So I just found out that a good friend of mine died of an overdose while I was in jail last week. It came as quite a surprise to her family because she appeared to be a young urban professional with a bright future, and nobody knew that she was secretly shooting heroin on a day-to-day basis. Her death was not reported in the papers, and her obituary said only that she died ‘suddenly’. It seems her family is quite ashamed of her manner of death. I haven’t spoken to the family at all, and I think I’m going to keep it that way. If I did though, I would love to ask them if they’d support a Naloxone program in Ottawa. Because if she had been with someone who had the stuff she’d be alive. Period.
They have them in New York, because over an eleven year period (1990-2001) overdose deaths increased by %48, from 541 to 799 fatalities per year. That’s about 23.5 more deaths year over year, and an average of 60.9 deaths per year. Does that seem shocking to you? Consider the population of New York — nineteen and a half million. For that many people, and the number of users living there, those numbers were already extremely low. In contrast, Vancouver, a city of about 2.1 million (578,000 in the core) had 223 overdose deaths from September 2003 to June 2007, a three and a half year period. That’s an average of 63.7 deaths per year. Now, those numbers don’t seem all that different — until we look at it per capita. Per capita, that’s 1 death per 327 000 people per year in New York, whereas in Vancouver it’s 1 death per 9073 people per year. THAT’S why we opened InSite, THAT’S why we need Naloxone programs in ALL major Canadian cities. (I got my stats from here for NYC, and here for Vancouver)
Now — naloxone. At one time or another, we’ve tried to open these programs in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and either Winnipeg or Edmonton. The only one still operating is in Winnipeg (I think — I know it’s either Winnipeg or Edmonton). Why can’t they stay open? Why is it so controversial to give out an opioid antagonist? This drug is LITERALLY the OPPOSITE of heroin — injecting it puts you into instant withdrawal, or, if you’re overdosing, it brings you back down to a safe level and you almost immediately pull out of a life-threatening condition. How is it possible to oppose such a basic, life-saving operation? Apparently, with ease — President Bush’s National Office of Drug Control Policy called it “not good public health policy” because it is not overseen by EMHs or doctors. So what — he’d rather dispatch an ambulance every time there’s an overdose? The public health cost of that is staggering. The only stat I could find in a brief Google search was the cost for one year of ambulance calls for heroin overdoses — $7.7 million dollars AUD, approximately $7.2 million CDN. So that number doesn’t seem too high, considering it’s for all of Australia, but if you look at the cost of naloxone, it’s way lower, about $7-12 per syringe of prepared naloxone. This number goes even lower when you hand it out in small bottles, alongside the normal needle exchange.
What does it all mean? Well, here in Ottawa, my group, with (hopefully) the support of the CSSDP (I still am trying to reach Tara), is going to propose to the City that we need this program. If that doesn’t work we’ll go to the province, and if that doesn’t work we’ll fucking take it all the way to federal or the Supreme Court if we have to. I’m so sick of seeing my brothers and sisters dying of something so preventable.
R.I.P. K.L.P. (1985-2010)
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