Advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm continues calls for drug policy change at Vancouver vigil - Action News
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British Columbia

Advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm continues calls for drug policy change at Vancouver vigil

Advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery Friday, remembering loved ones lost to the toxic drug crisis and asking the province to do more to stop the deaths.

Over 1,000 people have died due to toxic illicit drugs in B.C. in the first half of 2022

A person holds up a picture of a dead loved one at a protest. They are surrounded by multiple cardboard coffins, with years listed and the words 'RIP'.
Moms Stop the Harm is a network of Canadian mothers and families whose loved ones have died due to fatal drug overdoses. The group organized a coffin march in downtown Vancouver on Friday, Aug. 26. (Janella Hamilton/CBC)

Members of the advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm took to the streetsFriday evening, holding a vigil outside the Vancouver Art Gallery and carryingmakeshift coffins in memory of loved ones they've lost to fatal drug overdoses.

The rally was part of a push to call for more action on B.C's toxic drug crisis, leading up to International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31.

"We're all here for the same reason," said Traci Letts, an organizer with Moms Stop the Harm. "To remember ... to speak their names. These types of deaths there's just no dignity in them."

"We just want to change the narrative," Letts, whose son struggles with drug addiction, said. "We need to talk about substance use, drug use. We need to make it part of our everyday conversation to reduce the stigma."

According to the B.C. Coroners Service, over 140 people died from illicit drug toxicity across the province in the month of June. Preliminary data shows the number of overdose deaths in the first six months of 2022 is the highest ever recorded for that period of a calendar year.

Moms Stop the Harm wantB.C. and Ottawa to overhaul provincial and federaldrug policies and apply harm reduction principles on a much wider scale. Some of those changes includeincreasing access to needle exchanges, safe supply,Naloxone kits, drug testing and supervised consumption sites.

According to the group's website, harm reduction aims to keep people alive and as healthy as possible, connects people with social and health services or treatment, encourages self-respect and meets drug users where they're at without stigma or shame.

Lisa Weih, a woman with greying hair and round glasses, speaks at a protest.
Lisa Weih lost her 29-year-old daughter Rene to a toxic drug overdose in 2020. She says deaths like her daughter's are "largely overlooked." (Shawn Foss/CBC)

Lisa Weih was at Friday's demonstration. Two years ago, her 29-year-old daughter Rene died after consuming toxic drugs.

"It's a terrible kind of loss, to lose a child and for her sibling to lose her," Weih said."It leaves a hole ... in your heart and in your life."

Rene had struggled with substance use for several years and Weih says the family didn't know how to help her then. Today, she's grateful for the support of other members of Moms Stop the Harm, but is also adamant that things have to change.

Two people holding coffins with the toxic drug death toll listed on them walk next to a woman with a sign saying 'Still Dying' and a picture of a dead loved one.
More than 10,000 people have died since B.C. declared an emergency due to the toxic drug supply in 2016. (Janella Hamilton/CBC)

In an article she wrote about her daughter's death, Weih questions whylaws against harming and killing others are not applied in the same way when people are harmed and killed bypoisoned drugs.

"This kind of death is particularly painful because there's no kind of justice for the family," she said. "You feel quite bereft."

"Nobody's investigating, nobody's trying to solve or resolve or figure out what happened. These kinds of deaths are largely overlooked."

With over 10,000 deaths in B.C. since a public health emergencywas declared in 2016, organizers and participants at Friday's rally say they'll continue to take to the streets and raise their voices until there'sa shift in how thegovernment handles the overlapping issues ofsubstance use, addiction and drug toxicity.

With files from Janella Hamilton and Akshay Kulkarni