Push for overdose education in B.C. schools
Posted September 7, 2022 9:15 am.
Last Updated September 7, 2022 1:09 pm.
There are growing calls to make overdose education a mandatory part of the B.C. high school curriculum.
Chloe Goodison, a health sciences student at Simon Fraser University, says education should include addressing the stigma around drug use.
“The stigma around people who use drugs versus the stigma around drugs themselves, and how we have to shift that focus onto focusing on not stigmatizing people who use drugs because we never actually know why someone’s using drugs, whether it’s an addiction or to cope with something,” she explained.
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Goodison is the founder of NaloxHome, a group which teaches students how to recognize an overdose and use Naloxone to potentially save someone’s life.
“There are lots of overdoses that happen where people don’t die or they stay alive but with long-term damage. So our goal, because this is a public health crisis, is to have widespread implementation of overdose education and harm reduction education in all B.C. schools,” Goodison told OMNI News.
“Students leave our presentation equipped with the tools to pick up Naloxone, recognize the signs of an overdose, decrease the use of stigmatizing language, and potentially save a life.”
She says she was inspired to start the group after witnessing a teen overdose while on a SkyTrain in Coquitlam five years ago.
In 2016, B.C. declared the toxic drug supply a public health emergency. Since then, thousands of people have died while using drugs, many of which are cut with substances like fentanyl.
In August, the BC Coroners Service revealed that more than 10,000 people had died since 2016. That came a month after B.C.’s chief coroner told CityNews the province was on track to set a new record in 2022 when it comes to drug deaths.
She said she wasn’t convinced things would get better anytime soon.
In May, B.C. became the first province to be granted an exemption to federal drug laws in order to decriminalize small amounts of certain substances for personal possession.
-With files from Sonia Aslam, OMNI, and The Canadian Press
