A drug lawyer defends you against charges under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Counsel protects your right to silence and to a lawyer, argues for release on bail, tests the Crown’s disclosure and lab evidence, challenges unlawful searches, and negotiates a resolution where the evidence allows.
The first hours after a drug arrest decide more than most people expect. What you say at the roadside or in the back of a cruiser becomes evidence. Whether you spend the weekend in custody often turns on what your lawyer can put together before the bail hearing, not on the strength of the charge itself.
With more than three decades of experience defending Toronto area clients against drug charges, the criminal defence drug lawyers of Mass Tsang LLP take on CDSA files from the arrest through to resolution. Some end in a withdrawal or a negotiated outcome. Others are fought at trial on the quality of the Crown’s evidence. Either way, the work that decides them starts long before a courtroom.
Drug offences are not in Canada’s Criminal Code. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) creates them, and the Act works off lists. Hundreds of substances are set out in schedules attached to it, grouped according to their perceived threat to the public. Schedule I holds the substances treated most seriously, including cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin and other opioids. Hallucinogens such as LSD and psilocybin are listed under Schedule III. Depressants and anabolic steroids fall under Schedule IV.
Two things drive your exposure: which schedule the substance falls under, and what you are alleged to have done with it. Simple possession under section 4(1) reaches Schedules I, II and III only. Where the substance is a Schedule I drug, possession carries a maximum of seven years when the Crown proceeds by indictment. Trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking are charged under section 5 , and where a Schedule I or II substance is involved, the maximum is life imprisonment. Importing, exporting and production carry that same life maximum for those schedules under sections 6 and 7.
Those figures are ceilings, not forecasts. What a court actually imposes turns on the quantity, the role you are alleged to have played, your record, and aggravating factors such as weapons or proximity to a school. The sentencing range for serious drug offences is a separate question from the maximum printed in the Act, and it is the question that usually matters.
If Ontario police arrest you for drug charges, contact a drug criminal defence lawyer as soon as possible and before you make any statements to police or prosecutors. Section 10(b) of the Charter gives you the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay, and to be told that you have it. That call is not a formality. It is the point at which somebody acting for you explains what you are not obliged to account for.
Most of the damage in a drug file is self-inflicted and happens early. An explanation offered to sound cooperative, a phone unlocked to seem like you have nothing to hide, a question answered in the cells. As you may have heard on television shows, “anything you say can be used against you” in court. It is one of the few television lines about Canadian criminal procedure that holds up.
If you are facing pre-trial custody, your defence lawyer should first initiate negotiations for your release or refer you to a bail hearing lawyer who can advocate for your release during the judicial interim release (bail) process. Section 515 of the Criminal Code starts from release: the justice is to release you without conditions unless the prosecutor shows cause for something more.
Drug charges are one of the places where that default flips. Where you are charged with an offence punishable by life under sections 5 to 7 of the CDSA, the onus moves to you to show why your detention is not justified. That is a hearing your lawyer has to arrive at with a plan rather than an argument: a surety who will actually be accepted, an address, conditions that answer the specific risk the Crown has raised.
Getting you released from pre-trial custody is essential because it otherwise impedes your ability to help your lawyer strategize an effective defence.
Because of the variety of drug offences and the wide range of scenarios that can lead to charges, your criminal defence lawyer can turn to many different defences or other legal strategies designed to avoid a conviction or otherwise limit the penalties. The first thing your lawyer will need from you is a complete account of what happened before, during, and after the arrest. Your lawyer will need any relevant documents, texts, emails, cell phone records, photographs, or other potential evidence, and the contact information of anyone who may be able to support your narrative.
Running alongside that is disclosure. The Crown is obliged to hand over the relevant material in its possession: the officers’ notes, the stated grounds for the search, the warrant and the information sworn to obtain it, any video, the analyst’s report on the substance. Your lawyer reads that against your account, and the distance between the two versions is where most drug defences are found. Disclosure that arrives incomplete is itself something to litigate, because you cannot answer a case you have not been shown.
Your lawyer will likely try to negotiate a reasonable settlement if the Crown’s evidence seems weak or flawed or if the charges mark a first-time offence. If your lawyer believes they may be able to negotiate dismissal, reduced charges, absolute or conditional discharge , or other favourable outcomes, they may recommend that you enroll in substance abuse counselling or take other actions to support the negotiations.
Parliament has also written a diversion path into the Act. Since 2022, section 10.2 has required a peace officer weighing a simple possession charge to first consider taking no further action, giving a warning, or, with the person’s consent, referring them to a treatment program or community service provider. Section 10.1 explains the reasoning: problematic substance use is to be addressed primarily as a health and social issue, and judicial resources are better spent on offences that pose a risk to public safety. A warning or referral cannot later be used to prove prior offending behaviour. Where a charge has already been laid, that stated policy is something your lawyer can put in front of the Crown when asking for the file to be reconsidered.
Absent the ability to negotiate a reasonable settlement, your lawyer will need to raise an effective defence at trial, with defence strategies dependent upon the type of charges and distinct circumstances of the case.
Being near drugs is not the same as possessing them. The CDSA takes its definition of possession from subsection 4(3) of the Criminal Code : you possess something when you have it in your personal possession, or when you knowingly have it in another person’s custody, or in any place, for your own use or benefit or someone else’s. Knowledge and control are what the Crown has to establish, along with proof that the substance is one of the scheduled controlled substances.
That is why so many drug trials come down to whose bag it was. Your lawyer might raise a reasonable doubt by showing that you did not know the drug was in your possession, that you had no control over it, or that you did not know the substance was a drug. Where several people are charged over the same drugs, paragraph 4(3)(b) adds a further hurdle for the Crown: joint possession is made out only where the others had knowledge of the drugs, consented to their presence, and had some measure of control over them.
Parliament has also written a diversion path into the Act. Since 2022, section 10.2 has required a peace officer weighing a simple possession charge to first consider taking no further action, giving a warning, or, with the person’s consent, referring them to a treatment program or community service provider. Section 10.1 explains the reasoning: problematic substance use is to be addressed primarily as a health and social issue, and judicial resources are better spent on offences that pose a risk to public safety. A warning or referral cannot later be used to prove prior offending behaviour. Where a charge has already been laid, that stated policy is something your lawyer can put in front of the Crown when asking for the file to be reconsidered.
Your lawyer may also be able to challenge whether the Crown can prove the substance is listed on a CDSA schedule. The exhibit goes to an analyst, and section 51 of the Act makes that analyst’s certificate or report admissible in evidence and, absent evidence to the contrary, proof of what it says. That is a shortcut for the Crown, not a formality you have to accept. Continuity of the exhibit, how it was handled and weighed, and what the certificate actually states are all open to challenge, and your lawyer may seek the court’s leave to require the analyst to attend for cross-examination.
While researching the details of your case, your lawyer will also closely examine police and prosecutor conduct during their investigation and your arrest to determine whether they violated your Charter rights. These violations often arise during the search and seizure of drugs, whether with or without a warrant. Section 8 of the Charter is one line long, guaranteeing everyone the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, and the fight is over whether the officers had grounds, whether the warrant was properly obtained, and whether the search stayed inside its limits. Where officers acted without a warrant at all , the questions are narrower and harder for the Crown.
Where a breach is established, section 24(2) allows the judge to exclude the evidence if admitting it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. In a drug prosecution the evidence at stake is usually the drugs themselves, which is why search challenges carry so much weight in these files.
Last, if evidence suggests that the police played any role in getting you to instigate the offence, your lawyer might also raise the “ entrapment defence .” In general, though, criminal defence lawyers only turn to this defence when there is obvious evidence of police misconduct.
A conviction on drug-related charges in Ontario might lead to severe penalties and significant disruption to your life. The earlier a lawyer sees the file, the more of it is still open to argument: a statement not yet given, a bail plan not yet lost, disclosure not yet taken at face value.
As such, you cannot afford to defend drug charges without the expertise of skilled criminal defence drug lawyers, such as those at Mass Tsang. With decades of success in securing positive outcomes for our Greater Toronto Area clients, contact us for a free consultation.
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Legally Reviewed by
Jeff Mass
| Updated: October 1, 2026
