Ottawa death toll from drug overdoses headed for new record

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Preliminary data suggests Ottawa is on pace to set yet another record for drug overdose deaths this year with 244 people already lost to the epidemic.

In 2023, 188 people died from confirmed drug overdoses, according to figures published by Ottawa Public Health.

With one month remaining in 2024, the number of suspected overdose deaths in Ottawa has already surpassed last year’s toll.

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The city’s data on suspected overdose deaths is considered preliminary and is subject to change based on the findings of investigations that can take months to complete. Some of the deaths could ultimately be attributed to natural causes, such as cardiac arrest, rather than drug overdoses.

The epidemic’s death toll in Ottawa has increased in each of the past four years.

Kayla Hagerty, founder of the Solidarity Alliance of People Who Use Drugs, says the city’s overdose epidemic has been made worse by a consistently toxic drug supply, a shortage of affordable housing and the accumulated weight of trauma and loss in the drug community.

“People have experienced an accumulation of grief that knocks them down and sends them back into a cycle,” she said, noting that depression and isolation could increase the risk of an overdose death.

A master’s student in sociology at Carleton University, Hagerty, 25, has worked at three of the city’s four supervised injection sites. Her stepfather, Ian Harrington, died from a drug overdose during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

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Hagerty said the policies of Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government would threaten the lives of even more drug users next year.

The provincial government has introduced legislation to close 10 supervised consumption sites in Ontario, including one operated by Somerset West Community Health Centre in Ottawa. The same legislation will force municipalities to obtain provincial approval to participate in federal safer supply programs, which provide users with prescription drugs in place of dangerous and unpredictable street drugs.

“People are going to die,” Hagerty predicted. “People aren’t going to be stepping over needles and pipes on the street, they’re going to be stepping over dead bodies.”

Ottawa’s rising death toll from the overdose epidemic stands in contrast to the experience of some other jurisdictions.

Alberta has had a significant drop in the number of people killed by opioid-related drug overdoses. In the first five months of 2024, 431 people died from overdoses in that province, down from 788 in the previous year, according to data published by the Alberta government.

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Similarly, in the United States, federal data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that overdose deaths declined by more than 14 per cent during the past year.

The decline in the U.S. has been attributed to the wider use of Naloxone, a treatment that rapidly reverses the effects of opioid overdoses, and by changes in the country’s drug supply. The fentanyl being produced is less potent, drug experts say, and there’s less of its dangerous analogue, carfentanil, available on the streets.

In the past, Ottawa has mirrored drug trends first recorded in the U.S. and western Canada.

Across Canada, the opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of more than 47,000 people since 2016. Federal data shows the vast majority of those deaths (81 per cent) have been connected to fentanyl and its analogues — powerful synthetic opioids that can be fatal even in small doses.

Research also shows more drug users are taking opioids along with stimulants such as methamphetamines and crack cocaine. According to Health Canada, 61 per cent of people who died from suspected opioid overdoses in the first three months of 2024 also showed evidence of stimulant use.

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