International Overdose Awareness Day is being marked with ceremonies across B.C. on Sunday, as the province continues to lose more than 100 people each month due to unregulated drugs amid a public health emergency stretching back nine years.
The day, first commemorated in 2001, aims to break the stigma surrounding drugs and addiction while raising awareness about overdose prevention and drug policy.
In B.C., where more than 16,000 people have died due to illicit drugs since a public health emergency was declared in 2016, the day is a poignant reminder of the human toll of a crisis that has become highly politicized.
Guy Felicella, a former drug user who is now an outreach worker and harm reduction advocate in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said that Sunday was a day to honour people whose deaths could have been prevented.
“We have to make sure that we we stop this division that’s created by political opportunism or, you know, votes, off of the lives of people that are struggling, and start working together,” he told CBC News.
“This isn’t a partisan issue,” he added. “This is bipartisan and we should all be working together significantly because if we don’t, sadly, this is just going to continue.”
The toxic drug crisis, and especially harm reduction services for drug users, have become political flashpoints.
Some politicians have criticized services such as safe consumption sites, saying they don’t help people recover from addiction.
Instead, they have pushed for more recovery programs, even as advocates and medical professionals argue supervised consumption sites save lives.
Felicella said he wants to see services for drug users scaled up immediately, and said there’s still stigma standing in the way of of doing what’s necessary to save lives.
“The government has made significant strides in recovery services over the last few years, which is great,” he said.
“But still, with addiction being a chronic relapsing condition, and without a harm reduction safety net underneath that, we’re going to see, you know, people sadly use [drugs] alone and die.”
The most recent illicit drug death numbers in B.C. show that the province is recording a slight downward trend in the number of toxic drug deaths per day.
There were 147 overdose deaths in June, according to the B.C. Coroners Service, down from 185 the year before.
Many advocates for people who use drugs continue to push for a regulated safe supply of illicit drugs in order to save lives.
A number of drug user organizations commemorated the day at Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park on Sunday afternoon, in an event that saw tributes to those killed by toxic drugs, and a call for more harm reduction.
“We want freedom from the unjust laws, prisons and institutions that remind us of prisons, stigmatizing health care,” said Samona Marsh, the president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), on Sunday.
She also called for drug legalization.
“We want safe supply and end of prohibition,” she added. “Respect us. Respect the agency of the individual, [the] collective agency of the community.”
B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne said in a statement that every life lost due to the toxic drug crisis was a tragedy.
“It calls on us to respond with compassion, with urgency, and with the resolve to keep building a system of care that prevents deaths and supports recovery,” she said.
Osborne said that the government was expanding access to treatment and recovery and supporting services that save lives, including community-led solutions.
The ministry added that, while it was encouraging to see the toxic drug death rate dip this year, it would not stop “doing the hard work to save lives and help people get on a path to recovery.”
