Parents who lost children to drug toxicity call for B.C. government to do more on overdose crisis

"That half a pill that he took killed him."

Sandra Tully, who lost her eldest son in 2016 after he took a pill he thought was OxyContin but was laced with a fatal amount of fentanyl, is a member of Moms Stop The Harm (MSTH), an organization of Canadian families who have experienced substance-use-related harms and deaths.

The organization held a rally on Thursday morning outside MLA Todd Stone's office in Kamloops, B.C., in response to the B.C. Coroner's Service's Wednesday announcement that 2,224 people died in the province in 2021 as a result of suspected illicit-drug overdose — marking the province's deadliest year ever recorded.

Organizers of the rally are demanding safe drug supply, decriminalization of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use, and more treatment resources for people seeking to detox. 

"I would really encourage everyone to understand … we are all human and we could all be subjected to some sort of addiction, so go easy on people," said Tully. 

The organization also held rallies in Vancouver and Victoria.

The death toll in 2021 is a 26 per cent increase from 2020, which was already a record-setting year with 1,716 suspected overdose deaths.

Cranbrook resident Pat O'Connell lost his son Byron to opioid poisoning in 2014. Byron was 27 when he overdosed on fentanyl while working in Alberta. 

O'Connell said in an interview with Chris Walker on CBC's Daybreak South that the issue of drug overdose is on his mind every day. 

"When we lost Byron he was the second recorded fentanyl death in Alberta at the time … here we are eight years later and we've gotten nowhere. Absolutely nowhere," said O'Connell. 

O'Connell said the provincial government has not put enough funding toward addressing the drug toxicity crisis. 

"I think part of it is there's no political will for somebody to step out of the box and address something that is going to be very controversial," said O'Connell. 

'A report card with a big "F" on it'

Garth Mullins, drug user advocate and host of the Crackdown podcast, called for the resignation of B.C. Minister for Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcolmson on CBC's The Early Edition Thursday morning. 

"Two thousand, two hundred and twenty-four deaths on your watch in a year, that is a report card with a big 'F' on it ... yesterday they had a press conference where they were just kind of proud of their progress. It was bizarre to watch."

Sheila Malcolmson said stigma has not been the problem in this crisis, but rather the increasing toxicity of drugs. 

"Going from four per cent contamination of fentanyl right before the pandemic to 29 per cent in the final weeks of 2021, that's what's taking the lives," Malcolmson said later Thursday morning on CBC's The Early Edition. 

"It's not lack of political will, it's poison." 

Malcolmson said there has never been such an expansion of prevention and treatment support as the government is introducing now. She said if the solution was as simple as resources, the problem would have been fixed. 

"Tell me how me resigning will save a life," said Malcolmson.