Column on fentanyl gave voice to a roar

If I may, a thought or two on the column I wrote last week on the fentanyl crisis. My position on this tragic situation, as espoused in that column, can be summarized adequately in these three points:

The cry of sobriety is getting more and more lost in the din of harm reduction and it needs a louder voice; harm reduction does have an important role to play in the management of this crisis; the only way to guarantee you, me or anyone will not suffer a fentanyl overdose is to not use drugs that may contain fentanyl.

This last point seemed obvious in the way Wayne Gretzky’s quote about scoring was obvious.

“You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take,” he famously said.

If you don’t take a shot you won’t score; if you don’t do drugs that may contain fentanyl, you won’t die from a fentanyl overdose.

I am not moralizing here. If you think I am, that is not my intent. I have no desire to sit in judgment of anyone who is unwilling or incapable of quitting on their own.

Rather, I simply want to make the point, again, that, as we struggle to find solutions, the only solution guaranteed to eliminate all ODs is sobriety. Impractical? Of course. But as a statement of fact, it would seem unassailable.

Reaction to last Wednesday’s column staggered me. It wasn’t the volume of emails that had me reeling, it was that 98 per cent of the hundreds of responses sent to my inbox agreed with me.

Some readers agreed with me more than I agreed with myself.

I’ve been in the news business almost as long as ink, and I can tell you this: If I argued grey is a sadder colour than rose, I might get twothirds consensus, so 98 per cent agreement on anything is, well, as I said, staggering.

The day after the column was printed in the paper and online, more than 10 people in our community succumbed to the drug.

I’d read the “two a day” statistic, so, like most of us, felt emotionally flattened when that number jumped fivefold in one especially grim 24-hour period.

Even front-liners and those closest to the front lines reacted in ways that sounded more desperate than in the past.

Following news of the deaths, Vancouver Chief Const. Adam Palmer and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson called on the provincial government to fund “treatment on demand.” Bravo. “We’re seeing a record number of overdoses in neighbourhoods all over Vancouver and it’s getting worse,” Palmer said at a news conference. “The fentanyl crisis … is bringing a new level of urgency to address the lack of detox and treatment options available to people. We need a long-term strategy to help people in crisis.”

I hope the premier heard the chief and the mayor.

I hope the prime minister heard them, too.

As I was working my way through the kind words of support readers shared last week, it became more and more apparent there is a voice out there that is not being heard — an important and ubiquitous voice that is not being respected.

“Yours are the most cogent and realistic thoughts on the subject I’ve read in a long time,” a reader named John wrote. “I also agree there are a lot of broken people on our streets and it breaks my heart every time I drop a coin or two in a hat. If there is a singular thing I hate about Vancouver, that is it. Vancouver doesn’t give a shit about the homeless and broken and addicted. They are just fodder in a political game.”

That said, politicians who begin listening to myself, John and others will be well served come polling day.