Joint letter (HLN, CDPC, and Pivot) urging Vancouver to develop a “Vancouver Model” for decriminalization that is appropriately broad and responds to the aspirations and needs of people who use drugs.

Threshold amounts must be appropriately high in order to eliminate both the abuse of police discretion and the enforcement and confiscation of below-threshold amounts.

There is truly no time to waste. We urge Health Canada to listen to the health and human rights experts who have already spoken about this, follow the public health evidence, and issue these exemptions quickly, without onerous and unnecessary conditions or restrictions. Lives and health are at stake.

Principally, we support full decriminalization. We do not support the use of administrative or other regimes to control, coerce, medicalize, pathologize, or penalize drug use.

As the opioid overdose crisis devastates communities across Canada, groups hope that other jurisdictions will follow Vancouver's lead to take meaningful action on full drug decriminalization.

Joint letter (Pivot, CDPC) urging the City Council and Mayor to approve the lease on a prospective overdose prevention site in Yaletown. The paramountcy of public health over community input in the approval process for harm reduction services is established in law and should be followed here.

Read Pivot's new blog on how talk is cheap and local governments must Act Now! to decriminalize simple posession.

Read the full report on how the City of Vancouver (and all non-federal jurisdictions, including provinces) can decriminalize simple drug possession now.

Read the statement issued by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, and Pivot Legal Society.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a unanimous decision on R v Zora; a case about bail breaches in which Pivot intervened with help from Vancouver-based criminal defence lawyer David Fai.