British Columbia police chiefs have pulled their support for the province’s decriminalization project — a move that serves to underscore just how confusing, contradictory and politically untenable the entire issue has become.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police late last week saying “since the exemption came into effect, police have witnessed trends of concern, including a continued high rate of opioid overdose deaths as well as growing fear among law-abiding community members due to public drug use and drug-related criminal activity.
“As a result of the experience in British Columbia associated to the January 2023 three-year exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of certain illicit drugs for personal use in British Columbia, the CACP Board no longer supports the decriminalization of any amount of illicit drugs for personal use,” the association said.
B.C.’s top Mountie, Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, sits on the Canadian police board, as does Victoria Police Chief Del Manak.
Within a day, the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police saying it “stands in alignment with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in its position on decriminalization and its role in addressing the ongoing toxic drug crisis.”
The move is significant, because the NDP government has long cited police support for decriminalization as a core justification for starting the three-year pilot project to legalize personal possession of small amounts of illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin and meth.
The hope was that decriminalization could free up police resources, reduce stigma, encourage drug users to step forward for treatment, and, yes, reduce overdose deaths (though advocates and government would later pretend reducing deaths was not an actual stated goal).
That didn’t happen. Instead, public drug use, street disorder and toxic drug deaths worsened before immense political pressure forced Premier David Eby and recriminalize drugs in nearly all public places in April.
Technically, decriminalization remains in place in private spaces. The government has asked police to only enforce drug possession in extraordinary situations in public.
The justification to keep it in place for private spaces, like homes, is that returning prohibition might scare people away from calling for help in an overdose. Yet, that isn’t being tracked or measured in any way to determine if it’s successful.
It makes you wonder why the police chiefs are wading into the issue at all now. No one was available for interviews, and the B.C. statement contains frustratingly vague language like: “Based on evidence and ongoing evaluation, we no longer view decriminalization as a primary mechanism for addressing the systemic challenges associated with substance use.”
That’s not enough to push the Eby government into cancelling the remainder of the decriminalization project before it’s set to expire in 2026.
The government isn’t even sure what argument the chiefs have for removing the policy from private residences, where it remains. And the chiefs haven’t said.
“We agree with the Chiefs of Police — decriminalization is not a primary mechanism to addressing the systemic challenges associated with substance use,” Health Minister Josie Osborne said in a statement.
“Public drug use is illegal in all public spaces, and police have the tools to stop this activity.”
BC Conservative critic Elenore Sturko said she believes police are acting in the wake of the October election to push back against other pro-decrim organizations and reiterate their stance to the new cabinet members in the Eby government.
“The police did support decrim but there were some significant caveats to that support, and that included robust treatment, having places for people to go, and a huge array of potential supports that didn’t materialize,” said Sturko.
“I really see it as the police really had no choice to withdraw their support, because what they were giving their support to didn’t exist. Because the NDP put this project together the way that they did there were actually harms that happened in the community.”
Sturko called on the NDP to just scrap decriminalization entirely. Doing so would return police discretion on what kind of drug arrests to make, she said. Government directives to Crown prosecutors could ensure minor possession charges aren’t pursued in the public interest anyway, Sturko added.
“People weren’t getting sent to jail for having personal use or overdosing in their home, so there wasn’t any need to remove that from law enforcement,” she said.
In the absence of a definitive government position on the future of decriminalization, the public is left with a wildly confusing situation.
Decrim is still in place, sort of. The police used to support it, but now don’t. The government agrees with police, but not enough to act. Politicians still hope decrim will help in some situations, but aren’t measuring how. The research data that was supposed to guide the whole project is ruined.
And there’s still another year left, with no signal from the government if it will renew or let expire the endeavour.
In short, it’s a mess. The statements from police are just another reminder — nobody is happy with the current situation, not the public, not the police, not advocates on either side of the issue, and not even the politicians.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
