Toxic-drug deaths in B.C. hit record high last year, coroner says

published on January 24, 2024 by Cindy E. Harnett in Times Colonist

A record 2,511 people died of suspected toxic-drug overdoses last year, the highest annual toll ever recorded — and almost one-fifth were from Vancouver Island.

The death toll had dipped in 2019 to fewer than 1,000 deaths, but spiked back up to more than 2,300 two years later.

B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe told a news ­conference Wednesday that the highly addictive opioid fentanyl remains the main driver of illicit toxic-drug poisonings.

Pender Island resident Leslie Mcbain, co-founder of Moms Stop the Harm, called the record number of deaths — about 7.2 a day in B.C. — heartbreaking.

“And to see that nothing that the government has done is working and to see that we are probably not going to see a change in these ­horrible ­numbers for some time is awful,” said Mcbain, whose son Jordan Miller, 25, died from an accidental overdose in February 2014…