Moms march through DTES to mark anniversary of province declaring opioid crisis in 2016
Mariah McLellan, whose street name was Creedence, was a lovely musician, her mother said.
She loved the band Creedence Clearwater Revival and could play a dozen instruments, from squeeze box to spoons and just about anything with strings. “You name it, she played it,” Tracy Scott said. “Including the saw.”
Mariah kept the saw in a violin case that she carried with her before she died of fentanyl poisoning in 2018. She was 20 years old. Her mom didn't know she was using until a week before her death, after Mariah had sent a letter to Scott's mother from rehab. “She had a relapse,” Scott said.
Maple Ridge outreach worker Scott was part of a group of about two dozen women from Moms Stop the Harm, women who lost children to fentanyl-poisoned drugs, marching Wednesday in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Scott herself came from the street. She said unless you're part of the drug culture, you probably don't understand the rituals involved every time a particular drug is used.
“You can't just give someone who smokes crack a pill, they'll just throw it away,” Scott said. “It's a waste of money.”
Like the other moms who marched from International Village to the Patricia Hotel in the DTES, she was demonstrating on the fifth anniversary of B.C. declaring the opioid crisis a health emergency.
“We just want a safe supply (of drugs),” Scott said. “Fix it.”
More than 7,000 people in B.C. have died of opioid overdoses since then-public health officer Perry Kendall declared the emergency. Last year alone, there were 1,716 overdose deaths.
But even before the stateof-emergency declaration in 2016, fentanyl had begun popping up in street drugs since 2012.
“It's crazy, we've spent the last five years screwing around,” said Kat Wahamaa, whose son Joseph suffered a fatal overdose in 2016. “And there was evidence of fentanyl more than five years ago.”
If you include U.S. President Richard Nixon declaring a “war on drugs” 50 years ago, then go way back before that to the temperance movement, it's obvious prohibition does nothing but drive up prices, stigmatize users and makes the drugs themselves unsafe because they're unregulated, Wahamaa said. “It makes no sense,” Wahamaa said. “It's not an opioid crisis, it's a poison crisis.”
Eight adults, between 22 and 38 years of age, were arrested for mischief and obstruction in downtown protests.