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.
Summary for service providers and policy makers
CATIE has summarized key findings and considerations for community providers and policy-makers.
Read the reports
Related Publications
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.