Special parent meeting on overdose prevention draws large crowd in Victoria

Hoping to walk away with potentially life saving knowledge, close to 200 people packed the auditorium of Victoria High Thursday night.

“Some people just don’t know the language around drug use… there was a set of grandparents with eight grandchildren who have never really heard the language around drug use so they wanted to come and learn the lingo,” Vic High Parent Advisory Council (PAC) member Margaret Case said.

Many of those attending were parents with teenagers.

“A lot of people, they just don’t know what’s going on,” Mia Golden, crime reduction and exploitation diversion coordinator for Pacific Centre Family Services, said.

“I mean I spent the afternoon Thursday at VJH with a youth who had overdosed… some kids will OD and not tell their parents.”

Experts on the province’s drug overdose crisis ranging from health care professionals to first responders were on hand to field questions from the crowd.

The arrival of the powerful opioid, fentanyl, pushed the provincial death toll to a record high in 2016, with more than 900 deaths from illicit drug overdoses.

For the Vic High community, the crisis hits very close to home as two students’ lives were cut short last year due to suspected opioid overdoses.

The high school’s PAC hopes the information sharing that took place at Thursday’s meeting, will be one step towards preventing yet another tragedy.