VANCOUVER, British Columbia (LifeSiteNews) –British Columbia Premier David Eby was forced to admit that a drug decriminalization trial in his province, which was implemented with the full backing of Canada’s ruling federal Liberal Party, was a failure and “didn’t work.”
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Eby said that the three-year pilot legalizing small quantities of hard drugs such as crack, regular cocaine, and heroin, which ends January 31, will not be renewed.
“We’re working closely with the federal government on this, but let me be clear, we are not going back to the old policy of decriminalized public drug use,” he said.
“It didn’t work.”
In the fall of 2025, Eby admitted that allowing the decriminalization of hard drugs in British Columbia via a federal pilot program was a mistake and not “the right policy.”
“What it became was a permissive structure that, in the effort to reduce stigma that it was ok to use drugs anywhere, resulted in really unhappy consequences not just in British Columbia but other jurisdictions that attempted this,” he said at the time.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has called such sites “drug dens” and has blasted them as being “disasters” and not “safe.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews in December, Canada’s Department of Health confirmed that taxpayer dollars were used to fund the purchase of drug paraphernalia such as crack pipes and other items permitted under the Liberal government’s “Safe Supply” program.
Official figures show that overdoses went up during the decriminalization trial, with 3,313 deaths over 15 months, compared with 2,843 in the same time frame before drugs were temporarily legalized.
Recently reported by LifeSiteNews, so-called “safe” drug injection sites do not require a minimum distance from schools, daycares, or even playgrounds, Health Canada has stated.
Records show that the Liberal government under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent approximately $820 million from 2017 to 2022 on its Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy. However, even Canada’s Department of Health admitted in a 2023 report that the Liberals’ drug program only had “minimal” results.
Recently, LifeSiteNews reported that the British Columbia government decided to stop a so-called “safe supply” free drug program in light of a report revealing that many of the hard drugs distributed via pharmacies were resold on the black market.
