'IT DIDN'T WORK': Eby says BC 'not going back' to drug decriminalization after pilot ends

VANCOUVER — Premier David Eby has made it clear British Columbia will not be giving drug decriminalization another go after the three-year pilot concludes on January 31.He said the province is working with federal officials to figure out the best path forward, and will have more information to share in the coming weeks.."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," Eby said during a press conference in Vancouver on Tuesday. "It didn't work.".WATCH: Eby admits he was 'wrong' on drug decriminalization.In October of 2025, Eby admitted on stage at an event hosted by the Urban Development Institute in Vancouver that he was "wrong" on decriminalization."I wasn't alone — but it wasn't the right policy," he said. "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.".In the months since, the chorus of opposition to the policy has grown in size and intensity. One of its fiercest opponents, Independent MLA Elenore Sturko, recently called on Eby to disclose the impacts of decriminalization..EXCLUSIVE: Sturko calls on Eby to come clean on impacts of decriminalization as experiment nears end."If this was a premier who was committed to doing the right thing for British Columbians," she told the Western Standard, "we would have a full public inquiry on how we came to be in a place where so-called experts and bureaucrats within the NDP's government framework ignored blatant evidence of harm on communities while calling critics liars and accusing them of spreading misinformation, and only really changed their policy direction when the public found out after the document was leaked.".On Tuesday, Eby answered those calls when pressed by the Western Standard, explaining that concurrent studies supported by public health officials at the provincial and federal level analyzing the impacts of decriminalization have been conducted. "The intent is to release that data," he added.Ottawa granted British Columbia a temporary exemption to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use in 2023. At the time, the province celebrated it as a "critical step toward reducing the shame and fear associated with substance use."