In a week in which harm reduction was a front-and-centre political issue, International Overdose Awareness Day was a reminder that it's first and foremost a health-care issue.
Island Health's chief medical health officer Dr. Réka Gustafson was one of the guest speakers at a community event Saturday, Aug. 31, at Nanaimo's Diana Krall Plaza.
Gustafson thanked the health and social service workers on the front lines of the drug poisoning crisis, and said the work they're doing is "the right and good thing to do" amidst "ever more polarized and polarizing and quite frankly just incorrect public narrative."
She said it's not a question of harm reduction or treatment – harm reduction and treatment together are part of the spectrum of care. That care might lead drug users to reconnect with family, for example, or it might lead to addictions treatment, but the point is that the drug user lives for another day, Gustafson said.
The doctor said there is reason for hope in the crisis, as three of B.C.'s health authorities have seen drug deaths decline in the first half of 2024. On Vancouver Island, the death toll has stabilized, and has declined overall on the central Island, though not in downtown Nanaimo.
Gustafson said one of the challenges is that the concentration of fentanyl in the drug supply has nearly doubled since the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2016. An illegal drug supply has meant a contaminated drug supply, with drug users taking substances they haven't intended to take, for example benzodiazepine.
"People don't know what they are taking and the people who are providing care for them don't necessarily know what they are taking and that puts us in a very, very difficult situation," the doctor said.
Gustafson noted that the average age of death by overdose is 42, meaning only cancer is responsible for more years of life lost in British Columbia. With that in mind, she thinks that more needs to be done as far as harm reduction, treatment, monitoring and other service provision.
She promised that the voices of people most impacted by the toxic drug crisis will inform Island Health's service delivery.
"We need to count on the wisdom of people who use, because they know the problems, they know the solutions and they know what recovery means. They need to find recovery on their own terms," she said.
Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP Lisa Marie Barron and Nanaimo MLA Sheila Malcolmson were among the other speakers at the International Overdose Awareness Day event.
Barron said the drug crisis is a health-care issue, not a criminal issue, and asked people to continue to stand united against hate and stigmatization.
Malcolmson expressed dismay that people who are saving lives are being told that they are enabling and facilitating drug use and addiction.
"Harm reduction saves lives and there are politicians who are campaigning openly and proudly to end it…" she said. "Keep both of these truths open at the same time: that government has failed to save the lives that we needed to save and there has not been enough done, but at the same time, there is a political party that wants to work with you, that values everybody, that wants to bring an evidence-based public health perspective to the overdose crisis, and there are some that will shut it down and we'll lose more lives."
International Overdose Awareness Day was organized locally by the Nanaimo Community Action Team, and was attended by various health and social service providers. About a dozen purple chairs were placed around the plaza symbolizing lives lost to drug overdose.
