Canada

Drug User Liberation Front founders Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum are back in court arguing their compassion club members’ constitutional rights were violated by part of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The pair were arrested in October 2023 after running a compassion club for about a year. During that year they bought heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine off the dark web, worked with Vancouver Coastal Health to rigorously test the drugs for purity and potency, accurately labelled the drugs and sold them at cost to their 47 compassion club members.

The idea was that if a person knew the purity and potency of the drugs they were putting into their body, they could accurately dose themselves without taking too much and overdosing, even if they wanted to get really high, Nyx said on Thursday in court.

In Canada, anyone who is charged with a criminal offence has the opportunity to challenge the law they’re accused of breaking as unconstitutional, in what’s known as a constitutional challenge. The challenge is being heard by the provincial court of B.C.