Canada Day festivities coincide with drug overdose spike
By Aidan Chamandy and Lauren Hicks
There have been three major spikes in overdoses in Ottawa over the past six months, including during Canada Day festivities, according to data from Ottawa Public Health.
The weeks of June 26 to July 3, and Oct. 16 to 23, 2017 each saw 42 people admitted to the emergency room for suspected overdoses. The week of Sept. 11 to 18 was the highest to date, with 43 hospitalizations due to suspected overdoses.
The leap comes at a time when opioid use in Ottawa and elsewhere has been steadily climbing, and is widely considered to be a public-health crisis.
What accounts for the spikes is unclear, but some Ottawa health and drug analysts speculate festivals and other celebrations could be factors.
“With fentanyl being present in more and more street drugs, we are seeing a lot of peaks. That can mean peaks during large city events and key partying times,” said Luc Cormier, head of nursing for overdose prevention at the Sandy Hill Centre. “When fentanyl wasn’t as prevalent in the system we didn’t really see peaks like this, especially with the city’s youth, because who brings heroin to a festival? A lot of overdoses happen with party drugs.”
Donna Casey, Ottawa Public Health media relations spokesperson, concurred that celebrations can contribute to busy hospital emergency rooms.
“We typically see increases in the number of overdoses in periods on or around celebratory periods like Canada Day,” she wrote in an email. “Overdose related emergency room visits were also seen (at this time) in 2016.”
Wendy Muckle, executive director of Ottawa Inner City Health, said her organization began preparations last February for the Canada Day weekend, which was a bigger party than usual this year because the country was celebrating its 150th birthday.
“We were full court press during the lead up to Canada Day weekend,” she said. “We had people patrolling the ByWard Market and parking garages 24 hours a day, We had people with lived experience in the drug community handing out naloxone (a drug used to stop an overdose), doing needle exchanges, giving water and transportation to shelters.”
It wasn’t just the deluge of drugs coming in to the city that proved challenging, she said.
“The police were moving everybody out of ByWard, so where people normally used and felt safe, they weren’t able to use,” she said. “People were going different places, hiding away, making it much harder to find them.”
Despite the spike, there were no overdose deaths.
Weekly overdoses in Ottawa, Nov. 30, 2015 to Oct. 30, 2017.
The second surge in hospitalizations due to overdoses coincided with the CityFolk music festival, held at Lansdowne Park Sept. 13−17.
“With festivals, alcohol always plays a double role on the affect of opioids on the system,” said Stan Kupferschmidt, a harm reduction worker at Somerset West Community Health Centre and a volunteer at Overdose Prevention Ottawa.
Opioid overdoses kill by steadily lowering one’s heart rate and breathing until death comes due to asphyxiation. Alcohol has the same affect on the cardiovascular system, so when alcohol and opioids are combined, they interact to increase the likelihood of an overdose.
Now that the illicit drug supply is tainted with fentanyl, it is potentially dangerous for recreational users as well, said Muckle.
“Everything we test these days has fentanyl in it. Everything. We assume everything has fentanyl or some analogue,” she added.
Ottawa Public Health and Ottawa Overdose Prevention Task Force were aware of the risk posed by festivals, according to Casey. They issued this PSA to organizers and on social media to highlight the dangers and offer solutions.
With no noteworthy event or festivals then underway, the reason for the spike in overdoses from Oct. 16−23 is less clear. However, it could possibly be blamed on a “bad batch” of drugs, says Muckle.
A bad batch can result from several causes, such as a new supplier, poor production methods or dealers mixing different drugs together.
“I can’t imagine the people making drugs are necessarily chemists. I can’t imagine they are making drugs in the best of facilities,” said Muckle. “So controlling the strength is really challenging and you’ll get a batch of drugs that gives really weird reactions.”
This can include anything from fevers to uncharacteristically aggressive behaviour, or even overdoses, said Kupferschmidt.
“When a reliable supply is taken off the market, that opens a hole for a new and more unreliable supply to come on to the market,” said Kupferschmidt. “Anytime there’s a big bust announced by police, like clockwork, suddenly there are notices of poisoning and overdoses.”
On Oct. 12 and Oct. 15, there were two reported drug busts in the city. Police seized firearms and various drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamines and MDMA, and opioids such as liquid morphine, hydromorphone and oxycodone.
The data does not show a direct relationship between overdoses and the factors highlighted above, and those interviewed for analysis cautioned they were speaking in general speculative terms and not confirming any cause.
Unintentional Drug Overdose Deaths in Ottawa by Type of Drug Involved, 2015