As many as 981 people died due to illicit drugs in BC, an average of 2.7 deaths every day in the province.
More than four in every five of these deaths had fentanyl detected in post-mortem testing, the government said.
Vancouver, Surrey, Victoria and Abbotsford led in the number of deaths last year due to consumption of illicit drugs.
Though the 2019 number is a decline of a 36 per cent from similar deaths in 2018, BC said the number was virtually identical to the number of deaths in the province in 2016.
It was in 2016 that the BC declared a provincial health emergency because of deaths due to consumption of illicit drugs.
The number of illicit drug deaths in 2019 was higher than motor vehicle incidents, suicides and homicides combined, said Lisa Lapointe, B.C.’s chief coroner.
“More than 5,000 lives have been lost in BC since 2016 as a result of illicit drug toxicity. These deaths have deeply hurt families and communities across our province and represent an immense loss of potential in all walks of life,” she said.
A continuing trend in the deaths is that middle-aged men are over-represented. More than three quarters of the suspected overdose deaths were of men, and 71 per cent were in the age group of 30 to 59.
Eighty-seven per cent of deaths occurred indoors, with more people dying on the days immediately following the issuance of income assistance payments than all other days in the year.
“The decrease in the number of British Columbians dying from this crisis is encouraging and indicates that our harm-reduction measures to keep people alive are working,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer.
But the province was no way out of the crisis, she said.
“We continue to see very high rates of overdose events across the province and are seeing increased numbers of young people with long-lasting health effects after overdosing,” she said.
Princeton, Grand Forks, Hope, Keremeos and Merritt are some other communities where the death rate due to consumption of illegal deaths is high.
