The Surrey Union of Drug Users (SUDU) is “disappointed but not surprised” by Wednesday’s announcement from the B.C. Ministry of Health to end the decriminalization pilot.
“We shame the government for choosing to further isolate drug users and increase the likelihood of drug poisoning in the community,” SUDU said in a press release Friday (Jan. 16).
Decriminalization began in January of 2023, allowing people to possess small amounts of illicit drugs in certain places without fear of arrest. Initially, the program included drug possession and consumption in both public and private spaces, but that was changed a year later to exclude public use after backlash.
B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne said Wednesday (Jan. 14) that the provincial government would not be asking the federal government to renew the exemption that allowed decriminalization, which means the pilot ends on Jan. 31.
Pete Woodrow, vice-president of the SUDU board of directors, said: “The failure of decrim is the failure of our government to save lives; they allowed politics to get in the way of humanity.”
Advocates felt that the pilot project was set up to fail as the possession limit was “set far lower than what was advocated for by people who use drugs and their allies,” SUDU said in a press release Friday (Jan. 16).
Mona Woodward, Sparkling Fast River Rising Woman, president of SUDU’s board of directors, said the end of decriminalization will hurt vulnerable people.
“As an Indigenous person, we are already targets. This is going to increase violence and increase getting jacked up by the police for no reason at all. This will increase our susceptibility to violence and harassment at the hands of the police. It’s all a farce. What it’s going to come down is that we’re going to have to do our own organizing, and figure out how to respond to keep our families and our people safe.”
Osborne said that although the pilot is ending, the work does not end.
“We remain focused on strengthening the approaches that are helping people get timely, appropriate care. Our priority is, and always has been, to make sure people can get help when and where they need it. We continue to believe that addiction is a health issue, not a criminal justice issue,” she said. “We are building a more complete and comprehensive system of mental-health and addictions care in B.C., including prevention, treatment and recovery, harm reduction and after-care. We have opened hundreds of new treatment and recovery beds, significantly reduced wait times for withdrawal management and prevented tens of thousands of overdose deaths through services such as take-home Naloxone and overdose-prevention sites.”
But SUDU says the end of the pilot will only make it more difficult for people who use drugs to access health-care facilities and harm reduction services, or to use safely around other members of their community “for fear of police seizure and violence.”
This will likely lead to more deaths, SUDU said.
Gina Egilson, a member of SUDU’s board of directors, said the end of the pilot is a move in the wrong direction.
“This cruel and irresponsible move backward to recriminalize people who use drugs – reversing course to treat substance use as a criminal, and not a health issue – underscores the Province’s commitment to upholding the carceral structures of prohibition, and not, as Osborne states, an absolute commitment to exploring every option,” Egilson said. “Policy kills.”
In 2024, SUDU, alongside other drug user advocacy groups, took the province to court to challenge Bill 24, which sought to move towards recriminalization.
The Surrey Union of Drug Users meets every Monday at 5 p.m. at the Black Arts Centre (10305 City Pkwy., #105). The meeting is open to people who are currently or formerly using unregulated drugs.
-With files from Mark Page