Let’s not forget the ongoing epidemic of overdose deaths

Treatment must be based on evidence, says Petra Schulz.

Your article “On average, a huge leap in mortality,” May 13, about the increase in mortality from COVID-19 neglects to mention the other epidemic Canadians are facing, the crisis in overdose deaths. Currently, 11 Canadians die each day from overdose and, in 2019, Statistics Canada reported that for the first time in over four decades life expectancy was not increasing. This startling trend was attributed to the impact of overdose deaths in British Columbia and Alberta.

Sadly, since March, 118 people have died from COVID -19 in Alberta (at the time of writing.) In that same time, at least 138 people died from an overdose in this province. Data from B.C. and Ontario suggests overdose deaths have been rising since the start of the pandemic, and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported a 60-per-cent increase between February and March 2020. While Alberta data is frustratingly absent, based on first-hand reports from health professionals caring for people using drugs, we are likely witnessing a similar situation here.

But without this critical data we can’t know for sure, and we can’t mobilize to prevent these deaths. Yet, this is not only about the numbers. In all cases, regardless of the cause of death, those who died are not statistics; they are people who were loved and leave behind grieving families. Our political leaders and public health officials remind us of the fact that every life lost in Alberta is a tragedy during their daily updates on COVID -19, but when it comes to lives lost from overdose, there is silence.

As an Albertan, I am thankful that our chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, leads us based on the best available public health evidence. Our premier, Jason Kenney, reminds us that he follows the advice of health experts and scientists.

But I wonder, why hasn’t an evidence-based approach been applied to our epidemic in overdose deaths? To the contrary, the Alberta government’s response has been to expand access to residential treatment spaces and to focus on drug abstinence as recovery.

While helpful to some, guidelines from the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM) are clear that residential treatment is not the most effective approach for opioid use disorder, and that investing in treatment is unlikely to prevent overdose deaths compared to interventions such as opioid agonist treatment, public distribution of naloxone, and supervised consumption sites.

Similar to their resistance to evidence for any intervention that doesn’t fit their narrow definition of recovery, the Alberta government has dismissed calls from across Canada for a safe supply for people using drugs, at a time when the pandemic has disrupted the supply chain and the street supply of drugs is increasingly contaminated with by-products and substances in higher and more lethal concentrations.

In response, Health Canada has rapidly revised their guidelines so physicians can provide people who struggle with problematic substance use with safe, legal, prescription alternatives. Implementing these measures would potentially reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection among this population, and thereby protect community health, when people dependent on substances do not have to buy drugs from illegal sources and can properly physically distance.

At a time when many in our province are fearful of illness or death from contracting an infectious virus, the threat of death from the lethal illicit drug supply persists for people using drugs. In 2014, my son Danny died alone in his home, because the opioid he took contained a lethal amount of fentanyl.

Please, in this time of COVID -19 and beyond, do not let our loved ones who struggle with substance use be forgotten. People using drugs deserve the same levels of protection that we are providing to everyone in our community, in order to keep them safe and alive. Petra Schulz is a mother who lost her youngest child to an overdose in 2014 and is one of the co-founders of Moms Stop The Harm, a network of Canadian families impacted by substance use related harms and deaths.

The Alberta government has dismissed calls from across Canada for a safe supply for people using drugs.