After my brother snapped his collarbone and was prescribed morphine pills to ease his suffering, my first instinct was fear.
Prescription opioids are the cause of many addictions across North America. Opioids are often prescribed as painkillers because of their ability to latch onto nerve cells, blocking out pain signals and stimulating feelings of euphoria. In 2021, one in eight Canadians had been prescribed opioids at some point in their life. These tiny pills are highly addictive.
Currently, North America suffers from an opioid epidemic, with more than 130 people dying from opioid-related deaths every day. Yet, the opioid crisis doesn’t seem to be talked about enough, given the scale of tragedy that’s ensued.
Kingston only has to look to its neighbouring city of Belleville to see the crippling effects of the opioid crisis. In 2024, Belleville’s Mayor, Neil Ellis, declared a state of emergency after 23 people overdosed in the span of 48 hours. My father grew up in Belleville, and he used to walk my siblings and I through the streets, pointing out his cherished childhood memories—streets where, 35 years later, 13 people overdosed in the span of two hours.
Ever since I was kid, I’ve heard countless warnings from my elders, including visits from nurses at school, about cannabis—a gateway drug. They claimed that if you tried it, you’d be sucked into a world of hard drugs and addiction.
When former drug addicts from a halfway house visited my elementary school in Ottawa, each speaker was asked if cannabis was the drug that led to their addictions. Yet, each one had the same hesitant answer—that their tumultuous experience with drugs actually began from prescription drugs. The visits from nurses and school presentations had never warned me of the dangers of medication.
Loosely prescribed drugs intended to help people have done more harm than good. From opium being doled out by doctors for stomach aches in the 18th century to Purdue Pharma’s false marketing of Oxycontin, a semi-synthetic opioid used to treat pain—opium has lurked in the shadows, ruining people’s lives for hundreds of years.
Purdue Pharma was aware of how dangerous and addictive Oxycontin was, yet they sold it. And it picks favourites—people who are, of course, in pain whether from abrupt injury or the aches of constant physical labour.
As heartbreaking as it is, there’s corruption and fraud in the field of medicine.
In 2016, British Columbia declared a public health emergency due to a drastic increase in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, 21,000 more people in the province have lost their lives to opioid-related deaths. Though I was aware of the West Coast crisis, in the five minutes I spent driving through Vancouver’s East Hastings Street, I was jarred by the amount of chaos and suffering caused by the drug epidemic.
I witnessed people of all ages—many with needles in their arms, some staring off in a frozen trance or digging through the garbage, and others collapsing onto the ground to be met immediately by a team of paramedics. It’s crucial to there are real people behind what’s known as the Opioid Crisis, people whose lives have been destroyed after they themselves or their loved ones were introduced to opioids.
If, for some awful turn of fate, one is prescribed opioids for a medical concern, they must also be strongly prescribed with immense caution for care of usage.
Eva is a third-year English & History student and one of The Journal’s Assistant Arts & Culture Editors.
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