Local service providers met with the BC Coroners Service yesterday, trying to develop strategies in battling the opioid crisis.
Ron Merk, Port Alberni Community Action Team co-chair, says people are dying daily of poisoned drugs in BC.
“Since 2016 in the Alberni-Clayoquot area we’ve lost 73 people to the poisoned drug supply and that should resonate and make it really personal for us here in Port Alberni,” he said. “When you overlay those 73 people that make up part of the more than 9,000 deaths that have happened in BC due to the toxic drug supply since 2016 it just becomes heart breaking.”
Merk said 21 people in Port Alberni died of opioid overdoses last year, and already this year there have been numerous deaths.
He says assumptions about the type of person dying from poisoned drugs is biased, and not the truth.
“The bias we have is that we think that the people that are using substances are people we might see on a streetcorner but that’s not the truth,” he said. “70% of the people who have died here in Port Alberni had jobs, were working, were probably men, they had families, and they were contributing members of society, so it’s not what you think it is.”
Merk said local care workers agree with recommendations towards a safer drug supply to those at risk of dying from fhe foxic illicit drug supply, and the need to develop an illicit drug toxicity action plan with ongoing monitoring.
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