British Columbia marked a grim milestone this month: a decade since declaring a public health emergency over toxic drugs—and more than 18,000 deaths later, the crisis shows no signs of slowing.
On April 14, 2016, then-provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall made B.C. the first province in Canada to sound the alarm over a sharp spike in illicit drug-related deaths. At that time, 474 people had died the previous year, a 30 per cent jump from 2014. It seemed urgent. It seemed like action would follow.
Instead, deaths have accelerated dramatically. In 2025 alone, 1,833 Albertans died from toxic drugs, according to B.C.'s coroners service. That's roughly five people every single day.
Who Is Dying?
The faces behind these statistics tell a story B.C. has struggled to address. Most people dying from unregulated toxic drugs are between 30 and 59 years old. About half die in private residences—homes, apartments, bedrooms where they thought they were safe. The majority are men. A disproportionate number are First Nations. One-fifth work in the trades.
Patricia Caddy's cousin, Jordane Lopez, was one of them. He was 35 when he died on February 28, 2023, with his beloved dog Arnold by his side. Caddy remembers their summers in the 1990s—cardboard sledding down hills in summer, recording songs onto mixtapes, living like kids do without worrying about the future. Lopez was more than a cousin; he was a constant presence, a best friend.
"It's tough to pinpoint specific stories," Caddy reflected, "because we were just living."
Lopez is one of thousands. Former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe reported in 2024 that an estimated 225,000 British Columbians use unregulated drugs. Of those, roughly 100,000 have opioid use disorder.
Science Versus Politics
Here's where the crisis becomes even more troubling: experts argue that B.C. hasn't actually leveraged the full powers available when a public health emergency is declared. Instead, they say, the province has allowed public opinion to drive policy decisions rather than rigorous scientific evidence.
The unregulated drug supply remains the leading cause of unnatural death in B.C. And the problem keeps mutating. The composition of street drugs shifts constantly—what killed someone yesterday may be different tomorrow—making prevention and treatment strategies that much harder to nail down.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control estimates that between June 2020 and 2023, approximately 191,000 people faced serious risk of harm from unregulated opioids, including overdose, brain injury, dependency, and death. Critically, most of those harmed have never been formally diagnosed with opioid use disorder.
Ten years. 18,000 deaths. And the question haunting public health experts remains unanswered: Is British Columbia actually treating this like the emergency it declared it to be?
This article is based on reporting from CBC Health. Read the original investigation at CBC News.