This photo shows some of the people who have died of toxic drug overdoses, some of whom lived in the Okanagan.

Image Credit: Submitted/Moms Stop the Harm

While working as a substance use councillor for 30 years in Kelowna, Ben Goerner had clients who ranged from CEOs and sales reps to street entrenched people.

Now he’s advocating with Moms Stop the Harm and assisting in other efforts to battle what he calls a pandemic of toxic drug deaths.

Key to that effort is trying to change the public’s stock image of homeless junkies being the only ones dying from these drugs.

“When I do groups and workshops, I usually ask people what’s the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of a drug user,” Goerner told iNFOnews.ca. “What do they look like? What’s the answer I get? Torn up, dirty clothes in a ditch with a needle in their arm or a bottle or something. That’s partly true but it’s not even close to the whole picture.”

That whole picture is made clearer by data on the B.C. Coroners Service website. The key data that was released Dec. 9 shows that there was a record number of deaths for one month in October (201) and a record 1,792 for the year with two months ago.

READ MORE: Interior has second highest overdose rate in B.C.

But another data sheet shows how the deadly drugs are ingested.

It’s a little dated, the most recent year being 2019, and it carries a high number of unknown cases because it’s not always possible to determine how the drugs were administered.

It shows a growing trend to fewer injections (25% in 2019, down from 37% in 2016) and more smoking (40% in 2019, up from 28% in 2016).

In 2019, 19.2% of people died after inhaling drugs, 10.2% took them orally and in 21.4% of the cases, the mode of ingestion was unknown.

While almost 87% of the drugs that killed had fentanyl in them, cocaine was in 48% of the drugs tested, and methamphetamines/amphetamine in 40%.

Goerner sent the above photo to iNFOnews.ca of people, many of whom are from the Okanagan, who have died from overdoses in an effort to get media away from the stock photos in the media that tend to show needles, which is only one part of the story.

“There’s a big campaign in Kamloops, for example, called The Pledge,” he said. “The idea is, you change your language. Instead of using the word addict or alcoholic you use the word person.”

Instead of referring to it as an opioid crisis, he calls it the toxic drug overdose pandemic because the problem is global and the toxicity of illegal drugs has increased dramatically during the COVID pandemic.

It’s the stigma of drug use that is keeping people from seeking help, going to safe injection sites or getting prescriptions for legal use.

“It’s really hard to reach out for help, because of how society views drug users,” Goerner said. “We believe drugs are bad so therefore, the people who use them are bad. If you change the way you say things, you’ll change the way you see things and, in turn if you change the way you see things, it’ll change the way you think things.”

He sees the prohibition of opioids, cannabis and even alcohol dating back to the 1900s which led to the failed war on drugs as a key root to today’s overdose crisis. The legalization of cannabis is a perfect example of how attitudes can change when the law changes.

“As far as most people are concerned, drugs are still a criminal act, so if our child or our loved one gets involved in drugs, all of a sudden, as a family member, we see them as a criminal when we should be seeing them as, maybe they’re at risk of developing a disorder or illness,” Goerner said.

That illegality is one of the reasons physicians aren’t prescribing legal drugs that could get users away from the toxic illegal market, he said. Other concerns the doctors have is the end use of the drugs once they’re prescribed, the amounts provided and the policies of their governing organizations. That makes for a complex system that needs to change, he said.

“If I had my dream, I would completely end prohibition of all drugs and regulate the supply so that it’s taken away from organized crime, and sort of almost ‘normalized,’” Goerner said. “At least you would get the safe supply and, like with alcohol, if someone develops a problem they can reach out for help. There’s still some stigma around that but the help is there. The help is there for the drugs too but there’s the criminality that’s preventing people from sneaking out of their houses quietly without anybody noticing to try to get help.”

Decriminalization would allow for things like compassion clubs, similar to what was done before legalization of cannabis.

He believes safe injection sites were a key reason deaths dropped dramatically in 2019 but, with COVID, those are not always as accessible and people have gone back to using alone.

Those sites serve more of the street entrenched population as opposed to the majority of people who die indoors.

The Coroner’s report says that, so far this year, 83% of people died inside with 55% being in private residences while 15% were outside, in vehicles, on sidewalks, in streets and in parks.

Goerner is trying to create an outreach program to deliver drug testing kits and other harm reduction materials to people in their homes.

“There’s folks that are staying at home who are too ashamed, too stigmatized to come out, too afraid to be criminalized to come out,” he said.

READ MORE: By telling her story, this Kelowna mom is reducing the stigma caused by drug overdose deaths

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