In October 2025, Statistics Canada released a report highlighting the country’s police-reported drug offences. Noteworthy among its findings was that after 12 consecutive years of decline, the rate of police-reported drug crime in Canada increased 13% from 2023 to 2024: the largest increases came from simple drug possession (i.e. having or holding a small amount of drugs for your own personal use), followed by trafficking (i.e. selling or providing drugs to another person). This is despite reforms over the past five years requiring federal law enforcement to explore alternatives to criminal charges for simple possession, as well as several provinces claiming to have decriminalised or deprioritised charges for this offence.
This does not surprise us. Findings from our recent study with people who use drugs (PWUD), harm reduction workers, lawyers, and drug policy experts show that those facing the most profound forms of marginalisation continue to be criminally charged for possession, particularly if they are Black, Indigenous, poor, or unhoused. These charges destabilise and can affect people’s housing, access to their children, and even employment. For someone doing shift work in the community, for example, requirements to see their parole officer or routinely check in at court can seriously disrupt their work schedule and, accordingly, deprive them of desperately needed funds.
Even years later, as one of the interviewed lawyers noted “good luck trying to find a job that’s not going to really ask you for a criminal record check”.
The Statistics Canada report also described how drug trafficking charges now account for a far larger proportion of the country’s overall reported drug offences compared to a decade ago. The experiences of our study participants reflected this trend too. Multiple respondents noted that police focusing on drug selling or supplying has contributed to “up charging” — meaning more serious charges are laid in the absence of a viable lesser charge, in this case, simple drug possession. When we interviewed criminal defence lawyers, they too shared that possession charges are seemingly being replaced with the aggressive pursuit of drug trafficking charges:
“There aren’t a lot of simple possession charges going around anymore. But that doesn’t mean that there are fewer drug charges, they’re just [possession for the purpose of trafficking] charges now.”
The complex reality of drug use
Trafficking charges are often based on the amount of drugs a person is caught carrying, the presence of scales, separated packages, cutting agents, and large sums of cash on a person or their property. However, our study revealed numerous reasons why people who possess drugs for their own use might engage in these practices — including for their own and others’ health, safety, and economic security.
Indeed, someone might buy a substantial quantity for financial reasons (as one said, “The more bulk you buy, the cheaper it gets”); due to housing instability (“If you are not living at a fixed address, you don’t know when you’re going to be able to see your guy… you will buy more,” shared one harm reduction worker); and to lessen the risk of public encounters with police (“… if I just buy in bulk, I can just stay at home, right?”).
Further, many people use scales to measure out suitable doses to reduce overdose risk, or to ensure a fair transaction when buying drugs: one person told us “I’ll use my scale just to verify the amount is correct”. Storing drugs in separate packages can also minimise the risk of robbery and help differentiate drugs of varying potency or composition, helping avoid inadvertently consuming a different drug or an excess quantity of drugs. As one person who uses drugs said:
“I have different kinds of crack, so they’re in different little packages. … I remember what’s what and they’re not all mixed together.”
Some people also share or buy drugs for friends, often motivated by care, to prevent painful withdrawal, or to reduce the possibility of overdose through a known or trusted supply. Clearly, the perceived binaries between people who use drugs and those who supply them are blurred in practice.
Numerous study participants also shared how a focus on trafficking and the resulting police seizure of drugs destabilises supply and pushes people to riskier markets, a topic increasingly explored in research. This is because seizures interrupt access to known and trusted sources of drugs, induce withdrawal symptoms, increase engagement with the unregulated drug market, and often force people to access an unfamiliar supply that may be more potent.
What can we make of the latest data from Statistics Canada?
Any claims that Canadian drug policy has softened in the past few years needs to be challenged with evidence, when the opposite is actually happening, especially as provincial governments call for a return to more punitive responses to drug use. Tens of thousands of people continue to be caught in the harmful web of prohibition, and the toxic drug crisis continues to claim thousands of lives annually.
Policymakers have a choice. On one hand, they can embrace an approach based on empirical data, social justice, and human rights. As our study participants shared, this means overhauling our current drug laws and replacing them with a rights-based legal framework rooted in public health. This would reduce the fear and barriers faced by people who use drugs when accessing supports.
On the other, they can continue to enforce a failed criminalisation model that advances neither public health nor public safety, that led to this public health crisis in the first place, and pursue a model that forces people who use drugs to continue enduring terrible costs to their health, well-being, safety, and liberty.
