Last year, British Columbia (BC) became the first province in Canada to decriminalise the use of hard drugs as part of its efforts to tackle a deadly opioids crisis. But the policy is facing pushback, leaving its future uncertain.

Every Monday, former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart would receive an email listing all the people who had died in the city from a drug overdose the previous week.

One day, three years ago, that list included the name of a relative – his brother-in-law’s sister, Susan Havelock.

“She died out here on the street at two o’clock in the morning,” Mr Stewart told the BBC at his office in Downtown Vancouver, pointing out the window.

“When it gets in your family, you begin to see how desperate this whole situation is.”

North America is in the midst of a toxic drug crisis. Fatal overdoses peaked above 112,000 in the US for the first time last year.

In Canada, nowhere is this issue felt more acutely than in BC, where the crisis was first declared a public health emergency in 2016. Last year, the province saw a record of more than 2,500 overdose deaths.

About 225,000 people are estimated to use illegal drugs in BC, and experts say a toxic street drug supply – laced with fentanyl and other products – places each of them at risk of death.

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