Last week, Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum, two members of DULF—or the Drug User Liberation Front—were found guilty of drug trafficking charges in the B.C. Supreme Court.
DULF was co-founded by Nyx and Kalicum as a response to Vancouver’s toxic drug crisis. Between January 2016 and March 2025, nearly 54,000 people died of opioid overdoses in Canada according to reported data. Vancouver has been particularly hard hit by the crisis. An increasingly toxic drug supply has contributed to more than 4,000 opioid overdose deaths in the city since 2016 alone.
In an attempt to save lives, DULF formed a compassion club in 2022 and used donated funds to buy cocaine, meth and heroin off of the dark web. They tested these drugs to ensure no toxicity, then sold them at cost to their 47 club members in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. The club ran for more than a year and, during that time, DULF collected data for several research papers meant to study the effectiveness of this radical, non-medicalized harm-reduction intervention. Throughout that period, not a single club member overdosed and died.
Their work represented a radical, non-medicalized approach to harm reduction.
Last Friday, after their case had made its way through B.C.’s courts system, Nyx and Kalicum were found guilty of drug trafficking. Despite the conviction, the judge presiding over the case stated in her ruling that “DULF’s pilot project worked.”
The legal battle isn’t over. DULF has mounted a constitutional challenge, which will begin in court on Nov. 24. The pair is continuing to fundraise for legal costs.
Script managing editor Ziya Jones was in Vancouver this fall, working on a forthcoming story about DULF, and the state of the harm reduction movement in Canada. Here, they explain what this conviction means, and how DULF’s constitutional challenge could alter Canada’s drug policy and legal landscape.
This story is a collaboration between Xtra and our new sister site Script, which covers everything you need to know about LGBTQ2S+ health.
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