Substance-Related Toxicity Deaths

Alcohol and drug toxicities are a growing concern both in Canada and globally with increasing polysubstance use complicating substance toxicity responses and leading to higher fatality rates. Historically, Ontario’s detailed data on fatal substance-related toxicities has been primarily focused on opioid-related deaths. In collaboration with Public Health Ontario, the existing opioid-related mortality database was expanded to include data on alcohol, opioid, stimulant, and benzodiazepine-related deaths. This enhanced dataset contributed to the development of three public reports, which provide insights into trends, circumstances, prescribing patterns, and prior substance use disorder diagnoses among substance-related toxicity deaths in Ontario between 2018 and 2022.


Read the reports

The following publications were developed based on some or all of the above reports:


Note: Related publications may report different values than those found in the reports, as small differences in numbers can arise due to updates in data or variations in analysis methods.

Please note that this report is NOT COMPLETE and is still in progress. Click below if you would like to continue.