Fentanyl deaths on the rise in Ontario as the drug creeps eastward
TORONTO — Fentanyl-related deaths are still rising in Ontario, though the province’s chief coroner said numbers there aren’t as bleak as those in western Canada, where the crisis originated.
Fentanyl has made headlines in the past year as the deadly opioid has become more widely available, and a tidal wave of overdoses has spread east from British Columbia.
Chief Coroner Dirk Huyer spoke from a training symposium held by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, where more than 450 front-line officers and border patrol agents are to be trained in the health and public safety challenges posed by the synthetic opioid.
Huyer said people with fentanyl in their systems accounted for nearly 30 per cent of Ontario’s fatal opioid overdoses in 2015, based on the most recently available statistics.