Record number of Sask. people died from drug toxicity in 2021

The number of Saskatchewan people suspected to have died from drug toxicity in 2021 is more than double the number from two years prior.

There are 464 people confirmed or suspected to have died last year, according to the Saskatchewan Coroners Service.

Hannah Schneider cried when she saw the statistics. She knows that each number tallied up on the spreadsheet represents a person lost and others left to mourn. 

She remembers autumn in Regina, when there was a bad batch of drugs going around. 

"I kept getting messages. 'Hey did you hear so and so passed. Hey did you hear so and so passed. It was just like hit after hit after hit after hit,'" said Schneider, who created a Saskatchewan Overdose Awareness Group. "When does it stop? It's just so painful to hear [about] so many people."

Schneider and other advocates want more to be done to address the overdose crisis in Sask. 

For 2021, 225 deaths are confirmed while the rest remain under investigation. That means the number could change, but the preliminary data still shows a likely significant jump from years prior. In 2020, there were 327 people suspected to have died by overdose and in 2019 there were 179 confirmed. 

Schneider remembers a close friend who died in March 2019. He had been working on his own recovery and the loss affected her deeply. 

"It was very unexpected.… I had no idea he was getting back into the hard stuff," she said, adding he had also played a big role in her own addictions recovery journey.

His memory moved her to host a ribbon memorial event in his memory on International Overdose Awareness Day. Since then, she's learned the stories of dozens of community members who have died from drug overdose as people reach out, wanting to remember them. 

"A good handful of these people who've passed have tried to find help," she said. "These people are basically getting lost in the process." 

Chantel Huel said it seems like there has been an endless stream of "rest in peace" tributes on social media in the last two years for people who died because of toxic drugs.

"It became a daily thing. It became normal in my life," said Huel, who lives in Saskatoon. "Fentanyl has taken the lives of so many beautiful people." 

Most of the confirmed deaths in 2021 have been linked to fentanyl. Huel has lived through her own addiction to opioids, and spent time in and out of custody because of it. She's since marked 39 months sober.