Alberta opioid overdose deaths decline

New data shows a huge decline in opioid overdose deaths in Alberta. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason.

“Other reasons include access to treatment supports, supervised consumption services, harm reduction support such as naloxone kits as well, but also getting people onto opioid agonist treatment,” said Dr. Monty Ghosh, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta.

The new data shows that the overdose deaths in the province reduced from 788 in 2023 and 431 in 2024 in January to May which is a 55 per cent decline.

While on Rogers Media’s Big Story podcast, Dr. Ghosh says the government isn’t properly advertising harm reduction enough because of politics. You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify. You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

“They don’t properly advertise harm reduction either to be honest with you, but behind the scenes we are supporting it, we are increasing funding towards it and ideally they would expand it upon it to fund more.”

Despite Dr. Gosh’s comments, the province is supporting harm reduction behind the scenes. However, Dr. Gosh explains, “In terms of the government’s approach to harm reduction a lot of it is mixed messaging, unfortunately. This is the fact the UCP Party is a very big tent party it involves people who are very far right as well as just people who were just right of center.”

Dr. Ghosh hopes the reduction in opioid overdose deaths continues to decline so the province can focus on the social aspects behind it such as increasing social services such as housing, income, and even mental health support.