Victoria on Vancouver Island

We visited Victoria - the capital of British Columbia - located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and named after Queen Victoria of Great Britain. It's a beautiful city, especially around Parliament and Fisherman's Wharf. A city we really think is worth a visit. But that's not what this post is going to be about... It's about the other side of the coin. Something we couldn't avoid exposing our children to For something we've experienced all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to cities like Nanaimo, Port Alberni and now Victoria, is the sheer number of fentanyl addicts that characterize the cityscape. The trip has been an eye-opener - especially in relation to the serious fentanyl crisis that is hitting both the US and Canada hard these years. A problem we don't see to the same extent back home in Denmark Daily you meet people in deep addiction - often in the middle of cities, in a zombie-like state. Destroyed by drugs and with no real help in sight. These are heartbreaking fates that remind you how brutal life can be at the bottom of society. Fentanyl is an extremely powerful synthetic opioid - up to 50 times stronger than heroin - and was originally developed as a painkiller for cancer patients. In the 1990s and 2000s, opioids like OxyContin were massively overprescribed in North America, starting a wave of addiction. Many later ended up using illegally manufactured opioids like fentanyl, which today is the leading cause of tens of thousands of overdose deaths each year - especially in the US and Canada. It's a massive problem that you don't understand the extent of until you see it for yourself.