Young people in B.C. are a lot more likely to die from an encounter with toxic drugs than they were just a few years ago.
The most vicious toll of the epidemic of fentanyl and other potent drugs has been on men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
But young people have also been dying. Between 2017 and 2022, 142 of the 10,453 deaths were of youths.
It has become the highest leading unnatural cause of death for young people in this province, ahead of suicide and car crashes.
Every death from these drugs has been preventable, and every one is a tragedy.
The death of someone in their 30s or 40s robs them, and their families, friends, and loved ones, of 40 to 50 years of life they could have expected to live.
When someone 16, 17, 18 years old dies, they are losing out on even more. They won’t graduate high school or go to university, they won’t find a career or explore hobbies, they won’t grow old with a spouse or lifelong friends.
Too many of these deaths are anonymous. We regularly report the statistics, but each one of these deaths is a story. A real person lived and died. In many cases, they made mistakes, or found their way to that death by bad luck and poor circumstances.
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But we can’t dismiss any of these people as disposable because they were drug users.
The deaths of the young people of B.C. drive this home.
Who can’t say that at 16, 17, 18 years old, they didn’t do something stupid? And who can’t say that they learned and changed and grew after that, putting those mistakes behind them? All of these young people had that potential. They could have lived full, long lives, and they lost that opportunity because a drug supply we can’t seem to contain cut their stories off, unfinished.
– M.C.