Books have the funny function of canonizing events. Politics, when written down, becomes history. Former Mayor of Vancouver Kennedy Stewart’s new book, Decrim: How We Decriminalized Drugs in British Columbia, serves as a snapshot of a specific moment in time that already feels like it’s slipping away.

In broad strokes, Decrim gives us Stewart’s backstory as an MP in Ottawa for Burnaby South (currently occupied by Jagmeet Singh), his decision to run for mayor, and the troubles he found actually trying to run a city with a comparatively limited political system. The meat comes from his attempts to pass drug decriminalization, intermingled with his personal experience of addiction and loss within his family—things I don’t remember him speaking publicly about when he was in office.

The decrim plan, as Stewart tells it, started off as a municipal policy. The City sent their preliminary submission to Health Canada in March 2021, asking for a city-wide exemption to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. You can see the commonalities between what eventually passed in the provincial legislature and his description: “The proposed ‘Vancouver Model’ would set personal carry-threshold amounts, and would make referrals to addiction and health services voluntary and free of ticketing by police.”

But, according to Stewart, the provincial government was largely not part of the legwork—perhaps due to the spiciest revelation in the book: long-standing beef between former BC Premier John Horgan and Stewart. The province-wide decrim only happened after Vancouver had done most of the work in trying to create city-wide decriminalization. A federal election, cabinet shuffle, and David Eby’s introduction as premier all served to wiggle the political agenda in such a way that it became more convenient for the Province to also support the motion.

A version of what was originally Vancouver’s decrim plan came into effect on January 31, 2023. The three-year pilot removed criminal penalties for possessing 2.5 grams or less of a list of specific illicit substances. Health researchers recommended higher quantities, and drug user liberation organizations suggested even higher still. In Decrim, Stewart says the limits were essentially set by the police: the force supported decrim, but only in small quantities.

When the Province created their own plan, they suggested a cumulative limit of 4.5 grams—which the police balked at, as Vancouver had already experienced.

“Minister [for mental health and addictions Carolyn] Bennett … asked me why we did not apply for a higher carry threshold, and I told her that we had already altered our initial application to include higher thresholds, but had had to revert to our original limits after police threatened to withdraw their support for the City’s application,” Stewart writes in the book. Elsewhere, he’s even clearer about the sway that police held in drug policy: “While the federal government could more or less ignore drug user advocates, it would never approve an exemption to which the police were opposed.”

That rub also somewhat explains Stewart’s tone through Decrim, which, while advocating for decriminalization, increased harm reduction, and scaled-up safe supply, is nonetheless quite critical of groups like VANDU (The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users). When these groups responded to initial decrim plans with scorn, Stewart moans, “the extreme backlash endangered the entire endeavour.”

Given what’s happened since January, it’s pretty obvious that the biggest threat to progressive drug policy comes from the right—what with Aaron Gunn’s polemic Vancouver is Dying and Pierre Polievre ratcheting up attacks on safe supply.

Drug user advocates have been fighting to stop the misinformation, alongside pushing for expanded life-saving policies, for much of this year; meanwhile, the number of people accessing medicalized safe supply has dropped, and BC United (formerly the BC Liberals) have gone hard in attacking government funding for life-saving services operated by drug user groups. 

And even in the last couple of months, the political tide seems to have turned. The Province banned drug use near playgrounds in September; provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry promised the BC Union of Municipalities that changes to decrim would be coming; and then, last week, Premier Eby announced a bill that would ban drug use in many other public spaces. (If someone overdoses outside, they’re more likely to be found and helped. Many towns and cities throughout BC don’t have adequate safe consumption facilities or supervised consumption sites, so cracking down on public drug use may lead to more people using alone, indoors, without someone around to help reverse a potential overdose.)

Critics say the move guts decrim: “What use is decriminalizing the possession of drugs, even at an inappropriate quantity, when consuming those same drugs has been made illegal across the province?” write Tyson Singh Kelsall and Vince Tao in an op-ed for the Straight.

The policy that Stewart cared about so much that he wrote a whole book about it is being picked away, and he hasn’t publicly said a thing.

When I first read Decrim in August, I wasn’t sure who it was for. Policy wonks? Health researchers? Stewart himself, who spends a decent chunk of the word count insisting he’s definitely left-wing? But a week in politics is a long time; two months is even longer. And the book makes more sense now that decriminalization is imperilled.

Decrim, read through today’s lens, is a reminder of how fragile policy is. How an imperfect compromise can take years to brew, only to be unravelled in weeks or months. It’s not the most engaging read: as a long-time politics professor, Stewart tends to write prose that leans towards dry, though it is fairly accessible in its discussion of complex ideas. He does a good job of explaining the physical, emotional, economic, and social benefits of reforming drug policy to be less punitive.

It’s unlikely to convert any ardent believers on either side. If you favour an Alberta-style model of forced treatment and police intervention, you probably won’t be swayed. And Stewart spends enough time decrying drug user groups that diehard progressives likely won’t buy his appeals for practicality and compromise. But Decrim lays out what happened, when, and why. Stewart describes different political configurations as windows opening or closing; provincial decrim happened when there was a perfect storm of good conditions, backed by extensive behind-the-scenes work and preparation. 

The window might feel like it’s currently closing on BC’s attempts to radically change how we deal with the war on drugs. But Decrim suggests that it might not be long before it opens again.