Diminishing Life Expectancy

"In particular, the drug overdose crisis occurring in Canada was a major contributing factor in the change seen in life expectancy from 2016 to 2017, especially for men."
"Although older men are living longer, the increase in deaths among young men almost completely offset these gains [in increased life expectancy in the near past]. A similar pattern occurred among women, although to a lesser extent."
Statistics Canada report

"I don't understand, truthfully, how governments are making decisions that pertain to this issue because we're hemorrhaging money with bad drug policy and poor health care spending."
"It's absolutely mind-blowing."
"We're doing a very bad job nationally with drug policy, combined with the fact that we're not looking after people from the lower socioeconomic groups."
"There's a traumatic fallout for people who are losing children and siblings and friends and parents. There is health-care-provider burnout at a level I've never seen before. My colleagues are absolutely burned out."
Dr. Keith Ahamad, St.Paul's Hospital, Vancouver

Vancouver has seen some of the most troubling numbers of drug overdoses leading to death, in all of Canada. Street drugs tainted with inexpensive, deadly fentanyl and the even more powerful carfentanil, both opioid-alikes produced in laboratories and imported into Canada mostly from China, have taken their toll. Although the toll can be seen across Canada, in both urban and rural settings, it is in Vancouver and in British Columbia that the shock of increasing drug overdoses is the most egregious.

Death rates as a result of drug overdose were 2.1 times higher for men and 1.6 times higher for women in 2017 in comparison to 2015, according to Statistics Canada. Yet even these dreadful figures of wasted lives are considered to be underestimates since cause of death in some cases have strained resources in investigations leading to long wait times to determine validation of suspected drug overdose.

The situation has led to the realization that for the first time in four decades life expectancy rates in Canada have been stopped in their tendency to increase, reversing the trend. From 2016 to 2017 the reverse of the upward trend dating from the mid-1990s to 2012 was halted. The gains stalled and began to reverse, and Statistics Canada points to the increasing emergency of drug overdoses as causation.

For the second year in a row in British Columbia, 2017 life expectancy, particularly for young men between the ages of 20 and 44, was seen to have fallen. Addiction specialist, Dr. Ahamad, responding to notice of the high rate of deaths, insisted that the public in its concern over young adults dying from overdoses should call for immediate changes in drug policy by "holding politicians' feet to the fire".

Life expectancy, he said, between young men in Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside and the west side differs by 17 years. Men are dying 11 years earlier than women. Indigenous people are affected disproportionately by the overdose crisis, leading the government of British Columbia to declare a public health emergency in 2016. According to Dr. Ahamad, this is an issue that should be highlighted during the federal election this fall.

Vancouver's opioid epidemic has prompted community groups to patrol Downtown Eastside alleys on the lookout for people who might be at risk of a drug overdose.

Of the 4,108 overdose deaths recorded in 2017 in Canada, close to 1,100 involved people between the ages of 30 and 39, according to Statistics Canada. The issue seems to correlate in time with the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada. Where casual drug use may be a crowd pleaser for the Liberal government that promised to enact drug legalization during the 2015 election; did so, but perhaps failed to take into account fallout from 'entry level' to harder drug use and dependency.

"Every province in Canada has experienced the impacts of the opioid crisis, so I think we would expect that dip in life expectancy gains that we see in B.C., maybe not in the same level of magnitude,"
"I think we do need different approaches to address the gender-based uniqueness of the impact."
"[Restricting access and denormalizing its use needs to be applied to cannabis to ensure it isn’t further normalized] We need to monitor that."
"Tackling every drug issue at the time of a crisis is not where I want to go and we need to go upstream and get to prevention."
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer