Poll finds 12% of Canadians know someone opioid-addicted

A significant number of Canadians have a buddy or relative addicted to opioids, according to a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute.

The survey, released Wednesday, found one in eight (12 per cent) — the equivalent of nearly 3.5 million Canadian adults — say they have close friends or family members who have become dependent on opioids in the last five years.

And, nearly 20 per cent of Canadians say they have been prescribed opioids.

Surprisingly, in B.C., the province with the highest rates of opioid-related deaths, only eight per cent said they knew someone with an addiction to the strong narcotic.

Seventeen per cent of B.C. respondents say they have been prescribed opiates.

Also in B.C., the poll shows nearly half of residents have followed the opioid epidemic closely, compared with 36 per cent or fewer elsewhere in Canada. The same number of British Columbians are more likely to describe the issue as a “crisis” than respondents in other provinces. B.C. was the first province to declare an emergency in 2016, after hundreds of people died from overdosing on the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

The poll says a majority of Canadians (77 per cent) agree the opioid problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, while a similar number agreed that if people were dying from Ebola or the Zika virus instead of drugs like fentanyl the problem would get more attention.

A high majority (85 per cent) support compulsory treatment programs for those who overdose.

The Angus Reid Institute conducted the online survey of 1,510 Canadians from Nov. 14 to 20, 2017. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.