Overdose Crisis on the US-Canada Border: Steel Town Down

Introduction

Tens of thousands have died of an opioid overdose across the US and Canada in 2017, with the death count surpassing the peak of the AIDS epidemic. The weight of the crisis in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario falls on a handful of people struggling to keep their fellow community members alive, similar to countless towns in North America. Steel Town Down is an intimate portrait of the only harm reduction worker in town and a family desperate to save their son from becoming another victim of the crisis. [Taken from YT description]

Quotes

“It’s fun at first, when you’re like, I’m rebelling and I’m not getting caught, I feel so cool. And then it’s almost like a cry for help, where you’re like, I want to get caught, why isn’t anyone noticing me doing all this bad stuff? Am I just unloved? Does my family not care that I’m falling apart?“

“Harm reduction to me is making sure that you, as a person, is okay, whether you use drugs or not, and if you do use drugs, we want to make sure that you’re causing the least amount of harm as possible.”

“I feel one of the biggest issues in Sault Ste. Marie is the level of povery that we have, which is attached to food insecurity, which is attached to the housing issues, which is attached to education issues.”

“[Narcan] is an opioid antagonist, so what it does is it attaches to the same receptors in your brain that the opium does, any opiate family, and it essentially blocks the action of that.”

“87% of the stigma that people who use drugs deal with or face comes from health care workers. So, if you just put that into context, if you’re someone who uses drugs and you find yourself in a situation where you’re overdosing, do you really want to go to an environment where you’re going to be told [awful things]?”