#listentomom
A group of moms who won’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day with a child they lost to the overdose crisis is calling for a compassionate approach to treating drug addiction.
A group of B.C. women know exactly what they want for Mother’s Day, but their wishes cannot be fulfilled by their children.
The grim reality is that each has lost a child to the province’s escalating overdose crisis, which is killing more than four people a day.
These women have united in their grief with like-minded mothers across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to launch the international #listentomom campaign, which demands a more humane approach to drug addiction: removing the stigma and having it recognized as a medical issue.
“It is a monumental epidemic and we are not addressing it with the urgency it requires. It is a public health emergency, like ebola and AIDS,” said Kat Wahamaa of Maple Ridge, whose son Joseph, 25, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016.
“Our war on drugs, that is what is killing our children. It doesn’t help us. We spend billions of dollars on policing and jail, then there is a pittance put into services for children.”
Wahamaa is a member of Canada’s Moms Stop the Harm, which is urging “a compassionate and tolerant approach” to substance use disorders. During the same week as their campaign launch, the coroner’s service announced 161 people had fatally overdosed in B.C. in March, the second-highest monthly death toll since the province declared a public health emergency more than two years ago. March’s grim tally was an alarming 58 per cent jump over the 102 deaths in February.
The mothers are demanding eight recommendations for change, including several for which top health officials in B.C. have previously expressed some support.
They want publicly funded drug treatment available on the day the addict asks for help, similar to the system in Portugal, rather than B.C.’s lengthy waiting lists for public facilities or very expensive private options. Judy Darcy, the mental health and addictions minister, met with a Portuguese official last September and said she saw a “pathway to hope” in that country ’s system.
The mothers would also like to see decriminalization of drugs for personal use, which the chief medical health officers of B.C. and Vancouver Coastal Health called for last year.
“The fentanyl crisis has shown how woefully behind the game we were in dealing with addiction,” said Deb Bailey, of Moms Stop the Harm.
“We want to get them into treatment, which we don’t have that much of. And in the meantime, people are going to continue to die unless we can provide them, the people who are addicted, with a safe supply of drugs.”
The mothers want society to look at this crisis through a maternal lens: how best to help tomorrow’s children avoid the fate of the thousands who have already died.
“I really hope this Mother’s Day, people will take a minute to think about moms who are dealing with children who have a life-threatening disease called substance-use disorder,” said Louise Cameron of Vancouver, who has lost one son and has a second still battling addiction.
Below, these mothers share their stories of frustration and loss, hoping they will propel change.