Opioid deaths in Alberta on track for deadliest year

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The opioid crisis in Alberta keeps claiming more lives, with advocates concerned for drug users’ safety throughout the remainder of the pandemic.

New data from the Alberta government shows between January and July, 898 Albertans died from a drug overdose, and 96 per cent of the deaths were attributed to the consumption of opioids. That’s compared to 735 deaths in that time period last year.

Euan Thomson with A-AWEAR (Alberta Addicts Who Educate and Advocate Responsibly) says the crisis in the province has spiraled out of control.

“There’s a lot of burnout right now,” says Thomson.

“People are working similarly to what we’ve seen with the COVID crisis in the hospitals. They’re just in crisis mode all the time responding to overdoses in the streets.”

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The Alberta government’s approach to handling the crisis has focused on recovery and abstinence rather than supervised injection sites and safe substance provision so far.

Ophelia Cara is a client at the Safeworks Harm Reduction Program and says she feels “very lucky” to find a doctor who prescribed her IV opiates after becoming addicted to heroin.

“There have been some really, really significant changes happening in my life,” she says.

Cara uses social media to de-stigmatize harm reduction, just one of many ways people are trying to mitigate the harm caused by the opioid crisis.