On Aug. 31 Quesnel will mark International Overdose Awareness Day at Lhtako Dene Park. There have been at least 78 lives lost to the toxic drug crisis in Quesnel since 2015.
The event, organized by the Coalition of Substance Users of the North (CSUN), will memorialize the lives lost, give people the opportunity to share their stories and have information booths and support systems from CSUN and their community partners.
"We at CSUN also recognize the deep impacts on people who use drugs to be left to a system of harms associated to criminalization of people who use drugs. Harms by way of criminalization are immeasurable in association to prohibition, outdated drug policy and the failed war on drugs," said Charlene Burmeister who founded CSUN.
"We're going to be providing some supports for people who are suffering loss, who may be struggling and then those who may be struggling with trauma," Burmeister said, stressing that vicarious trauma is also part of that. "A really big and important piece is we have a lot of peers (and people with living or lived experiences) who have worked on art projects, both memorial and otherwise." Those art projects will be shared at the event.
The word "peer" describes someone with lived or living experience with drug use who draws from that expertise and experience to inform the work they do. The term comes from the BC CDC, where Burmeister works as a person with lived or living experience stakeholder engagement lead.
"Peers have, and continue, to be the experts of design, delivery and development of life-saving measures and services. They are the experts," she said.
Burmeister said CSUN is designed by people who use substances to support people who use substances. The facility has multiple services including supervised consumption services, offers clients space to build camaraderie with one another and connect with one another to build trust. CSUN can then help connect people in need with the resources that will best support their varying needs.
"CSUN's mission is respect and dignity for all," Burmeister said.
"Most people who use substances would not be using in public if they had a place to go," Burmeister said. While the facility has spaces for most kinds of substance use, there is no place for its clients to inhale substances which is something Burmeister said she'd like to see added. People are choosing inhalation of substances more frequently and strict requirements with inhalation spaces and a lack of funding make it difficult to implement supervised inhalation spaces.
When CSUN was created, Burmeister recognized that without people who use substances acting and advocating for themselves, nothing would change.
"More and more people were going to continue to die with no alleviation or support or help from the people who actually are designated to do so," she said, adding the prohibition of drug use has been a leading cause of drug-related deaths.
One part of the event will be Naloxone training and distribution, but Burmeister stressed Naloxone alone is not enough without meaningful changes.
"It's an intervention to try to keep people alive when the larger issue of the failed war on drugs and outdated Canadian drug policies need to be reformed," she said. "There's this larger picture of providing regulated substances to people. Like Canadians have the privilege of (safe, regulated, supplies of) alcohol and cannabis."
While acknowledging Naloxone and harm reduction are absolutely vital to save lives, Burmeister compared Naloxone to putting Band-Aids on bullet holes.
The work done by CSUN and other organizations to reduce harm and save lives of people who use drugs is vital. But numbers of deaths from the drug crisis continue to be high. There have already been nine deaths confirmed to be due to unregulated drugs in Quesnel as of June, the BC Coroners Service website says. There were 11 throughout all of 2023. Fentanyl was detected in 85 per cent of all unregulated drug deaths in B.C. in 2023.
