Vancouver Canucks launch campaign to fight stigma surrounding addiction

The Vancouver Canucks hockey team is launching a joint campaign with B.C.'s Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions to combat the stigma around substance use.

Theprovincewidecampaign will include television, online and social media messages, as well aspublic billboards that will be rolled out over the next few months.

The campaign will also be promoted in Rogers Arena at all Canucks home games and other events, such as concerts.

'Stigma around addiction is killing people'

Ata news conference, B.C.'s minister of mental health and addictions, Judy Darcy, said she hopes the campaign will discredit false stereotypes by showing that people from all walks of life can struggle with addiction including her own mother.

"Itserves as a call to action for all British Columbians to stop seeing addiction as a moral failure and start seeing it as thehealth issue that it is," she said.

"Stigma around addiction is killing people."

KirkMcLean, a retired VancouverCanucksgoaltender, is the campaign's ambassador. Hesaid that as a professional athlete, he's knownseveral colleagues who struggled with addiction.

"There is a public face to this crisis. In fact, many are the same people who support and cheer for our team. So it makes perfect sense for the Canuckstobe involved in this project," he said.

He said he hopes the messaging will encourage people to strike up "honest conversations" about addiction with friends, family members, and co-workers.

Darcy said that in the first 10 months of 2017, 1,200 families in B.C. lostloved ones to a drug overdose.