Annual event shares stories, successes and honors Vermonters lost to the opioid crisis

BURLINGTON – Kimberly Blake. Amy Riley. Dawn Tatro. They are all parents who have lost a child to substance use disorder in Vermont.

On Thursday evening, they shared their stories of loss and hope at City Hall Park, where  members of the community gathered to remember lives lost and advocated for overdose prevention and support.

With 65 deaths recorded through May of this year, opioid-related deaths were on the decline in Vermont for the first time since 2019. But advocates warned of new challenges such as Xylazine-laced opioids.

Xylazine, a horse tranquilizer and a popular adulterant for fentanyl, was involved in a third of the 95 accidental opioid overdose deaths that occurred in the state during a similar time frame in 2023.

Many whose lives have been touched by the continuing opioid crisis highlighted the importance of breaking the silence and the stigma that still surrounds substance use disorder.

“We are all people and we all deserve love and respect and compassion,” said Martina Anderson, a social justice advocate and harm reductionist, who wants to see attitudes change “because stigma still kills people.”

About 50 faces of people lost to overdoses were posted around the park as part of the third annual International Overdose Awareness Day event organized by Team Sharing Vermont to remember those lost to substance use disorder. It also coincided with Overdose Prevention Center National Solidarity Week.

Among them was Grace Riley’s photo.

Grace was 21 and wanted to be an addiction counselor. She had become addicted to Percocet after an accident, had undergone treatment and was doing well, said her mother Amy Riley. But then she died alone in her car in Maine in June 2022 after buying what she thought were Percocet pills in downtown Burlington.

“She came home, she had dinner with us and she drove back to her apartment in Maine. Even before getting out of her car, she took one of the pills that she bought on Church Street, and she died instantly. It was 100% fentanyl,” Amy Riley said in an interview Friday.

“All it takes is one pill,” she said.

Riley was among families and advocates who applauded ​​the state Department of Health’s guidelines on safer injection sites expected to be published next month, and the potential opening of an overdose prevention site in the city next year.

“I’m completely in favor of it. I’m really in favor of anything that involves preventing other people from dying,” Riley said.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, a longtime proponent of an overdose prevention site in the city, joined other elected officials to commend the efforts that led to legislation this year to make way for one that she expects will open next year.

“Lives will be saved,” she said.

Lawmakers in June overrode a veto by Gov. Phil Scott of H.72, which paves the path for the creation of Vermont’s first overdose prevention site in downtown Burlington, funded by $1.1 million in settlements with pharmaceutical companies.

“This legislation would not have come to fruition today if it was not for the strong advocacy of the people here in Burlington, the vulnerability and sharing what it meant to lose your loved ones, and sharing what it would mean to have an overdose prevention center and to save lives moving forward,” said Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski.

The annual event, said Mulvaney-Stanak, is an opportunity to remember and honor those who have been lost “by committing ourselves to movements for change to end overdose, to challenge antiquated and harmful drug laws, and to foster understanding working towards a future where stigma is no longer a barrier to support care and recovery.”

Support groups participated in the event by setting up information booths, advocating for ending stigma, promoting harm reduction and distributing free drug tests and Narcan kits.

Dakota Roberts, a harm reduction specialist from the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, spoke about the importance of drug testing programs and said it is heartening to see the support there.

“Rather than really thinking about the grief and the loss, I’m more focused on how great it is to see so many people all together for one thing: trying to make a difference in other people’s lives,” Roberts said of Thursday’s event.

As attendees wove around the posters of faces lost to addiction, a woman knelt and quietly placed a small framed photo of a young woman on the grass. She stepped back, wiped her eyes and walked back into the crowd.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Annual event shares stories, successes and honors Vermonters lost to the opioid crisis .