For 12 hours a day, four days a week, Lee Tran works in ground zero of the province’s fentanyl epidemic.
As a volunteer at the Overdose Prevention Society’s pop-up safe injection tent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Tran has used the drug naloxone to bring about 40 opioid drug users back to life.
“To see the person overdose and, I would say, die in front of you and then see them come back, yes it’s quite an experience,” Tran, a former addict, told Global News.
Soon, more B.C. schools could be equipped with those same life-saving naloxone shots.
“If a tragedy hits and a student does go down in a high school, it’s better that our staff have support, feel confident and are prepared,” said School District 42 Board Vice-Chair Susan Carr.
Carr has been pushing for naloxone kits in all B.C. schools and her fight was recently bolstered by the coroner’s jury at the inquest into the death of Brandon Jansen. The 20-year old died of an opioid overdose while at a treatment centre on the Sunshine Coast in March of 2016. The inquest jury issued 21 recommendations to reduce illicit drug deaths, including having naloxone kits available in the school system with trained personnel on site.
READ MORE: Brandon Jansen inquest brings 21 recommendations to reduce illicit drug deaths
Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says no one has overdosed in a school since officials started tracking the increase in opioid related deaths. Still, he says naloxone kits make sense for high-risk schools, or those where teachers know students are attending while high. “The young people that we are seeing dying from fentanyl overdoses have been kids who basically were partying and thought they were taking something like ecstasy and it was contaminated with fentanyl and that’s when they died,” Kendall said.
Drug overdose deaths in the 10-18 age group increased from five in 2015 to 12 in 2016. Among the fatalities are 16-year-old Gwynevere Staddon and 17-year-old Victoria student Beth Klimek.
Staddon died of a suspected fentanyl overdose in the washroom of a Port Moody Starbucks last August. And days before Christmas, Klimek lost her life to a suspected opioid overdose. Outside Vic High, many of Klimek’s peers support the idea of naloxone in schools. “Lots of people do pills for their first time and it’s their last time,” said one female student. “You don’t want to risk it. You don’t want to risk someone’s life,” added another.
Even veteran beat cops with the Odd Squad Productions Society, who’ve preached prevention for two decades with their reality-based documentaries and drug education, are on board with naloxone kits in schools. “At the end of the day it’s a pragmatic reality. Better to have it and not need it,” said Vancouver Police Cst. David Steverding. “If it wasn’t there and they got brain damage or they died I’d be pretty mad,” added Sgt. Mark Steinkampf.
Six B.C. school districts — Rocky Mountain, Vernon, Powell River, Prince George, Nicola-Similkameen and Qualicum — have purchased naloxone kits for schools assessed as high-risk. Six other school districts — Kootenay Lake, Langley, Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, Peace River North, Campbell River and North Okanagan — are in the process of considering purchasing kits.
The Jansen inquest jury is also recommending the implementation of a substance abuse and addiction program into the education curriculum, starting at the elementary level.
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