OPINION: An empathy gap is fuelling the overdose crisis

published on January 14, 2021 by Guy Felicella in Vancouver Is Awesome

Last month, just before Christmas, the BC Coroners Service did what they’ve done every month now for nearly five years – they released their report on the number of drug overdose deaths in the province.

For families, friends, and communities that lost a loved one, behind those numbers is a life representing an unspeakable loss. For others who have been personally unaffected by substance use and the overdose crisis, they have become just that: numbers. A numbing monthly reminder of policy failure and inaction before moving on with their lives. This has become a sign of the empathy gap that is contributing to the social conditions that help fuel the overdose crisis – stigma, discrimination, isolation, and despair.

How we think and talk about substance use and people who use drugs has a profound effect. Many people, influenced by media stories and accompanying images of discarded needles in a puddle that accompany those monthly fatality reports, associate substance use with poverty and homelessness. They see drug use as the result of a series of poor individual choices, a sign of the “rock bottom” we hear so much about before people can get better. It’s a deserved, if not tragic, outcome…