Over 25,000 Canadians have died from opioid overdose since 2016 — with 6,306 people dying in 2020 alone.
The overdose crisis is driven by an unregulated drug supply made up mostly of fentanyl, increasingly potent fentanyl analogues such as carfentanil, and more recently, unregulated benzodiazepines. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, fentanyl directly contributed to 89 per cent of all overdose deaths in Ontario.
