Methamphetamine is a real problem in Winnipeg, the majority of people involved are youth and older teenagers. There is a study conducted by Winnipeg Police department about how people on meth are no longer productive, so they have to find other ways to get money to fuel their addiction and get more drugs. People on meth turn to pity theft and other, more serious crimes.
But the even bigger problem is opioid overdoses, like fentanyl, in most cases, it leads to death. Many young Canadians, teenagers are affected by this problem.
2,066 Canadians died at the hands of the opioid crisis in the first half of 2018, according to new numbers released by the Public Health Agency of Canada. That means the total number of opioid-related deaths in the country since January 2016 is now at least 9,000. Numbers for the second half of 2018 have not been released.
An overwhelming majority of the reported deaths in 2018, at 94 percent, were caused by accidental overdoses, 72 percent of which were related to fentanyl.
The NDP released information it obtained via Freedom of Information requests from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority indicating an “unprecedented” spike in blood-borne diseases that were linked to meth use.
The opposition party said the documents showed illnesses like HIV, syphilis and Hepatitis B and C rose dramatically over the past year — including a recent outbreak of Hepatitis B “almost exclusively linked to injection drug use.”
Canada has also experienced a rise in opioid overdoses and harms that weren’t fatal. The latest numbers crunched by the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that an average of 17 people across the country were hospitalized each day due to opioid poisonings in 2017. That’s a slight increase from 2016, which saw 16 daily hospitalizations on average.
Drug trafficking problem is on a rise in Canada for the last couple of years. Opioid use continues to be a public-health crisis with just under 4,000 deaths across Canada in 2017 and over 3,000 in 2016. Unfortunately, many young people and teens are irresponsible and become an easy target for drug dealers, who offer first just to try for free and to “have fun”, but later teens get hooked and become dependent, without even realizing it.