The death tolls follow one another every few months, inevitably adding up to thousands each time. Countless victims of an epidemic that we refuse to name as such and who, lurking in the shadow of this disturbing trivialization, practically no longer cause a stir. The overdose crisis drags on in indifference, and even abandonment.
Researchers from the University of Toronto found, in a recent study, that a quarter of young adults who died in their twenties and thirties died from a single cause: an accidental overdose. Their number quadrupled in Quebec, between 2019 and 2021, and quintupled in Manitoba. The frightening census has barely been recorded.
Across Canada, 5,975 people died from apparent opioid poisoning between January and September last year. A staggering average of 22 victims per day.
So many children, brothers, sisters, parents, uncles and aunts that their loved ones may have lost sight of, but who have not necessarily been forgotten. And who deserve better than to be reduced to simple annual statistical data, which no longer even makes the headlines.
Since the start of this health crisis in 2016, nearly 42,500 Canadians have died. That is to say the equivalent of the population of Boucherville, or that, within 600 people, of Rouyn-Noranda. An entire city, in seven years. And a toll to which are added thousands of other deaths caused by poisoning with stimulants, such as cocaine, crack or crystal methamphetamine (crystal meth)even more deadly than opioids in Quebec.
The crisis is everywhere, in all major cities. It is no longer just drug addicts taking injections or smoking that passers-by encounter in our streets, but now sometimes even victims of this disastrous addiction dying before their eyes.
While governments are slow to increase support resources to meet needs, conservative politicians are going to war again to eliminate them. In Ottawa as in Alberta, Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith claim that it is enough to treat only the addiction, without supporting drug addicts at the same time to prevent them from succumbing to the Russian roulette of their consumption. The rhetoric is incendiary: harm reduction is only a “theory”, concocted by “chimerical pseudo-experts”, in the process of “killing” Canadians, insists Pierre Poilievre.
However, science, real science, has evaluated the effectiveness of supervised consumption centers, which the Conservative leader wants to stop funding, although their operations are protected by the Supreme Court. The verdict: a 67% reduction in fatal overdoses in the neighborhoods where they live. As well as a 30% increase in users’ use of detoxification services, which Mr. Poilievre says he wants to prioritize.
The safer supply, which consists of providing pharmaceutical substitutes for increasingly dangerous street potions, has also led to a reduction in overdoses as well as drug-related deaths.
Studies that conservative politicians prefer to ignore, who prefer to brandish abuses that are currently anecdotal.
None of the avenues are obviously perfect. The decriminalization of simple possession, begun in British Columbia last year, is still in progress there. Challenges of supervising places of consumption arise there, near schools, in parks or hospitals. The more secure supply is, for its part, not immune to the diversion of these products, which some resell on the street to obtain others, stronger or with a different component. Tablets diverted in this way were also found during recent seizures by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the authorities do not speak of a widespread phenomenon.
These are flaws that must be taken into account, otherwise these essential avenues will end up being abandoned for lack of having been adequately supervised, as decriminalization has just been after three years in the State of Oregon. Their failure could also serve as a pretext for the government of Quebec and the City of Montreal not to finally follow this necessary step.
The ultimate response to the overdose crisis will inevitably be multidimensional. No single solution will be enough to cure such a complex scourge. To deny, as conservatives advocate, two decades of complementary approaches in the hope that this deadly tragedy will magically evaporate would be the worst of them.
Funding for drug treatment is essential. But addicts still need to be able to use it, without first succumbing to their addiction. Beyond the political debate, it is about saving lives.