Family photo

A Vancouver Island couple whose 26-year-old son died after smoking fentanyl-laced heroin wants the coroner’s report on his death changed to say he was poisoned.

Ryan Hedican, an electrician, was on a construction site on April 24, 2017, in Vancouver when he smoked heroin during his lunch break, after more than eight months of being drug free.

At the time, he was living with sober friends, had a “vision board” of short- and long-term goals in his room and individual meals in the fridge for the week.

“He didn’t get up that day intending to use drugs,” said his father, John Hedican, who lives in Courtenay. “He bought heroin or he was given heroin with fentanyl.”

A B.C. Coroners Service report classified the death as an accidental overdose, said Hedican, who argues that the word “overdose” puts the blame on the user for making a bad choice.

“The user is deciding to do this, so it’s too bad for them,” said Hedican. “But it’s not — it’s a poisoning from a toxic drug supply provided by organized crime, the sole provider of toxic drugs to millions of Canadians."

In July, the Coroners Service changed the way it describes deaths such as Ryan’s, calling them illicit-drug toxicity deaths, as opposed to overdose deaths. 

“The term overdose wasn’t precise or as accurate in describing it as an illicit-drug toxicity death,” said Andy Watson, spokesman for the B.C. Coroners Service. “It can be stigmatizing to use the term ‘overdose,’ as it may imply that the user knows the amount they are consuming. But as we know with fentanyl … sometimes it’s not known about the toxicity of what is being taken and therefore [the death] is unintentional."

The Hedicans want their son’s death report changed to reflect the new terminology, but Watson said the family would have to apply to the chief coroner to have the investigation of the death reopened based on new evidence. That’s rare, he said.

Ryan, the oldest of three children, was born Oct. 3, 1990, in Port Hardy and grew up in Courtenay.

“He was a normal teenager, you know?” said Hedican. “He was playing hockey right up until he was 17. I mean, it was high-calibre hockey and he was up early in the mornings and he was busy on weekends.

“His grades were good at school and he didn’t even have to work that hard. He was just a smart guy. And he had plans in life.

“And then all of a sudden, you know, he’s fighting a disease that most people think is a choice. And there’s no help. That’s what it’s like when a kid is fighting addiction. There’s nothing there for you, and you as a parent have to figure it out. And you as a parent have to fund it.”

The Hedican family paid $13,000 a month for two months for Ryan at the private Edgewood Inpatient Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Centre in Nanaimo, and then $8,000 a month for eight months at Last Door, in New Westminster.

After completing the program at the Last Door, Ryan “had so many plans of how he was going to live going forward in his recovery,” said Hedican.

He returned to work on a construction site in Vancouver, but relapsed within weeks.