Parent hopes fentanyl-poisoning awareness walk will become annual event

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This article was published 25/06/2023 (827 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In blue-and-yellow T-shirts symbolizing the bright summer sky, roughly 60 people gathered at Oodena Circle at The Forks on Sunday afternoon to rally for fentanyl poisoning awareness.

The group chanted the slogan, “No thanks, I’m good,” as they set off on a march to the legislature grounds. Those were the words Joseph Fourre’s son Harlan normally used in response to questions about whether he wanted to do drugs. Harlan died in April at age 31 after ingesting a party drug that was laced with an opioid. His family believes the drugs Harlan took that night in The Pas were cut with fentanyl without his knowledge.

Now, his father Joseph Fourre hopes the No Thanks, I’m Good awareness walk will become an annual event to educate the public about the dangers of recreational drugs. He wants people to stop assuming that only drug addicts die of overdoses.

“Sweeping my son’s death under the carpet of overdose doesn’t sit right with me, because in reality, he was poisoned,” Fourre said in an interview prior to Sunday’s event.

“We sweep these deaths under the carpet of overdose, and I don’t know why we do that. Maybe it takes the sting (out) and puts the blame on the person — you know, ‘It was a lifestyle,’ ‘They chose to do that.’ But my son didn’t choose to do that. My son was poisoned.”

Harlan was a master roofer, his father says, who was always busy working under sunny skies. He’d been in The Pas helping out his sister on a job, and was hanging out with people who weren’t normally in his social circle, his father said. Fourre, who has worked in addictions support after kicking a heroin addiction, said Harlan didn’t normally do drugs. The drugs he took that weekend caused six overdoses in The Pas, and RCMP later said they were likely laced with opioids. The others who overdosed survived.

“My son wasn’t an addict. He didn’t have addiction issues. He went out and made a bad choice one night, and it cost him his life,” Fourre said.

With grad season and summer underway, Fourre said he wants recreational drug users to be aware. The overdose death statistics don’t tell the whole story, he said.

“These numbers aren’t telling us who’s one and done, trying it for the first time, buying something believing it’s one thing and getting a totally (different) thing.”

People of all ages, including a few uniformed Winnipeg Police Service officers, walked with Fourre during Sunday’s rally. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak supported the event and covered the cost of T-shirts and informational materials in memory of Harlan.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com