Toxic drug numbered released for April

MERRITT – The BC Coroners Service released the toxic drug report for April.

Officials report there have been four people die in Merritt due to the toxic drug supply through the first four months of 2023.

Kamloops lost 31 lives in the first four months of 2023 and is on pace to slightly surpass the record 92 fatalities in 2022.

According to the latest preliminary data by the BC Coroners Service, 206 people died province-wide in April 2023, with 51 of them in the Thompson Cariboo Shuswap health service delivery area. That works out to be a rate of 61.3 per 100,000 people.

Throughout the Interior Health, 120 deaths were recorded during that time.

“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,” Lisa Lapointe, B.C.’s chief coroner says. “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.”

Across B.C., 814 lives have been lost in 2023 due to the toxic supply.