Overdose crisis: The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare decades of drug policy failures

A syndemic occurs when multiple public health emergencies interact to make each other worse. This past year clearly fits the label: the global COVID-19 pandemic has indisputably intensified the existing drug overdose crisis in Canada. 

For over a year now, there has been non-stop coverage of COVID-19, while a number of other issues continue to be neglected as “newsworthy.” For people who use drugs in particular, a public sense of the crisis has never quite taken hold, despite years of growing overdose deaths and harm across communities. 

The pandemic has exacerbated risk and harm for people who use drugs. However, it would be inaccurate and short-sighted to suggest that the spike in drug-related deaths over the past year is solely, or even primarily, the result of the pandemic.

Rather, current realities should be understood as the result of decades-long, pre-pandemic political decisions and the consequent, entrenched policy failures. From the lack of welfare and treatment services to the criminalization of drug use and resulting stigmatization, it is long-standing political inaction and failed policy measures that have resulted in the thousands of lives lost to overdoses and now, drug toxicity. 

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