B.C. Judge Strikes Trafficking Ban, Applauds Dark-Web Dealers, Hands Ottawa Six Months

VANCOUVER – September 30, 2026 – A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has stayed trafficking convictions against two Vancouver activists who bought heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine on the dark web and sold the drugs to more than 40 club members — and she told them in open court that she applauds what they did.

Justice Catherine Murray ruled Tuesday that Section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the offence of possession for the purpose of trafficking, is of no force or effect because it breaches Charter sections 7 and 15 — life, liberty and security of the person, and equality. The declaration is suspended for six months so Parliament can rewrite the law. The convictions of Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx are stayed. The Crown has 30 days to appeal.

Kalicum and Nyx founded the Drug User Liberation Front. From 2022 until a Vancouver police raid in October 2023 they ran a storefront “compassion club”: dark-web purchases, lab tests for fentanyl and other contaminants, labelled packages, sales at cost to about 43 adult members. Health Canada never gave them an exemption to distribute. Murray convicted them in November 2025 on the trafficking counts, then put sentencing aside to hear the Charter case. She had already said their intentions were good. On Tuesday she went further.

“I applaud you for what you’ve done,” she told them, according to the Globe and Mail and The Tyee. “I think you should be very proud of yourselves, and it’s people like you who make a difference. And you just did.” She said they had put themselves aside for the cause, “something most people wouldn’t do,” and that they had done the public a service at personal cost. “So, go do great things.”

That is a Superior Court judge, on the record, praising people who imported Schedule I drugs from anonymous vendors and put them into members’ hands.

Murray did not erase every trafficking offence in the Criminal Code. She struck the CDSA possession-for-trafficking section as it applied to a non-medical “safer supply” model the pair say Health Canada left them no lawful way to run. The finding is paused. If Ottawa does nothing for six months, the section falls. If the Crown appeals within 30 days, the pause and the stay both sit in a higher court.

Murray wrote that the toxic-drug emergency is more than 11 years old, that more than 16,000 British Columbians have died since it was declared, and that the defect in the statute needs fixing with urgency. Their lawyer, Tim Dickson, called the ruling a vindication and said the club reduced overdose risk and did not harm the wider public. That is his submission. Police still charged the pair. The last Liberal cabinet never built the exemption they asked for. B.C. has already walked back its own decriminalization pilot.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Vancouver this week on other files. The decision on his desk is simple enough: appeal, legislate a gated safer-supply scheme, or let a trial judge’s Charter finding open a hole in the trafficking law. Conservatives will treat the applause line as the story. Harm-reduction groups will treat the six-month clock as the win. Neither side needs help reading which way the last decade went in the Downtown Eastside.

Northwestern Ontario is not Vancouver. It is also not a spectator. Kenora has spent this month on toxic-supply alerts. Thunder Bay police are still pulling cocaine, fentanyl and loaded guns out of houses. A ruling that treats dark-web bulk buys as a Charter pathway will be read on the same streets where the Kenora District Services Board is about to count who is sleeping rough. If Ottawa appeals, say so. If it does not, that is a choice too.