Ten people in New West have died from an illicit drug supply in the first four months of 2023.
Preliminary data from the BC Coroners Service shows that communities throughout the province continue to be devastated by deaths due to unregulated drugs, with 814 lives lost in the first four months of 2023, including 10 in New Westminster.
“Illicit fentanyl continues to be the main and most lethal driver of B.C.’s drug-toxicity public-health emergency, having been detected in 86 per cent of deaths in 2022 and 79 per cent of deaths in 2023,” Lisa Lapointe, B.C.’s chief coroner, said in a news release. “Cocaine, methamphetamines and/or benzodiazapines are also often present. This drug poisoning crisis is the direct result of an unregulated drug market. Members of our communities are dying because non-prescribed, non-pharmaceutical fentanyl is poisoning them on an unprecedented scale.”
BC Coroners Service statistics show the number of unregulated drug deaths in New Westminster in the past decade: 2013 – five; 2014 – nine; 2015 – 12; 2016 – 10; 2017 – 24; 2018 – 36; 2019 – 20; 2020 – 36; 2021 – 46; and 2022 – 31. From Jan. 1 to April, 10 people have died of unregulated deaths.
According to the coroners service, as has been the case throughout the crisis, the illicit drug supply remains highly volatile, challenging people’s best efforts to use safely and challenging life-saving responses.
“Fentanyl is present in about eight of every 10 deaths, almost always in combination with other substances. April 2023’s reporting also notes an increase in the presence of benzodiazepines, which is largely the result of enhancements to benzodiazepine testing by the Provincial Toxicology Centre.
April 2023 was the 31st consecutive month in which at least 150 lives were lost to unregulated drugs in B.C., and the 13th month in which more than 200 deaths were reported. The total number of deaths in April equates to about 6.9 lives lost every day.
At least 12,046 British Columbians have been lost to toxic, unregulated drugs in the seven years since the public-health emergency was first declared in April 2016, said the coroners service.
“It’s critical that we rely on science, reliable data and legitimate reporting as we respond to an emergency that has taken the lives of so many of our family members, friends and neighbours,” Lapointe said. “We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the root of this crisis was the arrival of illicit fentanyl in B.C. in 2013, and that it has been driven by illicit fentanyl ever since. Safer-supply prescribing and the decriminalization of small amounts of some drugs for personal use are recent health-centred approaches to a complex health challenge. Anonymous allegations and second-hand anecdotes suggesting that these new initiatives are somehow responsible for the crisis our province has been experiencing since early 2016 are not only harmful, they are simply wrong.”
