During July of this year, 175 such deaths were reported. That's over five a day. If a similar number of deaths were the result of car accidents, plane crashes, or drownings, everyone would be screaming at the government to do something about it.
But no, too often the person who died is someone who lived in poverty, eking out the best they could to get by, one of the people who have become invisible.
For the most part, I prefer to call these deaths what they are: deaths by poisoning. Too many of them are the result of a person using drugs that have been cut by unscrupulous entities, often with fentanyl or carfentanyl or their even deadlier cousin, isotonitazine (iso).
Yes, Vancouver has long been home to safe injection sites, but during these 'virus days' with rules about social distancing and staying home, too many people are using in isolation and as a result, not only using alone but dying alone.
The city has several memorials to those who've been lost to this latest spate of drug-related deaths, including murals in the Downtown Eastside, and an array of shoes fastened to the Burrard Bridge.
While I don't have anyone's shoes to mark the day, I do have a shirt from a friend who died a few years ago. To the best of my knowledge, his case was not yet one involving fentanyl, but was blamed on a batch of overly powerful heroin that had made its way into the city.
Because I recently had to write a piece about grief, I did a fair bit of research. One of the expressions I kept coming across was that of 'the empty chair' -- the place at the kitchen table that will never again be filled by the person who has died.
And yes, the green shirt hanging on that empty chair is in fact a shirt that once belonged to my friend, he of the unexpected death one Easter weekend. Yet another person who erred in thinking he could use alone.
Over five deaths a day?? That's completely unacceptable. Our laws need to change -- and soon.
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