An overdose conference held at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax on Thursday connected police, health care workers and government officials with those who have “lived” overdose and addiction experience.
“In death, overdose victims are publicly granted the humanity that could have saved their lives in the first place,” said Jordan Westfall, the president of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs.
Westfall was one of several advocates and addiction experts speaking at the “Tidal Wave of Our Overdose Crisis” conference.
READ MORE: At least 2,458 Canadians died from opioid-related overdoses in 2016: PHAC
“I think that people look at drug-users as bad people, when in actual fact they’re just people who’ve had some terrible things in their life happen to them and they’re only way of coping with it is by using a substance,” said Natasha Touesnard, a Naloxone trainer and community outreach worker in Halifax.
More than 2,000 people died across Canada in 2016, according to a national report from the Public Health Agency of Canada.
But many speakers at the conference feel the government called “health crisis” is being ignored.
“It’s exhausting to watch so many friends and people die every single day and it’s frustrating to watch our government respond so slowly. If it were any other group of people it probably would have been dealt with by now,” Westfall said.
Touesnard said voices from people with “lived drug experiences” is critical in addiction and overdose conversations aimed at changing policy.
“What happens most times and historically it’s happened over and over, there’s decisions made for a group of people with no consideration to them whatsoever. And then there’s what they call ‘unintended consequences’ to these discussions because there was no first-voice represented,” she said.
All speakers are calling for increased government action, such as safe-consumption sites and an overhaul of how the justice system handles addiction.
“People do not want to come out of the shadows if they’re perceived as criminals, to talk about their drug use. The ‘criminal’ aspect interferes with implementing overdose prevention measures because the issue becomes so controversial that you’re helping ‘criminals,’ when it’s really that these people are criminalized by the system,” Westfall said.
“There’s people dying. Safe-consumption rooms are a way for people to get into treatment beyond just using drugs. Once they access the service they build up a trust with the workers there and then they go on to hook up with community services and housing, so it just overall improves their life,” Touesnard said.
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