DON’T FORGET FENTANYL
Jennifer Woodside lost her son Dylan to fentanyl in 2014 and wonders why politicians aren’t talking about drugs.
As illicit-drug overdoses kill four people a day in B.C., grieving mom Jennifer Woodside laments how little attention the fentanyl crisis is getting on the campaign trail.
“If it was small pox or the measles (causing the deaths), people would be up in arms,” said Woodside, who has advocated to change how society views addiction since her son Dylan, a university student, overdosed on fentanyl in 2014.
“This should be the No. 1 thing, but it’s not because of the stigma — it’s only those people . ... People think of drug use as being the hardened individual rather than being the kid next door or the fellow that goes off to work in his Mercedes.”
Dylan was a 21-year-old art student at Capilano University. Battling anxiety, he bought some OxyContin that he did not know was laced with fentanyl. He fell asleep in his father’s North Vancouver condo and never woke up.
Woodside’s Port Moody home is filled with the imaginative creations of her talented son. His sculptures and other art work remind her daily of her immense loss. She wants people to know that her son’s life had promise, but was needlessly cut short by a tragedy that she feels could have been prevented with political courage.
A year ago, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public state of emergency in B.C. after overdoses claimed more than 200 lives in the first three months of 2016. Since then, the death rate has skyrocketed, reaching 931 by the end of 2016 and another 347 as of March 31 this year.
The average number of overdose deaths before 2016 was about 300 a year. The massive jump in fatalities is mainly due to fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid far more potent than morphine.
The situation is getting worse because more powerful strains of fentanyl — which require multiple doses of naloxone to reverse an overdose — are now surfacing.
“It is not going away. It is becoming a longer-term situation to deal with,” Kendall said in an interview this week. “The drug supply is toxic right now.”
Without a major turnaround, Kendall predicted the death toll could be higher in 2017 than the nearly 1,000 fatalities last year.
Politicians often campaign on issues they think are most important to the electorate, Kendall said, but stressed this crisis should matter to everyone because it is taking the lives of people across the entire social spectrum.
Many, including Woodside and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, argue the issue of illicit drug overdoses — despite the mounting death toll — is not getting nearly the attention it deserves.
“We are in the middle of an election. Addressing this crisis should be a priority for every politician,” the association said Wednesday, urging voters to contact their candidates.
One of the few campaign stops entirely about fentanyl came Thursday, when NDP Leader John Horgan visited a Vancouver fire hall to reiterate a platform promise to introduce an ask-once, get-help-fast approach for mental health and addictions. He provided no specific details about the number of treatment beds required or the costs.
“The situation has gotten worse. It strikes me we are not doing enough to address this and I want to make changes,” said Horgan.
Fentanyl was raised during the first leaders’ debate on April 20 by the Greens’ Andrew Weaver, who said it should be treated as a health matter, not a criminal one. But the issue was discussed only briefly by the leaders during the 90-minute radio debate. The Liberals’ Christy Clark, who in February established a justice-and-medicine joint task force to address the overdoses, has said she doesn’t think this is a political matter, but one best left to health experts.
The topic was discussed even less in the 90-minute televised leaders’ debate. And a search of the parties’ websites and press releases shows little mention of the fatalities. Their platforms do talk about overdose deaths, but not with sufficient details to show voters how each party would solve the crisis, according to Julian Somers, a Simon Fraser University health sciences professor who has done extensive research into addictions, mental illness and homelessness.
The Liberals itemize the money they’ve already spent on the crisis, and in the future promise to “fully utilize” the $10 million given to them this spring by the federal government “to continue to prevent fentanyl deaths,” the party’s platform says.
“But there is very little evidence of a strategy linking together these expenditures and how they would contribute to a plan of overcoming (the crisis),” Somers said, adding any plan must address the usual precursors to addiction, including mental illness.
Both the NDP and Greens, if elected, said they would create a new mental health and addictions ministry, and both parties emphasize early intervention by focusing more on screening and treatment services for youth who show the first signs of mental illness and substance use.
The NDP proposal, in Somers’ opinion, is more specific than the Greens’ plan, but neither platform goes far enough to tell the public exactly how the ministry will work and who it will serve.
“It creates the risk of raising immense expectations,” said Somers.
Fifteen people died in Vancouver alone during the week of April 24, the second-highest weekly death rate for the city this year.
“The overdose crisis got dramatically worse last week,” a frustrated Mayor Gregor Robertson said Thursday in a statement. “The next provincial government needs to immediately take action on the overdose death crisis because the current government’s approach is not working.”
He recently asked if the three main parties will commit to new bold steps, such as on-demand treatment options and clean prescription drugs so that addicts can stop relying on sketchy supplies from the street.
Robertson criticized the Liberals for not immediately using the $10 million from Ottawa, which the party says will be spent on opioid-substitution therapies, more supervised consumption services, toxicology lab testing and coroner’s investigations.
But the solution for the most vulnerable addict, SFU’s Somers argues, includes stable housing and ensuring those discharged from the hospital or jail have support. He also recommends better collaboration with First Nations communities, which have a disproportionate number of victims.
Casual drug users — increasingly among the victims of this crisis — would often not benefit from measures intended for severe addicts, such as prescription heroin and safe consumption sites, Somers noted. A college student or businessman who uses sporadically would likely still buy from a dealer and get high in private.
Indeed, nine out of every 10 deaths so far this year happened inside, most often in private homes, leaving 10 per cent outside on streets or in parks, the coroner’s service says. There have been no deaths at Vancouver’s supervised injection sites.
In the first three months of this year, the victims were overwhelmingly male and the hardest hit age group was between 30 and 49. The cities with the most deaths were Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria. The Vancouver deaths were spread across the city, not just isolated to the Downtown Eastside. The issue is not just urban. Other areas, such as the Okanagan, South Vancouver Island, Central Vancouver Island, and Northern Interior, also had a 50 per cent jump in fatal overdoses compared to the first three months of 2016.
NDP and Green candidates have been conducting media interviews on this topic, but journalists are finding that Liberal candidates are declining to do so.
The campaign manager for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant Liberal candidate Conny Lin, a behavioural neuroscientist and addictions researcher, told Postmedia twice this week that Lin would speak with us for this story, but in the end the government’s communications officers answered in her place.
Critics have accused the Liberals of responding slowly to the crisis. Clark told The Sun’s editorial board this week that the government has improved access to treatment drugs, expanded availability for naloxone, and opened 23 new overdose prevention sites.
“One hundred deaths a month is what we are at now. It is way, way too many,” Clark said Tuesday. “We have spent $100 million so far ... and if we need to spend another $100 million we will do it.”
Woodside helped create momsDU (Moms United and Mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users), a group that shares the heartbreaking stories of their children’s overdose deaths in an effort to change drug policies.
She would like the provincial government to put a much higher priority on substance-use prevention and treatment, especially in the suburbs. Federally, Woodside would like Ottawa to follow the lead of Portugal, where all drugs have been decriminalized; the move has led to a drastic reduction in poison-laced street drugs and a near disappearance in overdose deaths.
The Greens’ platform does talk about decriminalizing drugs to eliminate the financial incentive for traffickers; by comparison, the NDP pushes for increased penalties for drug dealers who knowingly distribute fentanyl.
Woodside knows decriminalization is a controversial topic, but she begs politicians and society to give it some thought. If her son had had access to a clean drug, he’d still be alive today, she said.
“It’s a dirty word. Oh, we might not talk about this because I might not get re-elected. But this is an epidemic,” she said.
“It’s really frustrating how many people have to die.”
This should be the No. 1 thing, but it’s not because of the stigma . ... People think of drug use as being the hardened individual rather than being the kid next door or the fellow that goes off to work in his Mercedes.