Police drug seizures increased during the first year of British Columbia’s drug decriminalization pilot project, according to a study released Wednesday by Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Under the pilot, police were not supposed to arrest or charge people for possessing up to 2.5 grams of certain illicit drugs for personal use. The initiative was intended to reduce interactions between police and people who use drugs.

“Instead, our study found a significant upward trend of police drug seizures without making arrest,” said Kanna Hayashi, co-author of the study, professor of health sciences at SFU and St. Paul’s Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research.

According to the study, Vancouver police reported no possession seizures involving less than 2.5 grams between February and October 2023. However, self-reported data from people who use drugs painted a different picture.

Researchers said police-reported statistics only capture incidents that officers documented as drug possession-related interactions, whether or not an arrest occurred.

“Our data may have some overlaps with the police-reported data but likely captured events that did not go on to the police records as well,” Hayashi said. “Each dataset is incomplete on its own but offer deeper insights when viewed together.”

The decriminalization pilot ended in January 2026.

The survey-based study, published in the journal BMC Public Health, analyzed data from 490 participants in the Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study (VIDUS) collected between March 2022 and February 2024.

Before the pilot began, between 0.8 and 2.1 per cent of participants reported having drugs seized without arrest. During decriminalization, that figure increased to between 1.1 and 4.1 per cent, according to the study.

Researchers also found that people who reported having their drugs seized without arrest were three times more likely to experience a non-fatal overdose.

“In a toxic drug-supply crisis, losing a drug supply can have serious consequences,” Hayashi said.

“People may feel they need to replace those drugs immediately. If you’re rushing to get new drugs from an unknown source and then rushing to use them to avoid withdrawal symptoms, it may increase the risk of overdose.”

The findings aligned with concerns raised by people with lived experience, said Scotty Archondous, a researcher-member with Police Oversight with Evidence and Research (P.O.W.E.R.).

“As a community-based researcher across multiple projects, I heard directly from many people about their experiences of drug seizures of their personal supply during decriminalization,” said Archondous, who is also a board member of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU).

“We already live so precariously, and these seizures, often without charges or arrest, put our lives at higher risk of violence and harm based on what comes next: debts, desperation and sometimes disrupted access to a trusted source.”

SFU researchers said the experiences of people who use drugs should be considered alongside police-reported statistics when evaluating the impacts of decriminalization policies.

“Even though the pilot has ended, it’s important to understand what happened and what can be improved,” Hayashi said. “Those lessons can help shape future decriminalization policies here and elsewhere.”