Opioid deaths in Toronto up 74% from two years ago: TPH

Preliminary data released by Toronto Public Health shows there were 511 confirmed opioid overdose deaths in the city in 2021.

While that number is down from 539 recorded in 2020, the figure marks a 74 per cent increase from 2019 and a 273 per cent increase in deaths from 2015. And officials expect it will go even higher as the coroner’s office completes its investigation into all suspected overdose deaths.

“The overdose crisis continues to be an urgent public health issue in Toronto,” said Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health. “In keeping with our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing the drug poisoning crisis of this size and scale requires resources and action from all levels of government. These are preventable losses and members of our community.”

Health officials add the city’s Drug Checking Service has detected “increasingly toxic and unpredictable contaminants in the unregulated drug supply.”


RELATED: New strategies must be implemented to deal with opioid crisis: Ontario science table


The city adds the monthly number of emergency room visits due to opioid poisoning in the fall of 2021 were the highest seen in four years. Health officials say there were almost 4,000 emergency room visits alone last year.

Back in January, Toronto Public Health asked for an exemption from the federal government to decriminalize personal drug use, calling it a “health issue and not a criminal one.”

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