More than 18,000 British Columbians have died due to unregulated toxic drugs in the province over the last decade.
On Sunday, around 100 people gathered at Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park to mourn and celebrate the lives of their lost friends and family and mark International Overdose Awareness Day.
Similar gatherings were held across the province and country.
At 1 p.m., the B.C. groups held a minute of silence for the dead, which was then followed by a minute where those gathered said the names of those they’d lost out loud.
“We want this solemn event to shake the government as much as possible,” said Dave Hamm, vice-president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, or VANDU.
“It’s a celebration of life for those we’ve lost,” Hamm said. “But we won’t be solemn the whole day. They would want us to keep being the lively community we are.”
At Oppenheimer Park a team of volunteers cooked up salmon, bison, deer and potato salad.
Why people are dying from drugs in B.C.
In B.C., overdose deaths started to spike in the early 2010s when the synthetic opioid fentanyl started being added to the province’s unregulated drug supply.
Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. The fentanyl analogue carfentanil, which is added to the unregulated supply, is 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
Because fentanyl is so potent, when it gets added to the unregulated supply it can be hard to judge what amount of drugs can be taken safely, and many people accidentally overdose because they didn’t realize they were taking drugs that were so potent they were toxic.
So far this year fentanyl was detected in 70 per cent of overdose deaths, according to the BC Coroners Service. From 2017 to 2024 it was involved in more than 80 per cent of deaths.
The unregulated drug supply has continuously become more toxic over the last decade, with fatalities steadily climbing from 370 in 2014 to a peak of 2,578 deaths in 2023, according to the B.C. Office of the Chief Coroner.
In the early 2010s, people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood started dying from overdoses in such high numbers that their bodies were being stored in refrigerated morgue trucks, said Samona Marsh, president of the Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.
B.C. declared a public health emergency in April 2014, which is still in place today.
In 2024, the total number of unregulated drug deaths decreased a small amount, but 2,253 British Columbians were still killed.
So far this year the BC Coroners Service has reported 915 toxic unregulated drug deaths as of June 2025, which is the most recent data reported.
That’s a big improvement compared with the same period last year, when 1,227 people had died, but people who use drugs are still filled with rage and grief.
Why people who use drugs are calling for a regulated supply
The general sentiment among the mourners is that these deaths were entirely preventable and caused by Canada’s drug policy, Hamm said.
Lawmakers signed a piece of paper to make drugs illegal; they could just as easily sign another piece of paper to regulate them, Hamm said, adding that “not doing anything about it is criminally negligent.”
The argument follows this logic:
The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was created to keep the public safe from dangerous substances. But it also created space for black markets to establish themselves where unregulated drugs are produced and sold. Drugs from these unregulated markets killed at least 52,544 Canadians between January 2016 and December 2024.
That’s why organizations like VANDU call for the government to step in and regulate all drugs, setting enforceable standards to make sure substances are pure and have a predictable potency.
People were invited to add names of their friends and family to a memorial for local people who have died from toxic drug overdoses. One man wrote out 10 names before quietly adding them to the display.
“It’s not like we want free dope, just clean and regulated dope,” Marsh said. “The government can make its tax dollars; we just want to save the lives of our friends, family and neighbours.”
The government has done this before when it legalized and regulated alcohol after Prohibition. Today the production, distribution and sale of alcohol is closely controlled and consumers can trust that a 5.4 per cent beer or 40 per cent whisky is as advertised.
Alcohol is legal despite alcohol use disorder being the most common substance use disorder in B.C.
B.C.’s top doctor, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, and former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe have called on B.C. to give people who use drugs access to a regulated, pharmaceutical alternative to the street drugs they are currently using, with the intent to separate them from the unregulated market and therefore reduce their risk of overdose and death.
One B.C. program, which gets called “pharmaceutical alternatives” or “safer supply,” allows doctors to prescribe their patients stimulants, benzodiazepines or opioids like hydromorphone or fentanyl patches.
However, people who use drugs say the prescribed drugs don’t match the potency of the unregulated drugs they’re used to. Most people have to travel to a pharmacy several times a day to take any prescriptions in front of a pharmacist, which has an outsized impact on people in rural communities and people with regular working hours.
It’s a bit like letting a deadly poison seep into the country’s coffee supply and telling someone who drinks seven cups of coffee per day that they can travel across town to get a single cup of free green tea, but they have to pay the barista to pour it into a cup for them.
“God forbid you drink the poison coffee — or get decaf,” Hamm said.
Canada’s drug laws are set by the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which means they fall under federal jurisdiction. But provinces and territories can request exemptions to the act, like when B.C. was given permission to decriminalize small amounts of certain drugs from 2023 to 2024.
No country has fully legalized and regulated all drugs in the way that Hamm is calling for.
But Canada does regulate and sell several drugs that are also produced and sold in the unregulated market.
Fentanyl and cocaine can be used in medical and surgical settings, and heroin and amphetamines can be prescribed to certain patients.
Canada fully legalized cannabis in 2018, creating a regulated market and cracking down on unregulated producers and sellers. This virtually ended cannabis possession charges but didn’t address the historic impacts of criminalization on racialized communities.
Portugal decriminalized small amounts of drugs so people generally aren’t arrested or criminally punished for having a personal supply on them.
Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland have all tried giving certain populations access to regulated heroin as part of heroin-assisted treatment programs with generally positive outcomes for patients, but without widespread societal acceptance of the programs.
Members of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society gathered Sunday to join in the memorial for toxic drug victims.
“Addressing the toxic drug crisis continues to be a top priority for our government,” said B.C. Minister of Health Josie Osborne in a statement emailed to The Tyee. “This work is not easy, and it takes time, but it’s starting to make a difference. And we will not stop until our communities are safer, healthier, and free from the devastation of this crisis.”
Osborne pointed to funding for new youth support Foundry centres and rolling out the Road to Recovery model, which connects people quickly to treatment, from detox through to aftercare, as examples of ways the government has expanded access to treatment and recovery.
Reasons for doing drugs
The ongoing crisis is complex because drug use and the reasons people use drugs are complex.
Physical or psychological trauma can push people to self-medicate with opioids, which are powerful antidepressants and painkillers.
If someone is unhoused they might use stimulants to stay awake and alert and use opioids to help them fall asleep when they have a safe and quiet moment to do so.
People also use drugs for fun.
A report by the BC Coroners Service estimates almost four per cent of the population, about 225,000 British Columbians, use unregulated drugs, and Dr. Bonnie Henry estimates a little over half of them would have a diagnosable opioid use disorder.
All people who use unregulated drugs are at risk of overdose and death.
Government and non-government responses to the crisis
The province has done a lot to try to reduce the harm and death caused by unregulated drugs, although most of its efforts are focused on getting people to reduce or stop their drug use.
Doctors in B.C. can prescribe opioid agonist treatment, or OAT, which helps stabilize patients by preventing them from going into withdrawal or feeling euphoria and is considered the gold-standard treatment for opioid use disorder.
OAT is free in B.C. but patients have to pay pharmacies a dispensing fee.
B.C. has opened long-term care beds for people who have concurrent substance use disorder, brain injury and mental illness.
The province has expanded access to detox and treatment and recovery programs. As of this spring the Health Ministry says it has 3,778 substance-use beds in B.C., including 2,131 treatment and recovery beds and 1,647 substance-use housing beds.
However, drug treatment centres are unregulated in B.C. and can vary widely in the services and care provided, with private treatment centres charging $9,000 to $15,000 per month. Some centres create unsafe conditions where many people have died.
A banner at Sunday’s gathering. ‘Safe supply or we die’ is the rallying cry for advocates of a regulated drug supply they say will provide users an alternative to the risk of overdosing on toxic drugs via underground suppliers.
B.C. ran a decriminalization pilot project from Jan. 31, 2023, to April 2024, in which people 18 and older could have and use opioids, cocaine, meth and ecstasy in most places in B.C. as long as they didn’t have a combined total of 2.5 grams. In April 2024 the project was rolled back, and now these drugs are allowed only in a home, shelter or overdose prevention site. Public drug use is illegal again.
Drug user advocacy groups are challenging the April 2024 decision to recriminalize public drug use.
There are also several initiatives to keep people who use drugs safe set up by people who aren’t willing to wait for the government to act.
The Drug User Liberation Front created a compassion club where Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum would buy unregulated drugs, test them and sell them at cost to club members. They asked for, and were denied, permission from Health Canada to do this, and produced and published research that showed they were saving lives.
In October 2023, the two were arrested, which shut down the compassion club, but they continue to argue in court they were in the right and are supported by a large population of drug users and advocacy groups.
Doctors on Vancouver Island have been opening pop-up overdose prevention sites near hospitals so patients who use drugs have a place where they can be supervised when they use, so someone can step in if they overdose.
Free drug-checking services, funded by unregulated cannabis and magic mushroom sales, are available at several locations across Vancouver, but are occasionally shut down when the police raid the shop and confiscate illegal drugs.
Grassroots organizations like the Overdose Prevention Society and the Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War also open overdose prevention sites, although Marsh says the coalition’s nighttime OPS at 141 E. Hastings, which was open from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., was recently shut down.
That means there aren’t any overdose prevention sites in the Downtown Eastside at night, she said.
