A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has stayed trafficking convictions and ruled parts of the Charter of Rights are invalid after two people were convicted of selling to clients in order to reduce the harms of toxic drugs.
Justice Catherine Murray has ruled sections of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are unconstitutional, tossing out convictions against Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx who founded the compassion club known as the Drug User Liberation Front.
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Murray says Sections 7 and 15 of the Charter are invalid, although she has suspended her ruling for six months to give Parliament time to implement a plan that would allow for a non-medicalized safer supply program to operate.
Kalicum and Nyx were convicted of trafficking last year after admitting to buying the pure drugs on the dark web, then selling them to their members.
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Murray’s ruling says that running such a safer-supply program was precisely what the applicants were doing and that formed the basis of the criminal charges against them.
She says the applicants in this case have borne the burden of bringing a successful constitutional challenge, doing a public interest service at considerable cost to themselves.
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