Talking openly will not encourage your children to try drugs, says an overdose prevention officer and Quebec spokesperson for Moms Stop the Harm.
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“Prohibition doesn’t work. Prohibition doesn’t work.”
That’s a lesson that should have been learned 90 years ago, when Prohibition ended, and it’s a lesson Isabelle Fortier repeated last week, and any chance she gets to speak about the stigma surrounding drug use.
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Fortier’s daughter, Sara-Jane, died of an accidental overdose on May 17 five years ago. She was 24 years old.
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Sara-Jane started experimenting with cannabis when she was 13 or 14, then speed when she was 15.
“She was always a good student,” says Fortier, who was a teacher for 14 years. “She was rebellious, but more like she had an attitude. Then she started to have anxiety problems. She was medicated for that at one point, but it wasn’t working, so she went through her teenage years self-medicating.”
Fortier says she hit walls trying to get help for Sara-Jane, being told she couldn’t be seen for her mental-health issues until she stopped using drugs. “But she was using because she was having mental-health issues.”
Sara-Jane was living in a university residence when it happened. Her drugs were spiked with fentanyl.
Drug education focused on harm reduction has become Fortier’s life mission. She is an overdose prevention and response officer for the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services and the Quebec spokesperson for Moms Stop the Harm, a network of Canadian families affected by substance-use-related harms and deaths.
“I needed to understand why people use and why people get addicted and why is it so difficult, why couldn’t we help Sara-Jane?” Fortier did a certification in addiction medicine. Being in the harm reduction field, “you realize, OK, I was asking Sara-Jane to stop using pot. But she was probably using it to treat her anxiety. I didn’t know that back then.”
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Talking openly about safer drug use will not encourage your children to try drugs, Fortier says.
“Just like we have the talk with the birds and the bees and condoms, let’s have a talk with the pills and the booze and the Naloxone. It’s the same thing.”
Naloxone is an easy-to-use treatment that temporarily reverses the effects of an OD. The ACT Foundation announced this month it has completed training 2,300 Canadian teachers — nearly 800 in Quebec — to show students how to respond to a suspected opioid overdose.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 5,975 apparent opioid toxicity deaths were reported from January to September 2023. Youth between 15 and 24 are the fastest-growing population requiring hospitalization because of overdoses.
“You have to answer a kid on the spot or they’re gone,” Fortier says. Teenagers should be empowered and educated without fear and with language that does not further stigmatize people who use drugs.
Rather than terms like “drug addict,” use “a person who has a substance use disorder or substance use problem.” Don’t refer to someone who is in recovery or sober as being “clean,” which insinuates that they were otherwise dirty.
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Fortier doesn’t want to hear words like “junkie” any more. “Those are people just like you and me. It could be me, somebody’s dad or daughter.”
They should never take drugs when they are alone. Fortier believes that if Sara-Jane had not been alone, she would not have died that day. There should be a “designated driver” in a group who is not taking drugs and who can do spot-checks on their friends. If someone isn’t doing well or seems sleepy, that person should not be left alone.
These aren’t your parents’ drugs or your grandparents’ drugs, Fortier says. Drugs can be tested for contaminants, but she compares it with chocolate chip cookies: “If we split a cookie, you could have a lot of the chips and I could have only a few. Imagine that this cookie contains grains of fentanyl. If I split the cookie with you, you might be the one dying and I’ll be surviving.”
The signs of an alcohol or opioid overdose look the same, including difficulty walking, talking and staying awake; dizziness; clammy skin.
If you’re not sure, give the person Naloxone, Fortier says, because there are no side effects. It is completely safe to use on anyone, even if they have not overdosed. You cannot give someone too much Naloxone, Fortier says. It can be given every three minutes and in conjunction with CPR until first responders arrive.
In a perfect world, Fortier says, drugs would be legalized and regulated.
“It can happen to anyone. Anyone. We need to open the dialogue and we need to work on the stigma related to substances,” she says. “Stigma can really be hurtful because people will isolate themselves and use alone and die.
“Just like Sara-Jane did.”
In Quebec, Naloxone is free at pharmacies and many health-care centres. Naloxone should be stored in a cool, dark place until its expiration date, between two to four years from its manufacture.
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