'We don't know what's in it:' Ottawa's toxic street drug problem is getting much worse

Ottawa health care officials say they are treating some of the worst overdoses they've ever seen during the pandemic.

“They’re playing with their lives,” said Anne Marie Hopkins, a manager at Ottawa Inner City Health working primarily in their consumption and treatment service centre said. 

“How can you have a fighting chance at surviving, at having any type of recovery, of anything, if you’re dead?”

In the first quarter of 2018 there were 14 opioid overdose related deaths in the city; three years later, that number has doubled.

“Particularly since COVID started, we started to see some of the worst overdoses we’ve ever seen,” Hopkins added.