Illicit drug overdose deaths are up sharply across the province this year with fentanyl a major and growing cause, according to two reports from the B.C. Coroners Service.
“It (the use of fentanyl) is way too high,” Barb McLintock, coroner, strategic services, said in an interview Wednesday about the reports’ findings. “Until this year, it was very much concentrated in the Lower Mainland. But what we’ve seen this year is it’s really gone provincewide. There’s a lot on the Island, a lot in the Interior, and we’re now just beginning to see a lot in the North as well.”
McLintock cited Kamloops, Kelowna, Victoria and Nanaimo as four communities that have seen a sharp spike this year in illicit drug overdose deaths.
The coroner’s report said that in the first half of 2016 (Jan. 1 through June 30), the total number of deaths from illicit drug overdoses was 371, an increase of 74.2 per cent from the same time period in 2015.
However, for the first five months of 2016, approximately 60 per cent of those deaths showed fentanyl detected in toxicology tests, either alone or, more often, in combination with other illicit drugs. That’s up from 31 per cent in 2015 and just five per cent in 2012.
There is a one-month lag in fentanyl data due to testing protocols.
For both Vancouver Island and the southern Interior, the number of deaths in which fentanyl was detected in the first five months in 2016 has exceeded the number for all 12 months of 2015.
McLintock noted that the province has seen a 40-per-cent increase in drug overdoses this year with drugs not involving fentanyl: cocaine, heroin and crystal meth. “These are not novice or occasional users,” she added. “They’re regular or daily users.”
The report on fentanyl-detected drug overdose deaths showed that there were 188 in B.C. from Jan. 1 to May 31, 2016, compared to 153 for all of 2015, 91 for all of 2014, 49 for all of 2013, and just 13 in 2012.
As well, Vancouver Island saw 48 fentanyl-detected deaths in the first five months of 2016 compared to 22 in all of 2015 and just one in 2012. Kelowna saw 12 fentanyl-detected deaths in the first five months of 2016, compared to six for all of 2015 and just one in 2014.
Despite those numbers, there was some positive news with several communities in Metro Vancouver recording no fentanyl-detected deaths at all from 2014 to 2016: Squamish, Delta, Gibsons, Lions Bay, Sechelt and West Vancouver.
A separate study looking at illicit drug overdose deaths in general found that besides the 74-per-cent increase across B.C. in the first five months of 2016, males accounted for over 81 per cent of those deaths.
The top three municipalities where fatal drug overdoses occurred between 2007 and 2016 were Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria.
