Hundreds of people rallied on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Friday in support of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF).
The protest comes just over a week after Vancouver police raided what the group called a compassion club providing drug users with tested cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, arresting two organizers.
The province moved last month to cut funding the organization was receiving from Vancouver Coastal Health to provide overdose prevention and drug checking services.
“We come here today to show this unjust government that unjust laws must be disobeyed four our people to live,” Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users organizer Vince Tao said, before leading protesters in chants of “DULF saves lives.”
Leslie McBain, co-founder of Moms Stop The Harm, whose own son died of a drug overdose, said her group supported what DULF was trying to do.
“We need to really change public opinion about this,” she told Global News.
“DULF is doing what the governmnet should do, which is providing safe regulated supply of drugs to people who need them. A very small cohort, but that’s what we need.”
In a Sept. 28 interview with Global News, Jeremy Kalickum — one of the two organizers arrested in the VPD raid — said the group had sought legal avenues to operate its clean drug compassion club, but had been rebuffed.
Organizers then took matters into their own hands in an effort to save lives amid hundreds of monthly B.C. deaths from toxic drugs, he said.
“We needed a compassion club. We needed somewhere for people to come who use drugs to get what they need in known potencies, quantities and quality and not be exploited financially, not be put at risk of violence and to not overdose,” he said.
“We’ve been forced into that position. We’re under no presumption that buying off the black market is a good thing.”
Friday’s demonstration comes days after an expert panel led by B.C.’s chief coroner recommended the province massively expand its safe supply program, arguing offering clean drugs without a prescription would be the safest way to cut down on toxic drug deaths.
B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Jennifer Whiteside quickly rejected the recommendation.
Former Vancouver city councillor and Downtown Eastside advocate Jean Swanson said the province should act on the coroners’ report.
“Every bit of ammo that any politician would need to justify the compassion club model of safer supply is in this report,” Swanson told the demonstrators.
“Two-hundred and twenty-five-thousand British Columbians who use drugs risk death at any time if no action is taken, 13,000 have died since 2016.”
Swanson added that DULF had tried to go the proper route of obtaining a Health Canada exemption to operate the compassion club, and had secured the support of Vancouver Coastal Health and the city council she sat on, but were rebuffed.
According to organizers, DULF purchased its drugs off the dark web, then sent them to labs at the University of British Columbia and University of Victoria for purity testing. The drugs were then sold at cost to the compassion club’s 42 members.
The organization said none of the $200,000 in public funding it received was used to buy drugs.
The group also released preliminary findings from a study it had conducted, which has not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.
Among compassion club members, the study reported a 32-per cent drop in overdoses requiring naloxone, a 48-per cent drop in police interactions and a 50-per cent drop in hospitalizations.
The compassion club operation has been a focus of the Opposition BC United, who has accused both DULF and the province of taxpayer-funded drug dealing.
The party has called for a forensic audit of the matter.