Gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., raises alarm after spike in international student overdose deaths

The president of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., says the already alarming rate of overdose deaths among South Asian international students is only getting worse.

In a recent two-week span, Narinder Singh Walia of the Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib said he learned of four overdose deaths in the community, all current or former international students.

He said in the past two years, the gurdwara has helped the families of 16 men who died of overdose — all under the age of 30, international students or in Canada on a work permit.

Walia said the gurdwara gets involved when families of the deceased reach out asking for help in arranging a cremation, funeral or sending a body back to India. 

"Our gurdwara is contacted when something happens like this, somebody dies," he said. "Friends and their families contacted us because we announced we can take care of those dead bodies who have no relatives, who have no family here."

According to Walia, most of the deaths are incorrectly identified as a heart attack at first. But because the families give the gurdwara legal authority to deal with the deceased, he receives the coroners' reports that cite the official cause of death. 

A 2019 study found in the Fraser Health region, which includes Surrey — about 35 kilometres southeast of Vancouver — those dying of toxic drugs were disproportionately young, male and South Asian. The authors used a name-based algorithm to identify who was South Asian. The B.C. Coroners Service does not track ethnicity in overdose deaths.

An unspoken mental health crisis

But Baljit Kaur Lally, Metro Vancouver director for Khalsa Aid Canada, believes better data would not only be helpful, it could spark a badly needed wake-up call in the South Asian community where there is a great amount of stigma around drug use.

"It's almost like you need to do a shock-and-awe right now," she said. "[Drug use] is so prevalent. I was on the Downtown Eastside a few weeks ago when the weather was super bad and I saw a lot of young South Asian men."

Lally said in South Asian culture, males are put on a pedestal and receive special treatment when they're young. However, as soon as they turn 18, they face immense pressure to provide for their family.

Those expectations, believes Lally, are responsible for an unspoken mental health crisis among South Asian men. Many, she said, are turning to drugs to cope.

"When it comes to international students ... they're coming with that burden on their shoulders that says, hey, you are going to take care of the family even though you're 18 years old," said Lally.

"You have to go into this Western culture where you have to pay for your tuition, pay for housing, cook your own food and do your own laundry, where you never had to do that before. And then at the same time, you have to bring your family here and provide for them."

In an attempt to shine a light on the problem, Walia's gurdwara is reintroducing an information bulletin about the overdose crisis that will be distributed to people using the gurdwara's international student aid program and food bank. 

He'd also like to see better overdose data specific to the South Asian population to fully illustrate the magnitude of the problem.

"I'm thinking there's so many other people that died of overdose who didn't contact us," he said. "You know, if we got our four in two weeks, it doesn't mean it's only four."

According to Walia, Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib has spent close to $200,000 helping the families of the deceased men.