Over 25% of young Canadian deaths linked to opioids amid pandemic: study
Global News
Across Canada, the burden of premature opioid-related deaths doubled between 2019 and 2021, representing more than one-quarter of deaths among younger adults, a study found.
More than one in four deaths among young Canadians between 2019 and 2021 were opioid-related, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased use of fentanyl potentially playing significant roles, according to new research.
A study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) found that during the same years, premature deaths related to opioids doubled across Canada, with the highest spike among young adults aged 20 to 39.
“While we know that these rates of death have unfortunately been growing over the past decade, we’ve also seen that there’s more of a concentration and clustering of these deaths in younger people,” said Dr. Tara Gomes, senior author of the study and scientist at Unity Health Toronto.
“So we wanted to better understand the broad impacts of this early loss of life that we are seeing across our communities all across Canada.”
To do this, the researchers looked at data on accidental deaths from opioid toxicity from provinces and territories in Canada: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories.
They found that in three years (between 2019 and 2021) the annual number of opioid-related deaths rose from 3,007 to 6,222. And the number of years of life lost due to opioids increased from 126,115 to 256,336.
In 2021, the highest number of years of life lost was among males (70 per cent) and people aged 30 to 39 years (30 per cent).
“If you imagine someone in their 30s, their life expectancy might be into their 80s. They are losing 40 years of their life because of this early loss of life, and early death,” Gomes told Global News.
