Where is all the money to reduce the overdose deaths?

Re: A grim year by the numbers: 2020's busiest days for overdoses, and what needs to change in 2021

Some years ago I spent two to three days a week for 21/2 years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside because a friend lived in a housing co-op there. My stint resulted in a book called Angels Among the Rhetoric, and a solo gallery show of the images. While I'm a middle-class, retired, white male, I have considerable empathy for those less fortunate because it was me at one point.

Looking at the opioid overdose crisis Postmedia News reporter Lori Culbert reported on (April 10), I wonder where are the prime minister, premiers, health ministers and sundry others so visible every day in response to COVID-19? Where are the doctors, nurses, psychologists and other health professionals to try to deal with this “health emergency?” Where are the billions of dollars so far shovelled out the door to deal with COVID-19 to try to reduce the overdose deaths?

The silence on the issue is deafening, you and a few others notwithstanding.

I think Shane Sander, one of the paramedics you quote, captured the essence of the problem when he says: “It is a common assumption that overdoses affect only marginalized people, a misconception that he said must be overcome in order to address the crisis.”

I agree. Even among our friends, middle- and upper-middle-class Canadians, a good portion believe that “another druggie death” is no big deal and they likely “deserve their fate anyway.”

Until we overcome the idea that drug addicts are sinners, that they're doing something bad or evil and that they deserve punishment rather than our understanding and help, I fear nothing much will get done to solve “the other health emergency” that is currently taking more lives than COVID-19. Horst Siegler, Port Moody