MSTH Advocacy Spotlight - March 2026
At MSTH, we highlight some of our members and advocates from across Canada.
Our members do incredible work in their communities to raise awareness of the drug poisoning crisis in different ways.
Some facilitate our peer support groups Holding Hope and our peer bereavement support groups Healing Hearts, while others work in advocacy for MSTH in their communities and provinces.
To find out how YOU can become more involved please connect with us at info@momsstoptheharm.com
Ron Merk, Port Alberni, BC
Why did you become a member of Moms Stop The Harm?
I became involved in Moms Stop the Harm because the work they do reflects both my personal reality and my public advocacy. A family member has lived with concurrent disorders for more than two decades. Walking alongside them through moments of stability, relapse, hope, fear, and resilience has fundamentally shaped how I understand substance use, mental health, and the systems meant to respond to them. Their struggle has been the catalyst for my advocacy.
Through that experience, I’ve seen how quickly people are reduced to labels, and how families are often left navigating stigma, silence, and fragmented systems on their own. Moms Stop the Harm stood out to me because it refuses that framing. MSTH centers dignity, compassion, and evidence-based responses, while making space for grief, love, and accountability to coexist.
In my writing through Learning Moments and in my online engagement, I try to slow down conversations that have become reactive or punitive, and to highlight the complexity of concurrent disorders without stripping people of their humanity. MSTH embodies that same approach. It doesn’t ask families to choose between caring and truth, or between compassion and urgency.
What drew me in wasn’t only MSTH’s advocacy for harm reduction, but its insistence that every life matters, including the lives of those still here, still struggling. Being involved feels less like joining an organization and more like standing with people who refuse to let stigma, fear, or preventable loss define the story.
What does being an advocate mean to you?
For me, being an advocate is less about speaking the loudest and more about speaking responsibly, especially when the stakes are high, and the people most affected are often unheard or misrepresented. Advocacy means slowing down conversations that have become reactive, politicized, or dehumanizing, and asking harder, more compassionate questions.
Through Learning Moments, I try to write in ways that challenge certainty without dismissing pain. Many of the issues surrounding substance use, overdose, and concurrent disorders exist in uncomfortable grey spaces. Advocacy, to me, is about staying in that discomfort long enough to learn something and then sharing that learning in a way that invites others in rather than pushing them away.
It also means resisting the urge to reduce people to their worst moments. Too often, public narratives frame substance use as a moral failure or a personal flaw. Advocacy pushes back against that framing and reminds us that policy decisions, social conditions, trauma, and access to care all shape outcomes. Naming those factors isn’t about excusing harm; it’s about preventing more of it.
Being an advocate also comes with responsibility. Words matter. Tone matters. Accuracy matters. I see advocacy as a long game. One built on trust, patience, and persistence rather than outrage cycles. It’s about showing up consistently, even when the conversation moves on, and holding space for compassion when it would be easier to harden.
What do you want people to know about Moms Stop the Harm?
I want people to know that Moms Stop the Harm is not just an advocacy organization. It is a moral anchor in a landscape that too often drifts toward blame, fear, and political convenience. MSTH consistently reminds us that the overdose crisis is not abstract. It is personal, ongoing, and shaped by the choices we make collectively.
What sets MSTH apart is its ability to combine grief with clarity. This is an organization born from loss, but it refuses to let that loss be weaponized or ignored. Instead, it channels lived experience into evidence-based advocacy, grounded in compassion and informed by science. MSTH doesn’t ask us to look away from pain, but it also doesn’t allow pain to justify harmful policies or inaction.
I also want people to understand how important MSTH’s voice is in countering stigma. Stigma kills. Not metaphorically, but directly by isolating people, delaying care, and shaping policies that punish rather than protect. MSTH challenges stigma not with slogans, but with stories, persistence, and an unwavering insistence that people who use drugs are worthy of care and dignity.
Finally, MSTH models what ethical advocacy can look like: firm without being cruel, emotional without being manipulative, and hopeful without being naïve. In a time when public discourse often rewards outrage over understanding, Moms Stop the Harm stands as proof that compassion is not only possible. It’s incredibly powerful.
