Opioid overdoses continue to kill Canadians in droves at the rate of regarding 20 lives lost every day, Ottawa revealed on Monday.
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From January to September 2022, 5,360 people lost their lives following opioid poisoning, a tragedy fueled by the consumption – voluntary or via contaminated drugs – of fentanyl, described Health Canada in releasing its most recent data on the crisis.
Twice as many deaths
This is a small decrease from the same period in 2021, when there were 21 deaths per day. However, the number of deaths in 2022 remains twice as high as in 2019. Remember that the COVID-19 pandemic had the effect of reigniting the crisis from 2020, with many consumers finding themselves without assistance services.
The opioid crisis, which mainly affects British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, continues despite several investments and measures aimed at countering it, such as the distribution of naloxone kits – the antidote to fentanyl –, the opening of supervised injection sites and the legalization of simple drug possession for British Columbia.
“Since 2017, our government has invested more than $800 million to combat the toxic drug and overdose crisis,” said Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett, who believes that these measures “have made a difference. difference”.
Overdoses have become one of the leading causes of preventable death in Canada. By comparison, 1,768 Canadians lost their lives in road accidents in 2021, a number three times lower than for overdose victims.
