People between age 25 and 44 who are living unhoused in Nanaimo are dying from illicit drug overdoses two and a half times more often than elsewhere on the Island.
The grim statistic arose during discussion of drug toxicity data at a City of Nanaimo governance and priorities meeting Monday, Dec. 11. Dr. Shannon Waters, medical health officer; Dr. Roger Walmsley, Island Health addiction medicine physician; Amanda Lemon, mental health and substance abuses manager of community services; and Dana Leik, director with Island Health made a series of presentations on the topic to Nanaimo’s mayor and councillors.
According to Island Health, from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, B.C. Emergency Health Services attended 964 illicit drug poisonings in Nanaimo, compared to 586 for all of 2022. Nanaimo’s rate for drug overdoses now stands at just over 906 per 100,000 people, more than double Island Health’s average of 428 per 100,000.
Drug toxicity deaths in Nanaimo have been rising in recent year. In 2019, overdoses killed 28 people, and in 2022, overdoses claimed 85 lives. As of Oct. 31 this year, 99 people had died, representing a death rate more than double that of the rest of the Island Health region.
“Having been the medical health officer for the Cowichan Valley region, when I took on being interim [medical health officer] for this area and saw this data, it affected me really deeply because it’s very different and much more extensive than the data that I present within the Cowichan Valley,” Waters said.
Island Health statistics also show B.C. EHS paramedics in Nanaimo now respond on average to 89 illicit drug poisonings per month, a sharp rise from when responses averaged 52 per month at this time last year. Waters noted the response rose sharply in the spring of 2023.
The statistics are event more grim for young people.
Since 2017, paramedics attended to 2,069 illicit drug poisonings among 25-44-year-olds, 851 responses for 45-64-year-olds and 174 for people 65 and older. Men accounted for 1,236 overdoses and women for 575.
Over the past year, the rate of illicit drug toxicity deaths amongst those in the 25-44-year-old age range was 2.7 times higher in Nanaimo than the rest of Island Health, Waters said.
The frequency of people overdosing outdoors is rising, too, and accounted for 56 per cent of all calls this year, compared to 45 per cent in 2022, while the percentage of overdoses in private residences is falling, from 36 per cent of all overdoses in 2021 to 23 per cent in 2023. Overdoses continue to happen across Nanaimo, but the highest concentration is in the downtown area
Waters described the data as “complex and devastating.”
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Coun. Erin Hemmens asked, while acknowledging this newest data has only recently been compiled, what Island Health’s response will be to Nanaimo’s comparatively high rate of drug-poisonings.
“I’m curious about the systemic response when we see such a variability in the statistics,” Hemmens said.
Leik said the overdose prevention and supervised consumption site, operated by Canadian Mental Health Association B.C. at 250 Albert St., continues to see higher volumes of users than in other areas of Island Health with overdose prevention services, and Island Health is working with CMHA to extend the facility’s operating hours. Outreach teams have also seen increasing demand for their services.
“Many folks here know that we are working with the city and B.C. Housing to identify a location for complex care housing, which would enable people to access various streams of the housing continuum, from shelter-based to supportive living into the complex care housing that is coming with 20 net new units. So, we hope that we can confirm a location for that and begin the planning,” Leik said.
She and Walmsley also emphasized rising overdose deaths among unhoused people speaks to the need for housing in Nanaimo.
“One of the other things that I’m very aware of when I work on the street is the increased amount of homelessness and I don’t think that we can … dismiss the challenges that the housing crisis has put on our community,” Walmsley said. “I’m seeing more elderly people living in their cars. I’m seeing people who are not substance users who are faced with homelessness.”
He said in those situations people sometimes turn to addictions as a “way to survive.”
“Many of the people that I deal with on the street, they use drugs to stay up at night because they don’t have a warm place to go to. There’s not enough shelters in the city to go to to house all the people that we have,” Walmsley said.
He said there are no simple solutions, but there are hopes that through addressing homelessness and improving health-care delivery “we can make a change in some of those areas down the road.”
Coun. Janice Perrino said she is often asked, following the opening of the Albert Street overdose prevention site, about the increased numbers of overdose deaths.
“What people are saying to me is, what a mistake it is that we are giving out free drugs to help keep people alive and yet more are dying, and I don’t know how to answer that question…” she said. “I still can’t get my head around the fact that we have begun to give out free drugs to try to save lives and we seem to be losing even more.”
Lemon explained it is the illegal toxic drug supply, which contains contaminants, that is claiming lives because those contaminants make it far more difficult to counteract their effects with drugs such as naloxone.
Walmsley cited information from the B.C. Coroners Office that there is no data suggesting safe supply is contributing to more opiate use disorder.
“Prescribed safer supply has been an issue since it first came out … The reality is only five per cent of the people who have opiate use disorder are receiving safe supply,” he said. “That is not alone accounting for the increased deaths that you’re seeing. It’s not accounting for much of what you’re seeing.”
The B.C. Coroners Service reported last month that there were 96 overdose deaths in Nanaimo in the first 10 months of 2023, the deadliest-ever year for drug poisonings in the city. Prior to this year, 2022 had been the deadliest year for drug overdose deaths in Nanaimo, with 78.
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