More than 1,400 drug poisoning deaths recorded in Alberta last year
CBC
More than 1,400 people in Alberta died of drug poisonings in 2022, according to the latest provincial data.
The Alberta substance use surveillance system shows 1,443 deaths between January and November last year, the third consecutive year where the count surpassed 1,000. Of these, 1,346 were attributed to opioids.
So far it remains lower than 2021, the deadliest year yet on record, when 1,842 people died from drug poisonings.
For Petra Schulz, co-founder of harm reduction advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm, the numbers are sobering.
"If it gets a bit better from the worst day on record, that is no measure of success. That is just a measure of a slightly diminished failure," she said.
Dr. Ginetta Salvalaggio, family physician and former co-chair of Edmonton's opioid poisoning committee, cautions that the downward trend is still concerning given that the final numbers for 2022 have yet to be finalized as they are updated on a quarterly basis.
"There's always going to be a bit of a lag with the medical examiner's office," she said.
Salvalaggio said the overall decline should be viewed cautiously, comparing the 48 opioid-related fatalities in January 2020 to the 159 in January 2022.
"We're still triple what we were in at the beginning of 2020, for numbers, so we're nowhere near out of the woods."
Colin Aitchison, press secretary for the office of mental health and addictions, said in an emailed statement the government is "cautiously optimistic" about the continued downward trends since a peak in late 2021.
Aitchison also noted that opioid overdose deaths in Alberta were down 31 per cent in November 2022 compared to the same month in 2021.
He said hospitalizations and emergency department visits related to opioid addiction are at their lowest point since the start of the pandemic and have decreased 39 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively, since peaking in late 2021.
For 2021-22, the province provided over $35 million for support services — an increase of nearly 60 per cent compared to funding between 2018-19, according to Aitchison.
Some harm reduction advocates have called for more supervised consumption sites to be made available beyond the eight sites that exist across the province.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.