Founders of Vancouver club that sold tested illicit drugs file Charter challenge

Charter challenge after drug charges The founders of a Vancouver group that supplied people with illicit drugs say the criminal charges they're facing are unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the founders of Vancouver's Drug User Liberation Front say their clients are being wrongfully criminalized for operating a club that provided untainted drugs to people who would otherwise be at the mercy of a toxic and deadly illicit drug supply.

Lawyers Tim Dickson and Stephanie Dickson outlined a constitutional challenge of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act on Tuesday, filed in B.C. Supreme Court on behalf of Jeremy Kalicum and Erys Nix.

The pair had operated a "compassion club" that sold heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine bought on the dark web and tested for contaminants.

The club was raided by police in October last year, and the pair have since been charged with drug trafficking.

Their trial is set for October 2025, but they claim their Charter rights and the rights of users were violated when the club was shut and they were arrested.

"We want to demonstrate how deeply unfair and discriminatory it is to prevent drug users from saving lives, from saving the lives of the people they care about the most," Nix said during a news conference.

Their Charter challenge argues that denying compassion club members access to a predictable supply of drugs they depend on, while exposing them to the severe risks of the street supply is "grossly disproportionate" to any benefits of shutting down the club.

They say in their legal claim that preventing the initiative infringes on their right to liberty and the right to life and security of the person of the compassion club’s members.

The pair claim that people with serious addictions are compelled to turn to the toxic street supply for substances they depend on, making it discriminatory to shut down the club and a violation of the right to equality.

Nix said the only way to save lives is to see "some type of regulation of the illicit drug market."

"Organized crime thrives on this market and generates money from prohibition, and organized crime does not care about regulating the potency of drugs," Nix said.

The Charter application said they should not have been charged because the club's site had been given the authority by Vancouver Coastal Heath to collect, store and transport illicit drug samples for drug checking or analysis.

The operation and eventual arrest of the pair set off significant public sparring between the governing NDP and the Opposition BC United.

Tim Dickson said it was disappointing that there's been a "shift in the political discourse on drug policy in B.C. in recent months."

"But the advantage of the court case is that it's an opportunity to have these issues decided on the basis of evidence and of logic by an independent and impartial judge," he said. "It will be a very different process than the political debate that's been going on in recent months, which is more about sound bites than facts."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024