Families plead for action as Manitoba surpasses overdose death record

As Manitoba reaches a grim record, families who’ve lost loved ones to drug overdoses say government must do more to stop these preventable deaths. Saturday morning, Joseph Fourre tended to a sacred fire in Winnipeg, honouring his son Harlan who was taken off life support Friday following an overdose from tainted drugs in The Pas last weekend.
Fourre is remembering the 31 year old’s generous, hardworking and loyal spirit.
“The tragedy of my son is putting me in a place where I can say something,” he said.
Fourre says his pain is something he doesn’t wish for any family, but preliminary data for December released Thursday reveal at least 418 Manitobans died of drug-related overdoses last year, surpassing the 407 marked for 2021 last April. Since then, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has listed last year’s total at 424.
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“That number is outrageous,” Fourre told Global News. “We can’t sit quietly by and ignore those numbers. That’s more than one a day.”
Arlene Last-Kolb with Moms Stop the Harm visits a garden on Waterfront Drive in Winnipeg to honour those taken too soon. She lost her son Jesse to an overdose in 2014.
Commemorative plaques nestled in the ground memorialize loved ones. More will be added in the coming weeks, she said.
“People are still dying every single day, and more and more and more will keep happening, and the numbers will keep rising, and what I don’t want is for people to just accept these deaths. These are not acceptable,” Last-Kolb said. Families and those working in the sector don’t feel news heard by the province in their calls for a safe consumption site and safe drug supply, she said.
“We have some that have lost children that only took one pill, a toxic pill — thought it was something else.”
Occasional recreational drug use claimed Harlan’s life, something Fourre said he hopes more education at home and in schools will prevent.
“All this can be changed, could have been averted with two words: No, thanks.”
Both Fourre and Last-Kolb urge parents to have hard conversations with their children about drug use.
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As an addictions support worker and recovering addict himself, Fourre said more funding for treatment programs is desperately needed, as people often report difficulties finding affordable care and getting past waitlists in publicly-funded facilities.
“We need a universal mandatory treatment program,” he said. “You need to get that start and that balance. An addict that is in full-blown addiction is incapable of making a decision for themselves.
“We need to have the facilities in which they can go to, to get their feet back on the ground, to where they can make that decision for themselves.”
Shared Health told Global News earlier this month, it’s working to expand access at its Rapid Access to Addictions Medicine (RAAM) clinics. A seventh clinic will open at Winnipeg’s Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre in late May. 0:39 Safe-injection site advocate denounces Manitoba’s Bill 33, supports NDP delay Fourre said he doesn’t believe a safe injection site would have saved his son. They can do more harm than good based on his personal experience using one, he continued. Trending Now Story continues below advertisement
“When I was in the heat of my addiction, it was at a safe injection site where I was introduced to heroin,” he said.
Earlier this month, Manitoba’s Opposition New Democrats delayed passage of a bill that would have set up a licensing system for supervised drug consumption sites and some other addiction centres.
The Opposition has the right every spring to delay up to five bills in the legislature until the fall, and the NDP chose Bill 33 as its first of the year.
The delay means the bill may not become law, as an election is scheduled for Oct. 3. The Progressive Conservative government introduced the bill in March.
It would have set standards of care, required minimum levels of medical supervision and provided fines of up to $50,000 per day for violators.
The New Democrats said the bill seemed designed as a roadblock for organizations such as Sunshine House, which had received a federal exemption to operate a mobile overdose prevention van in central Winnipeg.
Meanwhile, Fourre warns that recreational drug use isn’t recreational anymore.
“We’re going to continue to lose our youth until we take a proactive approach,” he said. “This silent killer, fentanyl, lurking in the corners, being mixed in with what we think is recreational — this is what happened to my son.”
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Fourre hopes speaking out will bring compassion to the conversation and help save lives.
“The word ‘overdose’ concocts many images,” he said. “We tend to immediately go to a certain demographic of people … Sadly to say, we don’t have much compassion for that demographic.” — With files from The Canadian Press 4:03 Concerns in Winnipeg fentanyl-based drug ‘down’ being mixed with animal tranquilizer &copy 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.