kalicum was getting his first experience in harm reduction—first in Nanaimo, a city a couple of hours north of Victoria, then in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
“You’re just trying to do the best you can to respond, and saving people’s lives, but it’s like you’re trying to bail out a boat with a thimble,” Kalicum told the BC Supreme Court on November 24.
Kalicum was the first witness to take the stand, in a hearing set to determine whether recent drug convictions against himself and Eris Nyx, co-founders of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), should be thrown out.
The two are pursuing a constitutional challenge, claiming the charges violate Sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protect the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and guard against discrimination based on, among other things, disability.
The charges came after the compassion club they operated with DULF, providing tested drugs to protect members from the adulterated street supply, was raided in 2023—just seven years after Kalicum had stepped into the harm reduction world.
“They weren’t stopping the overdoses … It’s a red-light emergency.”
In early November, Kalicum and Nyx were convicted of three counts each of possession for the purpose of trafficking of heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.
Kalicum’s November 24 testimony started off with a focus on his trajectory from graduating high school in 2014 to the charges laid against him in 2023.
He was driven by his family’s experience with the drug toxicity crisis, having seen his brother struggle. It was he who provided care to his brother when he overdosed, as they waited for paramedics.
Kalicum got a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology with the aim of becoming a medical doctor. But as he saw the crisis unfolding, he made a turn towards public health to pursue population-level solutions.
What he was seeing in practice wasn’t enough.
“They weren’t stopping the overdoses,” he told the court. “The overdoses were continuing to rise. There is no amount of overdose prevention sites or drug checking that you can do that can keep up with the rate that this crisis is progressing.”
“Responding to 10, 12 overdoses a day at these sites, … walking home after a shift and finding dead bodies in alleys, seeing dead bodies in alleys, you realize that this is so bad,” Kalicum added. “It’s a red-light emergency.”
DULF lawyer Tim Dickson laid out three basic points, outling the framework for their case.
The hearing had begun with DULF lawyer Tim Dickson outlining the framework for their case that Nyx’s and Kalicum’s charges violated the constitution.
He laid out three basic points: that DULF’s compassion club was effective at reducing overdoses, deaths and a suite of other harms of prohibition; that prohibiting possession for the purpose of trafficking in this case renders the compassion club illegal, violating DULF members’ rights; and that there was no practically available safety valve in the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA).
Dickson lingered on the last point.
Section 56(1) of the CDSA is intended to act as a sort of safety valve—it allows exemptions to the legislation to ensure enforcement of the law doesn’t defeat the stated purpose of public safety and health.
It’s the section under which overdose prevention sites and drug checking services have been able to operate, and the section that enabled BC’s “decriminalization” pilot project.
But those examples are all related to blocking simple possession charges.
The DULF case stands out, as the exemption they sought from Health Canada was for possession for the purpose of trafficking. But that wasn’t realistically available to Nyx and Kalicum, Dickson argues.
“The court will hear that, while DULF hoped in the future to be able to distribute drugs from licit sources, illicit sources were the only option then available to it.”
DULF had tried getting safe-supply drugs from legal sources but found only a void, so turned to the illegal market.
But Health Canada was adamant that it wouldn’t entertain an application to sell drugs obtained from the illicit market, even as DULF argued there were no other options.
In fact, Health Canada was not considering any kind of de-medicalized safe supply program at all.
An expert advisory group urged Health Canada to implement a de-medicalized model, but when that group followed up with Health Canada, they were told it wasn’t an option.
What’s more, Section 56(1) only gave reprieve within the CDSA—it wouldn’t have lifted onerous regulations that the Food and Drugs Act would put on manufacturers supplying a legally sanctioned compassion club.
Fair Price Pharma founder Martin Schechter is expected to testify to that end, based on his company’s attempts at getting a licence to produce pharmaceutical heroin.
Dickson said in the hearing that while those regulations are plainly important for the pharmaceutical industry, “the court will need to consider the impact of these requirements in a harm reduction context.”
“DULF was compelled to obtain drugs for its non-medicalized compassion club from illicit sources over the dark web,” he continued. “The court will hear that, while DULF hoped in the future to be able to distribute drugs from licit sources, illicit sources were the only option then available to it.”
The hearing is expected to run several weeks, potentially requiring sessions to be scheduled into January.
Photograph of Jeremy Kalicum outside the court in early November by Dustin Godfrey