Pandemic leads to rise in Canada fatal drug overdoses
A homeless Canadian with a drug addiction, Luc Laplante, has lost three friends — Dave, Emily and Pat — to opioid overdoses in the last three months of the coronavirus pandemic.
Partly to blame, he said, is a government emergency program that put temptation in the way of users by giving them a sudden cash infusion with few questions asked.
“People have been applying for the government COVID-19 aid, using it to binge on drugs and overdosing,” he said, just hours after surviving a dangerously high dose of fentanyl himself.
It left him with a painful reminder: He fell while high, suffering a bloody scrape along the right side of his face.
Addicts and outreach workers say several factors have contributed to a surge in overdoses during the pandemic: Physical isolation amid lockdowns, reduced access to addiction services such as safe injection sites, and shifts in health care resources from serving addicts to treating Covid-related illnesses.
The Trudeau government introduced a monthly C$2,000 ($1,500) emergency benefit in March to help Canadians left jobless by the pandemic, as businesses were ordered closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The government simplified the application process to quickly funnel payments to Canadians in need.
Applicants are required only to answer a few questions and certify their veracity.
“With C$2,000 in their pocket, people just went on benders,” Laplante said.
“They had access to quick cash and it killed them.”
The Ontario coroner estimates fatal overdoses have shot up by 25 percent in the last three months. In British Columbia, deaths increased by 40 percent over the same period last year.
“Tragically, other jurisdictions across the country are reporting similar trends,” Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said last month.
She pointed to “clusters of overdoses due to unknown or unusual mixes of toxic illicit substances” in several cities, including Toronto and Calgary.
Bonnie Henry, the chief public health officer in British Columbia, broke down in tears at a recent briefing while describing a record 170 overdose fatalities in May, more than the number of coronavirus deaths in the province.
“COVID-19 is not our only health crisis,” Henry said.
Read the full article on: www.irandailyonline.ir/news/270745.html