Drug trafficking here in the United States is generally recognized as a bad thing, a pernicious and callous crime that literally costs thousands of American lives. Drug trafficking is, unfortunately, profitable for the Central and South American cartels who are responsible for much of the drug traffic, and it's a constant battle between American law enforcement at all levels and the cartels and their minions. It's a major problem.
In Canada, they have a similar problem with the illegal drug trade and its ill effects. Granted, they are, geographically, a little further from the source of the problem, but that doesn't seem to matter all that much. What does matter is Canada's soft-shelled approach to law enforcement and, as a related matter, illegal immigration.
Now matters in the Great White North may become orders of magnitude worse. A recent decision by a Canadian judge has some far-reaching implications, including, possibly, legalizing not only all street drugs, but also legalizing the trafficking of those drugs.
Last week, a Canadian judge ruled that addicts have a human right to access a legal supply of currently prohibited substances—such as cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and meth—and that, by extension, criminalizing drug trafficking is unconstitutional. Though the ruling is clear judicial activism, it could nevertheless impose drug legalization across Canada unless it successfully appealed.
The case concerns Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx, who operated a “compassion club” on behalf of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), an addict-led activist group based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Through this initiative, Kalicum and Nyx purchased illicit substances off the dark web, tested them for adulterants, and then sold them at cost to vetted users in clearly marked packaging. The pair thought that they could reduce overdoses by supplying club members with drugs of a known quantity, potency, and purity, in contrast with the unpredictable street supply.
I won't go into the empirics of treatment here, other than to point out that Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx obtained the drugs they administered illegally, thereby contributing to the criminal enterprises that manufacture those drugs and smuggle them into Canada. They are free to express their thoughts on how to treat addicts, but these kinds of tests should only be done legally in a clinical setting, by qualified physicians. Doesn't that seem obvious?
Not too surprisingly, the Canadian authorities didn't see it that way.
British Columbia authorities raided the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) headquarters and discovered cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine on the premises. Kalicum and Nyx were charged with — you guessed it — drug trafficking, and they were tried and duly convicted.
That would seem to be the end of it, yes? Not to Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx. They appealed.
Kalicum and Nyx argued that Canada’s laws against trafficking-related drug possession are invalid because they violate the Charter—specifically Section 7 and Section 15 (the right to equal treatment under the law without discrimination). They argued that, because street substances are dangerously unpredictable, addicts cannot enjoy their right to life and security of the person unless they have access to a regulated “safer supply” of drugs. Further, they claimed that, as Canadian law treats addiction as a disability, exposing addicts to the danger of street drugs (as opposed to a legal “safer supply”) amounts to discrimination.
What's more, they found an amazingly cooperative judge for their appeal.
Incredibly, Justice Catherine Murray of the B.C. Supreme Court agreed with their arguments. In her ruling last week, she threw out the charges against Kalicum and Nyx, deemed federal prohibition on the possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking unconstitutional, and repeatedly declared—without real evidence—an urgent need for “non-medicalized safer supply” (a term that essentially means drug legalization).
A close reading suggests that the decision was the product of the government prosecutors’ ineptitude and the judge’s credulousness. As noted in Justice Murray’s ruling, the prosecutors did not present any of their own experts during the appeal—a strange omission, given the plethora of drug policy scholars who oppose legalization and radical harm reductionism. That means Justice Murray listened only to one side of the debate, as represented by the most prominent and arguably most ideological voices within Canada’s harm-reduction movement.
You can read Justice Catherine Murray's decision here.
Now, why does this matter to us here in the United States? Well, here's why, and I'm going to tell you.
Here in the United States, there are all kinds of legal treatment options for addicts, and that's a good thing. The best way to deal with an addict, after all, is to get them clean and sober and keep them that way, and there are all manner of organizations, government, private, and church-organized, that can help anyone who actually wants help. The Trump administration in particular has been hitting the supply angle hard, and that's important, too; but there are any number of activist judges who are, amazingly, trying to impede the effort to stop the illegal drug trade into the United States.
This nonsense from Canada may well be duplicated anywhere. And we might note, this isn't a weed clinic we're talking about here; this DULF setup was dealing in heroin, cocaine, and meth; those can be killers.
Back to Canada: This case will likely be appealed and, also likely, overturned, even if it goes all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. (Yes, they really have one.) But the very fact that it got as far as it did is alarming; that two people can just suddenly decide to ignore the law, to purchase illegal drugs for their "clients," and when caught, find a compliant judge to not only let them go, but to overturn all of Canada's anti-trafficking laws in the process. And if you think for a moment that there are not activist judges here in the USA who would offer up similar outrages, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
