What went wrong with drug decriminalization in British Columbia? Those on the streets have a message for Toronto

VICTORIA, B.C. — On a sunny afternoon, a young woman inhales crack cocaine in full sight on a grim sidewalk where those in the throes of addiction often gather.
A few days earlier, Victoria police officers would have ignored her smoking glass pipe as they walked by. The use of small amounts of illicit drugs in public had been decriminalized in an experiment to fight overdose deaths. But the law has just changed. British Columbia has reversed course. Now, holding a loaded pipe on the street is once again a crime.
The woman smokes it anyway.
When British Columbia embarked in January 2023 on a landmark three-year pilot project to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs such as meth, cocaine and heroin, it was hoped that focusing on treatment over punishment would help stem soaring toxic drug deaths across the province.
It’s a hope that Toronto shares in its own plan to decriminalize possession of all controlled drugs and substances for personal use, a plan that’s awaiting Health Canada approval.
“Decriminalization will help reduce the barriers and stigma that prevent people from accessing life-saving supports and services,” Toronto Public Health said in a statement about the plan that echoed the provincial government’s stated goal from two years earlier.
But just 15 months into its pilot to decriminalize hard drugs, B.C. has reversed course after decriminalization appeared unable to slow the addiction crisis and amid soaring drug use in parks, restaurants and hospitals led to concerns that community safety was at risk.
In the year after B.C.’s decriminalization effort began, calls to 911 for suspected overdoses rose by 25 per cent in the province, the biggest jump on record. Fatalities reached a record 2,500 for the year 2023.
Now under the reapplied rules, police can once again arrest people for using illicit substances in public spaces — though simple possession of drugs remains legal, if less than 2.5 grams is held.
“Keeping people safe is our highest priority,” Premier David Eby said in a statement explaining that open drug use was setting a dangerous example for young people and emitting toxic second-hand smoke.
As the debate about the wisdom of B.C.’s reversal swirled around the province and all the way to Toronto, the people who make up a desperate community — full of addiction, heartache and ghosts — on a few blocks of Victoria’s Pandora Avenue tell stories that both support and undermine the idea of public-use decriminalization.
In the end, most say, the experiment missed its target.
Some of the people on the street share a fear expressed by many drug counsellors during the debate: that B.C.’s reversal, which will cause an increase in arrests, will put drug users at further risk of harm and death.
“It will hurt people to have to hide in back alleys,” says Bruce Livingstone who has experienced addiction and is an advocate for decriminalization in the community.
“It will kill people.”
On the other hand, Lydia John, 33, a mother of eight, says she sees a need to balance supporting people with severe addiction and keeping public spaces safe for children and families.
John’s eyes carry an empathy that defies her struggle with addiction and the absence of her sons and daughters, who are being cared for by others.
The diminutive woman has survived the hardships of street life since the age of 12 and says she doesn’t want others to mirror her path. She shouts out to the Pandora community to hide their drugs when children walk down the block.
“It’s very important not to expose children to this life,” John says.
“This is no fun place to be. You never know if you are going to wake up alive.”
Part of the intractability of the Pandora’s drug epidemic is the increasing toxicity of illicit drugs, something that decriminalization has not eased. The community is terrified about the deaths that surround them as their drug supply has become more deadly.
The powerful opioid fentanyl, the leading case of overdose death, is now laced into more than 80 per cent of street drugs. And recently benzodiazepines — tranquilizers that can cause unconsciousness — have been joining unpredictably to the mix, has risen to more than half.
The members of the Pandora Avenue community seem to agree on one critical thing: the biggest issue is not whether using drugs in public should be legal. It is that people cannot get treatment when they ask for it.
Several drug users and their loved ones told the Star that the real barrier to their recovery is a lack of rehabilitation spaces.
They say they also need mental health support and affordable housing, both of which are severely lacking.
Tanya, a well-loved Pandora regular who asked that her real name to be withheld, says that she is traumatized by living among so many people dying. She says she longs for support.
“Down here, people are grieving and don’t know how to grieve,” she said. “It’s coming out in anger. It’s coming out in all kinds of ways that just shouldn’t be. They need counselling.”
Tanya says she’s been waiting four years to be housed. In the meantime, in the past few months, she has lost 50 pounds and many of her teeth.
Despite additional shelter spaces and some new housing support, homelessness in B.C. has only risen since the COVID-19 pandemic fed a housing crisis in the province. More than two-thirds of people living outdoors have substance-use issues, according to Victoria governmental research, a situation that is mirrored in Toronto (which also has its own housing shortage).
Given these larger endemic problems, Tanya says she’s frustrated by what she sees as time wasted arguing about B.C.’s back-and-forth drug decriminalization efforts. She would never do drugs in front of other people, she said, waving her hands in disgust at the drug use surrounding her.
However, without housing, without mental health support and without treatment programs, debating over open drug use “is nonsense,” she said.
She said she wants Toronto to know, as it shapes its own efforts to help, that what those struggling with addiction need most is love from their families and accessible rehabilitation programs in their communities.
“They need help now. It has to be right there for them. Now. Not two or three weeks from now.”
One of the tragedies that people on this street still talk about is the loss of Chris Schwede, who died of an overdose of crack laced with fentanyl and benzodiazepines in August 2022, at age 50.
One of the arguments in favour of decriminalization is that it reduces the stigma about drug use that often prevents users from seeking help. In an interview with the Star before his death, Schwede had described the sense of doom that enveloped him as he hid his drug habit from police and the people who loved him most.
“It is really dark in the city now,” he said from behind an umbrella a few months before he died.
Schwede didn’t let his family know that he struggled with cocaine addiction for most of his adult life, said his sister, Candice Csaky. He broke off contact with his parents and lived on the street only blocks away from his beloved sister’s home.
“He felt so much shame,” said Csaky.
Chris was not just doomed by his shame, though, she said: When he found the resolve to consider treatment, the wait list was four months long.
The province’s promise to invest in more in addiction care, which went along with the decriminalization project, appears to have been fumbled. Wait times for patient referrals and the number of patients receiving opioid therapy medications have not changed since the time of Chris’s death.
In fact, waits for treatment may actually be getting worse. According to the Canadian Drug Rehab directory, wait times in general for B.C. treatment centres are now up to six months.
“I am upset that we don’t see enough support for mental health, rehab and treatment,” Csaky said.
The idea that decriminalization might help some to seek help was part of what drove the pilot program which started five months after Schwede’s death. In some cases that seemed to work.
After decriminalization, lifelong addict Marc Thibault saw a chance at recovery. 
Prompted by his friend’s death, Thibault sought treatment in March 2023 without risking arrest for using the drugs he depended on.
“I wish Chris was alive so we could do (treatment) together like brothers,” the 54-year-old wrote in a text from B.C.’s InnerVisions recovery centre in April 2023.
“All I have left is an iron determination to live.”
Thibault’s treatment path was not easy. He suffered a heart attack and several relapses. But he completed a five-month abstinence program that gave him the opportunity to live a different life.
He is angry about the decriminalization rollback, which he says puts pointless pressure on those battling addiction.
“Legal problems are not helpful in recovery,” he said.
Now living in a small apartment in Victoria, Thibault is struggling to make ends meet. Jeans sagging around his bony waist, he wishes he could find more affordable housing so that he could buy food. Without ongoing support, including mental health care, despair creeps up on him and his ability to stay clean dwindles.
“We need to make sure the mental health piece is in place before decriminalization,” said Candice Csaky.
“We did things backward here.”