NOTE: As of today, Jan. 31, 2026, it is once again illegal in BC to possess any amount of illegal drug(s) under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This includes private residences. Sanctioned supervised consumption sites and overdose prevention sites will continue to be the only decriminalized spaces in which to possess and consume drugs, though traveling to these sites while in possession of drugs intended to be used there risks criminalization.

Earlier this month, the Province of BC announced it would not extend its three-year Decriminalization Pilot beyond the original pilot expiration date of Jan. 31, 2026. “Decriminalization” is a misnomer of course, because the provincial government never fully committed to removing criminal sanctions for drug possession in the first place. From development, to implementation, to its eventual rollback, BC’s policy was influenced more by police and politicians than people who use drugs and other experts, leaving significant demographics of people who use drugs vulnerable to criminalization and police harassment throughout the Pilot’s term. The announcement was made with no notice to drug user-led groups, their allies, and First Nations groups.

Despite the limited scope of BC’s decriminalization policy, evidence demonstrated that it was successfully meeting at least some of its own policy goals to reduce criminalization and police drug seizures. The policy was also shown to improve access to health and social services. A recent study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy showed that Indigenous youth specifically felt more able to access harm reduction services during the pilot.

BC’s decision to sever the Pilot on the basis that it “hasn’t delivered the results” hoped for flies in the face of its own evidence and research, while signalling to people who use drugs that their lives continue to be expendable under BC and Canadian law. It is a reminder that when it comes to laws and policies that overtly harm the province’s most targeted and marginalized communities, the government of BC will not follow evidence, commitments to reconciliation or decolonization, or the basic premise that the lives of people who use drugs matter.

From the start, BC ignored calls from drug user groups and their allies to fully decriminalize drug possession, opting for a policy that continued to criminalize drug possession over 2.5 grams (and therefore failed to protect the very people arguably most in need of the policy, including people who use drugs in the DTES). When municipal governments and police complained of increased open drug use following decriminalization, BC ignored its own findings that public drug consumption had not in fact increased, caving to moral panic by way of introducing provincial legislation effectively banning all drug use outside of private residences.

To top it off, when the Chief Justice of the BC Supreme Court ordered that BC’s ban on public drug consumption would cause “irreparable harm” to people who use drugs and their healthcare providers, and therefore could not pass, BC imposed the ban anyway, through backdoor negotiations with Health Canada that effectively amount to an end run on the Court’s ruling.

Though we are unsurprised by the regressive move, Pivot condemns the (in)action of BC and its decision to foreclose a policy it never stood behind in the first place – all the while continuing to refuse safer supply alternatives to the toxic street market and imposing increasing austerity measures on housing and harm reduction. Of course, the end of BC’s Decriminalization Pilot does not mark the end of the fight for decriminalization or the legal regulation of drugs in BC, Canada or internationally. The end of BC’s decriminalization pilot is one moment in the arc of a decades-long struggle for drug user liberation that will continue for years to come, until the future we envision is ours.