“In the long term, would [legalization] be a way to counter the toxic street drugs and to take that business away from organized crime? Absolutely.”
––Bonnie Henry
Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum will appear in court this year to face charges of drug trafficking. But the founders of the Drug Users Liberation Front did not act alone. In fact, DULF, along with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and other drug user groups, were deliberately supported and positioned to play a crucial role in implementing a radical vision held by senior B.C. government officials to legalize all drugs.
DULF’s “compassion club” model was developed by taxpayer-funded researchers and the group’s trafficking operations were sanctioned by elected and public health officials at the highest levels of the BC NDP government and BC Ministry of Health. For years, complicit government backers funded and helped grow DULF’s operations, then scattered in the wind following their arrests.
The tentacles of impropriety in B.C.’s public health sector reach back almost a decade to 2016, when then-Provincial Health Officer (PHO) Dr. Perry Kendall declared that drug poisonings were a public health emergency.
After the BC NDP formed government in 2017 and Kendall retired in 2018, a coalition led by current PHO Dr. Bonnie Henry – including public health officers, elected officials, senior bureaucrats, clinicians, researchers, government-funded agencies, and drug user groups – began a coordinated effort to legalize access to opioids, stimulants, hallucinogens, and other drugs.
Members of Henry’s professional network formed private companies to manufacture, buy or distribute drugs. Some of these same people continued directing public health research agencies, shaping drug policies and even publicly pushed government to buy their products. Most of these colleagues were specialists in infectious diseases and had worked together on the AIDS crisis.
In 2017, members of B.C.’s HIV/AIDS Centre began operating as the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU). After Kendall retired as PHO, he assumed a leadership position at the BCCSU and co-founded an opioid company. Dr. Martin Schechter, the then scientific director of B.C.’s major health research funder, Michael Smith Foundation, was Kendall’s opioid business partner.
Dr. Evan Wood, one of the AIDS researchers who helped found the BCCSU, formed a pharmaceutical company.
Dr. Mark Tyndall, who served as Deputy PHO alongside Henry, formed an opioid vending machine company that eventually received at least $4.5 million in federal funding. And Leslie McBain, co-founder of one of Canada’s most active, government-funded drug policy advocacy groups, was employed by the BCCSU and sat on the three-person board of Tyndall’s company.
Push to legalization
The first overt public push by Henry in the direction of legalization came in 2019, when she recommended decriminalizing drug possession in her Stopping the Harm report, and which the BC NDP adopted as a plank in their 2020 election platform.
Her report stated confidently: “As overdoses become more pervasive both domestically and worldwide, jurisdictions are looking to BC for leadership and guidance. The stage is set for the province to meet this call.”
The basis for her confidence was not scientific evidence – safe supply as it was implemented in B.C. was unprecedented and unproven anywhere else in the world, and the North American OxyContin crisis had recently reaffirmed the dangers posed by unleashing large amounts of pharmaceutical opioids on the masses. Rather, Henry was articulating a consensus among public health leaders in B.C. that decriminalization and regulated markets for addictive drugs would substantially reduce poisonings.
DULF: The sharp end of the legalization spear
The term “compassion club” was coined in the AIDS crisis to refer to informal co-ops that would buy and share cannabis for symptom relief. The BCCSU repurposed the term to describe something completely different: buying opioids, stimulants, and other addictive drugs from the dark web and distributing them.
In 2019, the BCCSU published a report discussing the new model of “compassion clubs” with the claim: “this report describes a membership-based cooperative model that has the immediate potential to reduce the public health consequences stemming from the poisoning of the illicit drug supply while also disrupting organized crime concerns.” Evan Wood was an author and former BC chief coroner Lisa Lapointe provided a testimonial.
In March 2020, Henry introduced “safe supply” with a similar rationale, claiming that it would prevent people from using street fentanyl and avert overdose. Soon, papers advocating for “safe supply” began to appear, disproportionately featuring authors affiliated with the BCCSU.
Around the same time, Dr. Thomas Kerr, a BCCSU researcher and UBC professor who had been working with VANDU also began collaborating with the just-formed Drug Users Liberation Front on a research plan. DULF billed itself as a compassion club – a status Kerr helped other drug user groups to achieve. Addressing a Kootenay drug user group a couple years later, Kerr explained the role DULF and other drug user groups could play in the legalization agenda: “Compassion clubs have a huge potential to really up the scale of safe supply provision until we can actually get to regulation. Which in my view, is the ultimate goal.”
Back in June 2020, DULF staged the first of more than 20 public illicit drug trafficking/giveaway events, which Nyx and Kalicum called “unsanctioned safer supply.” DULF’s milestone event was proclaimed on the BCCSU website, as were many of the group’s subsequent illegal trafficking activities. The BCCSU also publicized a link to DULF’s fundraising GoFundMe page.
The BCCSU’s support for DULF would soon snowball as Henry and other senior health allies faced what they perceived as the biggest hurdle in government-funded “safe supply” – distribution. The medical prescriber model may not be the best delivery mechanism for safe supply, Henry said in 2023, because “it puts a lot of pressure on clinicians” and “it’s very difficult to scale up.”
“In the long term, would [legalization] be a way to counter the toxic street drugs and to take that business away from organized crime? Absolutely.”
–Bonnie Henry
Physicians in family practice are responsible for the vast majority of pharmaceutical prescriptions, but many family docs were skeptical that the answer to B.C.’s addiction crisis was to increase the supply of drugs.
Instead of investigating the valid scientific and medical reasons doctors were reticent, Henry explored ways to bypass them.
Tyndall’s “safe supply” vending machines provided one straightforward workaround, even though research showed that many of the people who used his machines were living in poverty and “sold drugs” for income.
The DULF model represented a more expedient way to distribute drugs. But it was clear that evidence would be needed before the public health system could overtly support such a radical approach.
Activist research denounced as illegal by Health Canada
How would DULF and the BCCSU get permission to conduct research on activities that are not only illegal but also fraught with risk to humans?
The research team might have drawn reassurance from the lack of consequences from DULF’s flagrant public drug giveaways, and from the bullishly pro-drug positions taken by many senior public servants and elected government officials, all clearly signalling an expectation of major changes to Canada’s drug laws. Indeed, in January 2023, B.C. began a three-year decriminalization experiment.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funding to DULF and VANDU also constituted a clear and tangible demonstration of support. As did the multi-year commitment to $1 million a year in funding to 15-plus B.C. drug user groups, according to a legislative report by VANDU.
In September of 2021, a formal submission was made to Health Canada’s Controlled Substances Directorate for a legal exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) to allow DULF to continue their illicit drug buying and selling in conjunction with academic research. The applicants included DULF’s Nyx and Kalicum and VANDU’s Brittany Graham.
Letters of support were provided by AIDS Vancouver Island, CATIE (an industry-funded organization described as “Canada’s source for HIV and hepatitis C information”), Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, City of Vancouver, UBC’s Department of Medicine and the BCCSU.
The UBC letters emphasized the involvement of UBC researchers in DULF’s activities.
“The DULF/VANDU model is an obvious next step in the fight to end this tragic epidemic.”
Thomas Kerr
Professor Kerr wrote “given the importance of this DULF/VANDU initiative, members of the Division of Social Medicine, including myself, are prepared to make major in-kind contributions to support the evaluation of this project. Our division members have committed to giving their time, in-kind, to ensure a robust evaluation is implemented and undertaken in partnership with DULF/VANDU members.”
Underscoring the importance of research, the application for exemption stated “given that safe supply interventions have only recently begun to be implemented, and given that we are proposing a novel approach to safe supply programming, we believe it is important to undertake a rigorous evaluation of our efforts.”
And “if an exemption were to be granted, Thomas Kerr of the UBC Department of Medicine, Division of Social Medicine, has expressed interest in pursuing this evaluation.”
A detailed study protocol and ethics framework were posted publicly, prepared by a research team including Kerr, Nyx, and Kalicum.
The authors wrote: “The following ethics framework was submitted to, and approved by, a community ethics board consisting of VANDU board members, and other people with lived and living experience (PWLLE) on July 23rd 2022.”
The study summary described two major components: quarterly questionnaires and in-depth interviews with “compassion club” members.
About one week later, on July 29, Health Canada denied the legal exemption, cautioning “if… you proceed with the DULF and VANDU evaluative compassion club model, including the purchase of controlled substances over the dark web and provision of those substances to compassion club members, you will be in violation of the CDSA.”
Fatefully, the DULF evaluation collaborators were unbowed and carried out their planned activities regardless of illegality.
Perhaps some believed a point of no return had been crossed. Too much had been risked by too many people.
Subsequent publications confirm that the research plan that had been rejected by Health Canada was implemented immediately and continued from August 2, 2022 until October 24, 2023 when DULF was raided by Vancouver Police, and Nyx and Kalicum were arrested.
Ethics of studying illicit drug trafficking
Science involving human participants needs to be reviewed and approved by an institutional Research Ethics Board (REB) before any activity or data collection can commence.
I’ve held positions on both sides of this process, serving on several REBs and also designing and publishing complex research projects addressing addiction. REB approval is required before spending research funding, a condition of employment as a researcher and a prerequisite to publishing findings in scientific journals.
The UBC and DULF investigators were clearly aware of these responsibilities, having prepared an ethics application in 2022 for review by community members.
But how would a university REB respond to a proposal that involves buying illegal drugs from the dark web and dispensing them for personal use in unspecified amounts and combinations?
Some of the issues that would need to be considered are: Should funds from taxpayers be used for illegal transactions in the name of research? Are there any better-established forms of intervention that researchers should consider offering to potential participants? How could researchers ensure the safety of participants and prevent drugs from being diverted?
And how would an REB address the fact that Health Canada had already reviewed and denied the “proposed evaluation framework” as both dangerous and illegal?
On Feb. 22, 2024, the International Journal of Drug Policy published a manuscript based on quarterly questionnaires, as described in the 2022 DULF/BCCSU study summary.
“The Drug User Liberation Front opened an unsanctioned compassion club in Vancouver where
International Journal of Drug Policy article
members could purchase illicit drugs…”
Among the results, 47 per cent of participants reported experiencing at least one non-fatal overdose event during the study period and 55 per cent of participants reported diverting their drugs at least once during the study follow up. There is no description of the recipients of diverted drugs or whether they also experienced high rates of poisoning.
The paper’s authors include Kerr, Nyx and Kalicum, all of whom list institutional affiliations with the University of British Columbia. But UBC’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board (BREB) didn’t receive the protocol or review it in advance.
Instead, the authors report that they received approval from the BREB for a “secondary analysis” of data from DULF.
Bluntly, this makes no sense.
Secondary analysis refers to circumstances when researchers obtain data that were collected for an original (primary) purpose so that they can be analyzed for another (secondary) purpose. Common examples include analyses of pharmacy records, diagnostic data or crime statistics.
But that’s not what happened here. In fact, the authors of the IJDP article claim responsibility for the “conceptualization” of their study and were clearly presenting one component of their 2022 study design.
Then another article on DULF’s evaluation was published Dec. 31, 2024 in the journal PLOS ONE. This paper presented results from the interview component of the study and provided more explicit details concerning the authors’ responsibilities.
“Collectively, the authors of this study developed a semi-structured interview guide.” Two UBC professors provided research space: “JB [Jeanette Bowles] and TK [Thomas Kerr] facilitated interviews in private offices.”
Participants received $40 cash for each interview and Kerr alone is credited with “conceptualization,” “funding acquisition,” and “supervision.”
The article states: “This study and all study materials were approved by the University of British Columbia Research Ethics Board” and “participants reviewed the informed consent document and were offered a hard copy.”
Red flags galore in research ethics
How could UBC regard one component of the DULF study as a “secondary analysis” alongside another component that involved interviews designed by UBC researchers and where UBC faculty provided space and supervision to Nyx and Kalicum? The answer involves reviews conducted by separate ethics committees.
Dr. Karen Bartlett Chairs UBC’s BREB and advised that the second review was conducted by a UBC-affiliated REB based at Providence Health Care. Kerr is listed as an hoc member of the Providence REB, representing HIV/AIDS.
Bartlett did not confirm whether the BREB had received the study summary or ethics framework attributed to Kerr, Nyx and Kalicum, and approved by VANDU in July 2022. However, she emphasized that “the evaluation…was only conducted by DULF.” As well, that “UBC researchers, specifically Thomas Kerr, were not involved in any of the primary data collection” and that “the data had already been collected.”
To sledgehammer her point home, she added “it is clear that D.U.L.F. members were solely responsible for the conceptualization of the evaluation.”
“it is clear that D.U.L.F. members were solely responsible for the conceptualization of the evaluation.”
Karen Bartlett
As I read her letter I heard the sound of Nyx and Kalicum being thrown under a bus.
I then wrote to Dr. Kuo-Hsing Kuo, Chair of the Providence REB, asking whether his committee was aware of the federal government’s assessment that “Health Canada cannot approve your proposed model of purchasing drugs over the dark web because of the associated public health and safety risks.”
I also requested a copy of the study’s informed consent form.
As of this writing, he has not replied.
Last ditch attempt to keep legalization on the table
In July 2024, almost a year after the DULF raid and arrests by Vancouver police, Dr. Henry’s office released another report focused on drug poisonings. In her introduction she expressed the “hope that this report will be received with open-mindedness,” followed by six pages titled “Unlearning and Undoing White Supremacy and Anti-Indigenous Racism in BC’s Office of the Provincial Health Officer.”
The report’s centrepiece was a call for ways to distribute addictive drugs without a prescription, and featured DULF as an illustration.
“A [DULF] program evaluation included self-reported improvements in the health and
PHO Alternatives to unregulated drugs report, 2024
well-being of club members.”
The Eby government declined Henry’s recommendation and critics denounced the plan as “radical,” while others were puzzled by the PHO’s hardline stance, particularly because the province’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, had previously made similar recommendations that were immediately rejected by the provincial government.
The PHO’s timing might be more understandable if her report was meant to build on the academic articles on DULF as part of a concerted push to keep “safe supply” and legalization in the ascendancy with mainstream media and the public.
In the same month, Maclean’s magazine featured a lengthy article sympathetic to DULF’s activities, touting their “year-long study, developed by the research director of the BC Centre on Substance Use and a Canada Research Chair in Substance Use Policy at UBC,” adding “the lengthy surveys were administered quarterly by a team of trained interviewers, including Nyx and Kalicum.”
Perhaps the PHO wanted to provide material that could assist Nyx and Kalicum in their legal defence. After all, her office was among the many powerful public health and elected leaders that supported DULF’s activities and thereby owns a share of responsibility for their alleged crimes.
It would have been a faint hope.
In the late summer of 2023 Oregon, the first North America jurisdiction to experiment with the decriminalization of drug possession, reversed course and reintroduced legal penalties.
The policy tide was shifting.
A brutal unravelling of ‘safe’ supply narrative
By late 2024, no jurisdictions were “looking to BC for leadership and guidance” on the drug crisis.
As a result of the PHO’s intransigent misguidedness, and the years of support she had from the province’s elected government officials, B.C. had made no progress preventing addiction, implementing standards for treatment, building a system of care to support recovery, or meaningfully measuring and reporting progress.
Meanwhile, throughout 2024, numerous drug user groups across the province reportedly continued to receive public funding, and B.C. officials – including the PHO, the ministers of health, addiction, public safety and the Premier himself – repeatedly and implausibly denied an association between government-funded “safe supply” and substantial public harms.
Scientists and journalists who raised concerns about “safe supply” were gaslit and vilified, and in my case, forced by the provincial government to destroy evidence, abandon approved research, and release scientists conducting critical work that threatened the government’s agenda.
Far worse, the denials and attacks gave the province more time to expand “safe supply,” allowing harms to metastasize.
At last, in early 2025, a leaked government report acknowledged what elected and public officials had long denied – the safe supply program was not only causing widespread harms, but those harms had been deliberately concealed.
Time for truth, reconciliation and real reform
Many are now calling for a well-justified inquiry.
Multiple public agencies and office-holders are now implicated in enabling drug diversion, violating ethical safeguards, ordering the destruction of scientific data, and having conflicts of interest. An inquiry should identify the specific abuses that collectively gave rise to the current catastrophe.
It should also pinpoint where standards must be strengthened to prevent similar abuses. Examples might include legislating a Canadian sunshine act and auditing public spending on addiction services and research to ensure alignment with the public’s interest.
Last, it should enjoin citizens to build consensus on sound opportunities to fundamentally improve public policies and services. New policies could draw on the large body of evidence that details effective ways to prevent and promote recovery from addiction.
B.C.’s toxic policies are at the root of a generational crisis in mortality and suffering.
We must summon the courage to pursue truth, reconciliation and real reform. We do these things in the memory of all who were lost or harmed, and in the service of our children and the many individuals and communities that urgently need help today.