Drug overdose deaths don't get enough attention
But they outpace COVID deaths for people under 50 by a wide margin
Canada keeps reliable records on drug overdose deaths. Over the past 2 years they have averaged about 7,000 each year, a sharp increase since the COVID pandemic began. Since 2016, over 21,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses.
By comparison, the number of COVID deaths recorded for people under 50 totaled 694 since the pandemic began.
Health Canada reports that the majority of opiod related deaths comprises young people between 20 and 49 years of age. The report contains the following:
Since the pandemic began, Trudeau’s Liberal government has spent some $275 billion to protect Canadians from COVID. For young people most affected by the lockdowns, travel restrictions, business closures and restrictions on assembly, the amount spent on dealing with the opiod carnage is a pittance compared to that spent on COVID measures. Retired Canadians suffered comparatively little from the COVID measures since they did not have to show up for work every day. The amount the Ottawa government spent to protect young Canadians from the risks of opiods measures in the hundreds of millions, not billions.
It is not hard to conclude that Trudeau Liberals are more concerned about their costly schemes to curry as much voter favour as money can buy during the COVID crisis than to actually take effective measures to deal with the free flow of fentanyl and related drugs into Canada. I have friends whose children have died from drug overdoses here in Ontario, and my own daughter (who lived in England) died from heroin abuse. Drug abuse is as much a public health issue as COVID.
My conclusion: Our Liberal government preferred to take advantage of the COVID crisis to promote its left wing values of big government, more control over our lives, less freedom, and profligate spending than to actually act to limit harm to Canadian from public health issues.
Drug abuse is a crisis equal in scale to COVID and voters should ask: “Why does our government do so little to deal with Canada’s drug overdose crisis?”
They might also ask: “Why does our government do so much to promote Big Pharma?” when there are less costly therapies for COVID than the plethora of vaccines that have so far proven ineffective at preventing the escalation in case counts. What studies has our government funded to explore the use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine which have shown some promise both in preventing and early treatment of COVID 19 based on studies published by the American National Institutes of Health. Is it because these low cost therapies are ineffective or because they are less profitable for Big Pharma political donors? We deserve an answer.