Front Burner - The 'compassion club' fighting Canada's drug laws

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Through 2022 and 2023, two Vancouver activists made international headlines with DULF — the Drug User Liberation Front. In a bid to stop overdose deaths, founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx sold clean, tested drugs — bought on the dark web — to their members as an alternative to the contaminated street supply.But that international attention led to political blowback. DULF was raided by police, Kalicum and Nyx were arrested, and in November they were found guilty on drug trafficking charges. Now, they're arguing in a B.C. Supreme Court that, in shutting down DULF, the government violated drug users' Charter rights.Michelle Gamage, health reporter with the Tyee, explains why DULF did what they did, and how their ongoing court case could set a legal precedent for harm reduction efforts nationwide.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

I'm a bit of a spontaneous traveler, and I don't always know where I'm going to be or how long I'm going to be there. And that's where Aerolo comes in. An e-sim from Aerolo allows me to get internet coverage, whether I need it for a specific country, an entire region, or globally. It's easy to set up and I can top up as I go without having to swap out SIM cards. It's the perfect way for me to stay connected. Just download the Aeroa app, pick your destination E-Sim, including plan length, and data amount, install, and you're connected the moment you land. No surprise roaming fees, no airport kiosks, or sketchy public Wi-Fi. Instead, just pay for the data you need.

Stream your playlist, scroll, text, navigate, and video call home, all without watching your phone bill explode. Plus, Aero Lo works in over 200 destinations and is trusted by over 20 million travelers. So if you have an international trip, download the AeroA app or visit Aero.com. That's A-I-R-A-L-O-com and use the code Roamsmart for 15% off your first ESIM. Terms apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody. I'm J.B. POSOM.

A constitutional challenge is underway in a BC Supreme Court right now that could impact drug laws nationwide. Or we die. Or we die. Don't save. DOLF is the drug user liberation front. And this is a group started in 2022 by Vancouver activists who wanted to do something about the toxic drug crisis that has killed more than 16,000 people in BC

and over 54,000 people across the country since 2016. So what they did was they sourced heroin, cocaine, and meth from the dark web, tested them for purity, and sold them to their members at cost. For the people who found, founded it and their supporters, it was their way of dealing with the unregulated and often contaminated street supply that was causing overdoses in their community. But in 2023, Dolf's storefront was raided by police, and founders Jeremy Callicum and Eris Nix were arrested. Last month, they were found guilty of possession of controlled substances for the purposes of trafficking. But now they have

filed a constitutional challenge of their conviction, and a BC judge will decide whether the drug laws that they were found guilty of breaking, violate the charter rights of Dolf's members. So today, we're going to get into this case, the politics around it, and how it could have big implications on the future of drug policy in this country. Michelle Gammage is the health reporter with the Thai, an online news magazine based in Vancouver. She's been following Dolf's case, and she is here with me today to break it all down. Michelle, hey. It's great to have you on the show.

Jamie, it's so good to be here. So I mentioned that Dolf was founded by two people, Jeremy Calicum and Eris Nix. And can you tell me a bit more about them and what they were trying to achieve with Dolf? Yeah, sure. So there are two Canadians. Eris grew up in Ontario and Jeremy grew up here in B.C. Aris, let's describe her as a punk. She's a musician.

She's a community organizer. She's lived and worked in the downtown side for more than a. a decade now. And she's a harm reduction worker. I don't want to do it. I'm only doing it out of necessity. Do you follow what I'm saying? I don't like selling drugs in my early 20s. I sold cocaine for, you know, money. It's not a pleasant industry to be in. And it's really annoying. Doing it for no money under an incorporated nonprofit and trying to sue the federal government is even more annoying. She's tattooed. She's outspoken. She's a very fierce individual. And she's also getting her master's of science at the University of British Columbia.

She's in her early 30s. Jeremy Calicum is a bit of a foil to her. He presents a bit more straight-laced. He wears button-down shirts. He's much more soft-spoken. He studied chemistry. He wants to be a doctor. And he was working as a drug-checking technician at Substance,

which is a drug-tracking project in Vancouver Island. He is in his late 20s. If it were to expand, what would the result be? What would the net change be? obviously there'd be less deaths, there'd be less overdoses, there'd be less of a tax on our health care system, less of attacks on policing. It'd also be a lot of money taken away from organized crime because these are drugs that organized crime would otherwise be selling to these people at inflated prices. And the both of them were kind of watching this just unbelievable crisis unfold and they were like, we have to do something because what is being done by the government isn't enough to. many people are dying. And Aris, living in the downtown East Side, has just spoken about just

it's not a hyperbole to when she says that thousands of people in my neighborhood would die every year of overdose. Just the contamination of the supply, fentanyl being added. And that just means that it's incredibly difficult for someone who can only buy what's known as down, which is a combination of unknown opioids on the street. Dosing is incredibly difficult. So the kind of idea behind Dolf was that if people could know what they were taking, then they wouldn't risk overdose or death. You cannot recover someone if they have passed away. Someone cannot go to abstinence-based treatment if they're dead.

Without the club, more money goes to the illicit market and organized crime. Without the club, overdoses go up. And so they decided to sort. heroin, meth, and cocaine. And the only way to do that in Canada is to source that illegally. And then they tested the drugs, working with various levels of government to do so, and then distributed those drugs to 47 Compassion Club members. There are lots of legal medical options for people trying to avoid using street drugs that could be contaminated. There are things like methadone or hydromorphone or opioid agonist treatment. Health Canada can also grant exemptions to the

controlled drugs and substances acts, which they've done in the past. And so why did Calicum and Nix feel that the only way forward was completely outside the system here? It was buying and distributing these drugs the way that they did. Just tell me more about the rationale behind that. So it really boils down to people were still dying in huge numbers. So whatever was being done wasn't going far enough. So when people want to access opioid agonist therapy or if they want to access safer supplier prescribed alternatives, they have to go to a doctor or a clinician and work with that clinician and generally show up at a pharmacy every day to receive their medications. And so that works for some people and for the people it works for, amazing. But it's not reaching

every. So calculations from the province say that, a fraction and we're talking about like less than 5% of people who could benefit from these programs are able to access them and calicum and nix say that a lot of the reasons for that is just people can't either maybe don't want to in work with the medical system so maybe they have past trauma from working with doctors maybe they have fears that if they go to their doctor and say they use drugs that their children could be taken away from them for example or showing up regularly at a pharmacy doesn't work for them. Maybe they live in a rural community and would have to travel several hours to be able to do this. And so Nixon Calicles said, we have to try

something that works outside of this to try and get the people who can't be helped by the current options. And when they started in 2022, as I understand it, Dahlv had 24 members and then it grew to 47 members at its peak, people who could come and access the drive. drugs. And just can you tell me a bit more about those members and the impact that they say that Dolf had on them during the time that it was operating? Sure. So people generally lived in the downtown East Side. And often by being able to come to the Compassion Club, they would be able to access, in a sense, community. They could talk with people who understood where they were. They could talk with people who could meet them where they were at. Aris talked in court about how

this was often the first time someone got to speak with another human all day, and it just kind of introduced a sense of stability into a lot of people's lives. And the impact that had on people was really powerful, actually. Dolf was like a huge, like, part of my social life, my, you know, gateway to the community, really. I can't stand the thought of my friends going to jail for this, for saving lives. you know, for saving my life. Like, I'd be dead 10 times over if it wasn't for them. So this feels like a really sad baseline to use,

but it's kind of one that's important because of the level of fatalities that are happening in this crisis, but no Compassion Club members died. So when they were accessing these drugs of no impurity and potency, they were able to dose themselves in a way that didn't cause fatal overdose. and in a study that Dolf did of its operations trying to see how it was working, how it was helping people, it found that Compassion Club members had fewer overdoses during that time. We also saw things that we weren't expecting. We saw people that were accessing the club stopped using drugs once they were able to gain that stability

and not have to be like kind of flailing around trying to find substances or, you know, getting ripped off. Combation Club members had fewer interactions with police officers. They ended up going to the hospital less, and they were less reliant on the unregulated market. So that's a really big success. When they were getting started, what was Dolph? relationship like with the Vancouver Police Department. Did the police know that they were doing this? Because just to state the obvious here, like you obviously cannot buy heroin off the dark web and just sell it to people. Like that is, that is illegal. Yes. So the police knew about

this. Jeremy and Eress tried to work with all levels of government from the get-go. And so when they were loosely formed in 2020. And in that summer, it was the first time that they were able to source cocaine, and this is before they moved to the dark web, so they were sourcing it in person, but they sourced cocaine, tested it, and then were able to distribute it for free at this protest. And they did about three more handouts that way, and there were no police arrests. Jeremy and Eris also went and spoke with the Vancouver Police multiple times and explained what they were doing. And the police, they never went as to say, we support what you're doing, but they did say, like, we see the intention that you have. We see the harm

reduction that you are doing. Right. And am I right to say that they also had funding from the provincial government through Vancouver's local health authority, right? Yeah, so multiple levels here. So the federal government controls drug policy and drug laws. In the summer of 2021, they applied for a federal exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act from Health Canada, which would have given them permission to work with a pharmaceutical company, so they didn't have to source drugs from the web. Health Canada said, no, we're not going to grant that to you. And so the province can't necessarily give Dolf permission to do, like, buying or selling of drugs, but they're like, here's how we can support you, because we see the benefit that you're having. So Vancouver

Coastal Health, which is a health authority and the First Nations Health Authority, both supported Dolf. VCH supported them financially. They gave them $200,000 to do drug testing and to, and to run an overdose prevention site, and they lease them a historic front for free in the downtown east side that they could run the Compassion Club out of. A couple other levels of government that were supporting them as well. We had the former leader of the BC Greens, Sonia Fisnero, and Vancouver City Council both voted in support of Health Canada granting them the exemptions. They said, we see what you're doing, we see the harms, it's reducing, and we support that part of it. Okay. So they're operating quite smooth.

for about a year, as you've said, with support from some governments, the provincial government specifically, and then really like tacit support from the police department. And then in October 2023, police raid their storefront and they arrest Calicum and Nix. This group was knowingly, illegally trafficking in drugs. As a result, we took action to stop it. What change that led to that raid? Yeah, so around August 2023, the winds

the winds shifted. So around that time, Dolf published research that showed its Compassion Club was working, and that seemed to catch the attention of BC United, which was BC's Liberal Party. They folded, they don't exist currently,

since then, but it caught the wind of BC United. Party leader Kevin Falkin was condemning They misattributed the Vancouver Coastal Health Funds and said that the funds were being used to buy drugs. Supporting organized crime is not life-saving work. And this caught the attention of Conservative Party leader Pierre Pollyov, who called the Compassion Club a disgrace and condemned the BC NDP for giving hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to illegal drug failures in addiction to decriminalizing hard drugs. That was a quote from him. And at the same time, the economist ran an article like a feature about Dolf. They were by no means the first media outlet to do that.

Almost everyone was writing about Dolf. But the Vancouver Police Department apparently saw that article. And that was the first time they learned that Dolf had a storefront. And so they were concerned that there might be copycats who also opened storefronts to do this. We have always warned that anyone who violates. the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act should expect to face enforcement. And so all of that kind of combined at the provincial level, there was criticisms about this Compassion Club and the NDP support.

NDP pulled its support. Vancouver Coastal Health ended its funding. And shortly after that, the police moved in and arrested everyone. BC's premier hopes the raid sends a message to other groups operating illegally. Even though they were doing that important life-saving work, They were also breaking along. We can't have it. I'm a bit of a spontaneous traveler,

and I don't always know where I'm going to be or how long I'm going to be there. And that's where Aerolo comes in. An E-SIM from AeroLO allows me to get internet coverage, whether I need it for a specific country, an entire region, or globally. It's easy to set up, and I can top up as I go without having to swap out SIM cards.

It's the perfect way for me to stay connected. Just download the Aeroa app, pick your destination ESIM, including plan length and data amount, install, and you're connected the moment you land. No surprise roaming fees, no airport kiosks, or sketchy public Wi-Fi. Instead, just pay for the data you need. Stream your playlist, scroll, text, navigate, and video call home, all without watching your phone bill explode.

Plus, Aerolo works in over 200 destinations, and is trusted by over 20, million travelers. So if you have an international trip, download the Aero app or visit Aero.com. That's A-I-R-A-L-O.com and use the code Roamsmart for 15% off your first ESIM. Terms apply. Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.com. I want to go through with you a couple of the critiques here, just to kind of get how Dolf's supporters,

how these two founders might respond to them. You know, you mentioned Pierre Pollyev's remarks, Eleanor Sturko, who was at the time in opposition MLA and one of Dolf's most vocal critics. You know, she was doing the same things here, saying that they were doing dark web drug trafficking and characterize it as the BCNDP funding drug dealers. And this government supported Dolf to the tune of $200,000, putting that money potentially into the hands of murderers. You should be ashamed. So let's make one thing clear that the premier subsidized an organization that not only used cryptocurrency to buy illegal drugs off the dark web, they funded an organization that was openly bragging about it. I take your boy that that money wasn't for buying drugs.

So that's not really a good faith criticism. But what about the criticism that just by buying drugs off the dark web, regardless of the source of the money, that it supports criminal networks? Like how would Dolf founders and their supporters respond to that? So it's not wrong. They were buying drugs off the dark web. And I think this really comes back to the request that they made to Health Canada. So originally they said, hey, health Canada, please give us. permission to work with a pharmaceutical company, so we don't have to do this. Because they weren't

able to do it legally, they had to do it illegally. And then the second part is, so if you think about it, people who would have been using drugs from the unregulated market, they would have been supporting organized crime. It's not really any different to then go and buy drugs off the dark web. In a way, you're still supporting organized crime. Jeremy and Eris talked about trying to source drugs from dealers that weren't selling in other things like information or weapons, but they argued they also tried to reduce the amount of potential violence because you're just taking money away from street dealers and rather giving it to them. And I'm not sure I've mentioned this yet, but an important part of what they were doing is all

of the drugs that they were selling, they were selling at cost. So Dolph wasn't making any money on the sales. And as you mentioned, Vancouver Coast Health money never went towards the sales. They were collecting private donations, which were then used to buy the drugs. There's also the concern of safer supply drugs being diverted to the black market and also to organize crime, right? A leaked report from the BC government suggested this has been happening to a significant degree, though that report didn't put hard numbers on how much exactly is being diverted. But after that leak, the government actually changed its safer supply program earlier this year. So patients are now required to take their prescription opioids in front of a pharmacist to stop them from being diverted.

And was there concern that DOLF could be implicated in something like that? Not really. So I'm glad you brought this up. So diversion is a whole other problem. And it is one that has been going on for way longer than Dolf has existed. So Dilaudid is a really powerful painkiller, and it's hugely prescribed across BC, has been for a decade to mitigate pain. And when people don't use the medication that they are given, sometimes they give them the medication maybe to a friend, maybe they have an old prescription, which they lend to a friend who, like, hurt their knee, or maybe they sell it to the unregulated market for money. And one of the biggest problems with diversion is that you're prescribing people medications that they don't want to have or they don't need to have.

And so part of Dolf is that they were sourcing and selling drugs that people actually used. And so there was less interest in selling the drugs elsewhere because you are able to buy the drugs that you actually want to use. So in early November, Calicum and Nix were found guilty in a criminal trial. They had argued that their designation from the province as an overdose prevention site exempted them, but a judge ultimately found them guilty of three counts of drug possession for the purposes of trafficking. And I know that you covered that trial extensively. And I'm wondering what you made of the judge's decision, because if you read it, it almost sounds like she is sympathetic to them and their cause. So I think the judge really was sympathetic to what Dolf was doing.

And she talked about how Dolf's pilot project worked and criticized even the backlash against Dolf a bit and called it the Dolf founders being hung out to dry. But that criminal case wasn't the opposite. opportunity for her to say this crisis is really bad, we need to do something. It was the opportunity for her to say, were they trafficking or not? And the office has always been very open in the media. They have been trafficking. They were open to the federal government. We're going to traffic if you don't give us permission here. So she was very sympathetic to what they were doing, but did ultimately find them guilty of trafficking. And I guess that this brings us now to the current moment. And this case is being heard right now in the B.C. Supreme Court, which is a charter challenge. And it's done as part of the same proceeding. So it's generally heard by the same judge, which is happening now. It's the same judge. And what exactly are Calicum and Nick's arguing in this charter challenge?

So they're arguing that by closing Dolph, the government is violating Section 7, which is the right to life, liberty, and security of the person. And Section 4. and section 15, which says all people must be treated equally under the law and have equal protection and benefit from the law. And so many people who are accessing Dolf could be said to have an addiction or a dependency on the substances that they used. And opioid use disorder is classified as a chronic relapsing illness so that people will continuously go back and use the drugs. So it's not as simple as saying don't use them, stop using them. There is an illness going on here that brings people back continuously to the drugs. So if you cut off people's access to this safer tested supply, then people will have no choice but to turn back to the unregulated

market. And as we talked about before, the unregulated market is hugely dangerous. Right. So they're essentially saying that by shutting down this storyfront and by arresting the two founders that those charter rights for all the people that like up to 47 people who are using Dolf, their charter rights have been violated. Yeah. And also when we're talking about people who use drugs and people living on the downtown East side, we're often talking about highly marginalized people. We're talking about indigenous people. We're talking about people with a lot of trauma. And an addiction is classified as a disability. So the law isn't supposed to discriminate against marginalized people in that way. And Dolf is arguing that it is.

Michelle, how has the crown been pushing back on the argument that this violates charter rights? Like, how is the crown saying that this doesn't violate the charter rights of Dauph members? So in Canada, drug laws, which are laid out in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, they're quite tough. But then they're allowed to be quite tough because it has this ability to grant experience. exemptions to the law. And so therefore, the government says, we'll hear cases as they come up, and we can grant exemptions if it's needed. So if the crown can argue that Dolph wasn't necessarily earnestly trying to get an exemption, then Dolph doesn't necessarily get to argue that the law violated charter rights. Right. So Dolph is saying exemption wasn't really possible, and the

crown is saying that exemption was, and you just didn't try hard enough. If Dolph if Calicum and Nix are successful here, what would the implications be for Canadian drug laws? Like, just extrapolate this for me. Yeah. So really hard to say. So they were tried for trafficking with the intent for distribution, which is section five, subsection two of the Control Drugs and Substances Act. So that's the kind of part that could be reworked here. So the rest of the drug laws are not on the table, but that section is. And so the judge could say in this one case, this one time, that subsection was unconstitutional. And then the charges against Jeremy and Eris go away because you can't be charged under an unconstitutional law. But the judge actually has a bit

of power here. So it's possible that she could go to the government and say, hey, you need to rework this section because it is unconstitutional. Or she could go as far as just striking it entirely. Now, that's probably not likely. But what is most likely going to happen if this is found to be unconstitutional is that there's just going to be clarity offered for people who maybe want to set up similar harm reduction services, which could be really interesting to see as this crisis continues across Canada. Yeah, super interesting. You know, Michelle, before we go, in the world of drug policy research and harm reduction, the consensus. is pretty unanimous that the way to stop overdose deaths is to provide people with safe,

regulated supply of drugs. You've gone through this all today. There's a huge body of research supporting that. But in terms of public opinion, this is still a really controversial idea. A poll from abacus data back in September 2024 found that only 46% of Canadians believe that the solution to the overdose crisis is a harm reduction approach. The other 54% preferred an approach focused on increased law enforcement and stricter drug trafficking penalties. So why is it that you think that there's such a disconnect between what the experts and the evidence say works and what Canadians actually want? I know this is a complicated question, but I'd love to get your thoughts on it.

Yeah. I think this is a product of the war on drugs, which is decades and decades and decades old. And the war on drugs says drugs are bad. Because drugs are bad. And for, I think, a lot of Canadians, they grew up hearing that. And that is a moral argument. And therefore, it's a moral failing to be using drugs. And when you're thinking emotionally or when you're approaching an issue emotionally, it's really hard to bring rationality in. They kind of clash. So we're talking about there's a rational argument to help people. And it's coming up against people's emotional reaction to drugs, which they've been taught their whole lives. So it's not really surprising that people are having a difficult time kind of like mashing these two together. But I think a really important thing to just note is it's not just regulated drugs that will take us out of this crisis. It's investing in everything that the government is currently doing and more. So we need

more naloxone everywhere, which is a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose. We need more treatment and recovery. We need more access to detox. We need more prescribed alternatives. We need more opioid agonist treatment. All of this and more. And then for the people who have tried everything that the government offers, maybe they would be able to benefit from a compassion club in their community. And so it's not one or the other. It's everything and more. Okay. Michelle, thank you very much for this. Really appreciate it. Really good to be able to talk about this. Thank you so much, Jamie.

All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. cbc.ca slash podcasts.