A B.C. death review panel looked into 6,000 overdoses in 4 years. Here's what it's suggesting.

A just-released report to British Columbia's chief coroner finds the primary cause of illicit drug overdoses in the province is a combination of an increasingly toxic supply and a current policy framework that it says forces users to unregulated sources.

A just-released report to British Columbia's chief coroner finds the primary cause of illicit drug overdoses in the province is a combination of an increasingly toxic supply and a current policy framework that it says forces users to unregulated sources.

The BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel examined more than 6,000 deaths from illicit drug overdose between August 2017 through July 2021. Although it did not look at data collected over the entirety of 2021, the report was released following what was the deadliest year on record in the B.C.'s overdose crisis, during which 2,224 lives were lost.

The report said, as the BCCS has before, that illicit drug toxicity is the leading cause of unnatural death in B.C., "accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, motor vehicle incidents, drownings and fire-related deaths combined."

Drug toxicity is second only to cancer in terms of potential years of life lost in B.C. Officials have previously said that in comparison, COVID-19 is 12th.

The expert panel said the supply is a factor in the issue, but so to is the current drug policy framework of prohibition, which it says forces substance users to buy their supply from an unregulated market, putting themselves further at risk.

The findings outlined by the panel include what those in the province already know: more people are dying, and the supply from street-level dealers is increasingly toxic.

"The average number of deaths per month more than doubled immediately after the start of COVID-19-related restrictions in March 2020 compared with the previous year," the report said.