New drug overdose numbers show victims skew older than many Manitobans assume: advocate

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Peggy

Drug overdoses are killing older people more often than Manitobans assume, a harm-reduction advocate says.

Of the 47 suspected drug-related deaths recorded in May, 30 of them, or 64 per cent, were people aged 40 and over, including seven people between 50 to 59 and nine aged 60 and above, according to preliminary figures released last week by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

A majority of overdose deaths in March and April were also people aged 40 and above.

For example, 10 people in their 60s and older, 10 people in their 50s and nine people in their 40s died in April. Overall, drug overdoses claimed the lives of 53 Manitobans that month, preliminary data shows.

Levi Foy, executive director of Sunshine House, says information about the ages of drug overdose victims hasn’t been widely known in Manitoba. The government only began providing age ranges in its monthly data releases this year.

The new data “shows kind of what we already knew a few years ago: The people who most often fall victim to drug overdoses or those folks who pass away from drug overdoses or drug toxicity have typically skewed … older than most people think,” Foy said.

More and more people are “taking risks in different types of ways that they may not have taken before,” he added.

Reason for older victims tough to pinpoint

Many people assume the demographic profile of overdose victims is generally young, poor and people of colour, but the government’s statistics, along with the first-hand experience of Sunshine House’s team, suggests that characterization isn’t accurate.

“We kind of just know that everybody does drugs,” said Foy, who leads the drop-in and resource centre prioritizing harm reduction.

“There’s a large segment of the population, regardless of age, gender or race, who are engaging in substance use of some kind.”

Foy said he couldn’t answer why more older people are dying of overdoses, but he suspects contributing factors include anxieties about the cost of living, a lack of social connectedness and people turning to unfamiliar substances because prices of certain drugs have jumped 400 per cent in a month.

“I think that all of those things converging can really put people in situations where they’re going to try different things and try different ways to cope with living in the world and this time,” he said.

The 47 overdose deaths reported in May is down from the 53 fatalities recorded in April and the record-high 56 deaths in January. There were 33 deaths in February and 29 in March.

Any death is too many, Foy says, but the number of deaths — on average, more than one person a day — remains stubbornly high: “We’re still looking at numbers that are too high and that are wholly preventable.”

Manitoba was regularly recording fewer than one overdose death a day before the pandemic, Foy says.

The province’s first supervised consumption site will open next year in Winnipeg, but when and where have yet to be determined. The Indigenous-led facility will provide a safe space where people can use drugs where staff are trained to respond to accidental overdoses and other emergencies.