National crisis, national answer

Almost as many Canadians have died of opioid overdoses over the last five years as have died from COVID. And this slowermoving but devastatingly lethal crisis grows more dire

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatened over the last two years to become the beast that ate the health-care system, other health concerns — the elective surgeries, the diagnostic testing – were backburnered.

Then, as the heavy-equipment sieges at various locations around Canada consumed political attention and dominated the news cycle, other urgent health and social issues inevitably received scant notice.

But they didn’t go away.

They continue exacting their lethal toll.

And those on the front lines continue to raise alarms and call for help.

As the Star’s Nadine Yousif reported this week, Toronto’s supervised drug consumption sites are seeing a record number of overdoses and the opioid crisis looks to be worsening this year.

“The drug poisoning crisis is not getting better,” Shaun Hopkins, manager of a supervised consumption site run by the City of Toronto, told Yousif. “We’re continuing to see records being set in terms of paramedic call, deaths, overdose numbers.”

A study released last month suggests that half of those who died from opioids in 2020 sought health care in the month before – “missed opportunities” to provide help during the first wave of COVID-19.

According to the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, a quarter of those who died had seen a doctor, gone to an emergency ward, or been discharged from hospital in the week before dying.

Experts said that while the prevailing assumption is that those using drugs are disconnected from the health-care system, it was startling to learn how many had, in fact, been in contact with health-care facilities or providers in the days or hours before fatal overdoses.

And the stakes keep rising.

A Star investigation last year found that Toronto’s supply of drugs was growing stronger and more toxic, with additives that make it harder to “bring back” those who overdose.

Experts have reported that benzodiazepines are increasingly present, along with fentanyl. The benzodiazepines are not affected, they say, by the drug Naloxone used to reverse the effects of opioid overdose.

In addition, pandemic measures have reduced available services for safe consumption and cut the number of available detox beds.

The opioid crisis is taking hundreds of lives a year.

The challenge has worsened through COVID-19 – with both overdose deaths and the rate of emergency calls for overdoses up massively since the start of the pandemic.

It takes a huge emotional toll on those working in harm reduction – deaths are so frequent that in-depth debriefs are no longer done on reach case – as they are overwhelmed with almost daily loss and grief.

Almost as many Canadians have died of opioid overdoses over the last five years as have died from COVID. And this slower-moving but devastatingly lethal crisis grows more dire.

In November, Toronto’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, put it bluntly in her latest report to the city: “The status quo approach to the drug poisoning crisis is not working.”

The scourge is not limited to Toronto, but has devastated rural areas and smaller towns in Ontario and across the country.

As we have argued in the past, the crisis is national and a national problem demands a national response.

Many of those victimized by drugs seek help. It is the duty of a responsible society to do a better job providing it.