RUSTAD: There is no dignity in addiction. There is no future in handing out the very substances killing people.

So now we’ve reached a point in British Columbia where people literally caught buying heroin, cocaine, and meth on the dark web… testing it… packaging it… and selling it on the street are not only fighting the charges, but launching a constitutional challenge arguing they had the right to run their own drug-trafficking operation because government policy wasn’t moving fast enough for them.

You can’t make this up.

You can’t fabricate a clearer indictment of what the NDP has created in this province.

A pair of activists, backed for a time by public money, let’s not forget, set up what they proudly called a “compassion club.” They bought hard drugs online. They tested them. They labelled them. And then they sold them. That’s trafficking. Not metaphorically. Not philosophically. Legally.

And after being convicted, their response isn’t remorse or accountability, it’s a challenge arguing that the drug laws themselves are unconstitutional because enforcing them “kills people.”

This is what happens when a government normalizes the idea that the way to solve addiction is to make the drugs easier to access. When you adopt the logic that criminal laws, not poison supply, are the problem, you get organizations who believe they’re morally entitled to break the law because the law is somehow the villain.

We need to end this NDP experiment because if British Columbia wants out of this nightmare, the answer is not “compassion clubs,” not activists playing pharmacist, not constitutionalizing drug sales, but reversing these failed laws, restoring consequences, and delivering mandatory, trauma-informed, evidence-based treatment, because the alternative is exactly what we’re living through right now.

Let’s talk about the absurdity for a second;
They asked Health Canada for permission to buy heroin, cocaine, and meth on the dark web. Health Canada, in an extremely rare moment of clarity said “absolutely not.” They did it anyway. And now they’re claiming the law discriminates against them because addiction counts as a disability.

So according to them, trafficking is not a crime, it’s a form of care. Selling meth isn’t exploitation, it’s inclusion. And enforcing the law isn’t public safety, it’s oppression.

This is exactly the worldview the NDP has been feeding for years.

Meanwhile, 158 people died of overdoses in September alone, five funerals every single day,  because the province refuses to acknowledge what every family who’s lost someone already knows:
There is no dignity in addiction. There is no future in handing out the very substances killing people.

And legitimizing traffickers, whether they’re wearing masks or academic titles  only deepens the crisis.
This constitutional challenge is what you get when a government signals, over and over, that the real villains are the laws, not the dealers. That enforcement is cruel. That boundaries are colonial. That consequences are optional.

Enough, because if British Columbia wants out of this nightmare, the answer is not “compassion clubs,” not activists playing pharmacist, not constitutionalizing drug sales, but reversing these failed laws, restoring consequences, and delivering mandatory, trauma-informed, evidence-based treatment, because the alternative is exactly what we’re living through right now.


John Rustad is the MLA for Nechako Lakes and the Leader of the Official Opposition Conservative Party of BC.