‘People are still dying’
Protesters call for action on opioids
Dozens gathered Tuesday on Parliament Hill to push the government to deal with opioid overdoses.
It was one of eight protests organized across the country by the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, an organization of past and present drug users, and its allies.
“Many people in this community know someone that has died,” said Rick Sproule, a member of the Ottawa-based Drug Users Advocacy League and protest organizer.
He said that’s why he and many other Canadians are pushing hard for an end to the “war on drugs.” He said he wants to see drug prohibition repealed.
“I know it’s an extreme position, but it’s the only permanent way out of the overdose crisis,” he said.
He said that would decrease illicit drug use and facilitate harmreduction services, such as supervised injection sites and readily available kits with naloxone — the opioid antidote.
His fear remains fixed on the fact counterfeit drugs often look like prescription drugs, meaning many users aren’t always aware of what they’re consuming — or how deadly it could be.
“If we can regulate the drugs, we know how much is in them,” Sproule said. “Right now, the way the drug supply is on the street … you can never be sure how strong it is and what it is.”
Marilou Gagnon, carried two arrows Tuesday, one pointed at Parliament reading, “They talk,” the other pointed back at the protesters and reading, “We die.”
Gagnon, a University of Ottawa nursing professor, hoped to send a clear message: “We are expecting more at this stage.
“A lot of us — nurses, social workers, physicians — want to see decriminalization, more access to naloxone, and supervised injection sites integrated comprehensively across Canada,” Gagnon said.
In the drug-user community, the issue is visceral. Jordon Maclean, a former user and one of the protesters, said he overdosed eight years ago, while waiting for rehab.
Eight years later, and he said he has yet to see real and effective change, and that the problem is only getting worse.
“In the past two years, we’ve lost 300 or 400 people,” he said. “We just lost a 14-year-old the other day.”
Ottawa teenager Chloe Kotval died on Valentine’s Day of a suspected drug overdose. It isn’t known yet what drug may have been in her system.
Now a social worker, Maclean witnesses how this crisis is affecting people in Ottawa every day. He spoke of a mother who asked him where she could get a naloxone kit for her daughter, who was using heroin. He told her that she couldn’t get one.
“I wanted to give her mine, but I could get in trouble,” he recalled.
That was a year ago, before Ontario pharmacies became eligible to dispense free naloxone emergency kits in June 2016. Today it is more readily available, he said.
“Things are changing, but people are still dying,” he said. “It’s still an epidemic.”