Downtown Eastside marchers mark Overdose Awareness Day

About 30 people, many dressed in black, marched along Hastings Street in Vancouver on Wednesday to mark InternationalOverdose Awareness Dayand to remember the people who have been killed by drugs.

The demonstrators walked in the rain with banners and a black casket to represent those who have died.

At times, there was solemn drummingand a man with a megaphone called out to people on the sidewalk, encouraging them to join the march.

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"We need safer consumption sites, and we need options in our treatments. That's the two major things," said Al Fowler, president of theB.C. Association of People on Methadone (BCAPOM), which organized the event along with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU.).

Fowler, who has been using methadone for seven years, said opioid-dependent drug users need alternative treatments to suit different users.

"Your doctor should just wean you off that particular drug, just don't drop you off and throw you on methadone.You should be weaned properly from those drugs," he said.

"If a person's drug of choice was whatever, then they should be able to you know, maybe that's the one that would work for them to wean 'em off, you know."

"It's terrible, it's terrible. You've got no get up and go," Fowler said of methadone.

"It's it's terrible. It doesn't help people ... get them energetic. You get your dose once a day.It's not working you know? There's other ways. There's other drugs."

Fowlerand the marchers also called for an expanded network of supervised injection and drug consumption sites across the province.

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