Canada’s addiction to opiates getting worse

Deaths from opiate overdoses in Canada have become a “public health crisis” that could prompt the government to declare a national health emergency, the Canadian health minister said on Friday. If such a measure is found “appropriate and helpful,” then “wewill use all the tools available,” Jane Philpott said here at the opening of a national summit on the crisis. An estimated 2,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses in 2015, said Don Davies, spokesperson for the left-leaning New Democratic Party. “Many provinces are seeing an even higher number of fatalities in 2016,” he added.