Lethbridge drug deaths drop in first half of 2025

The Government of Alberta recently updated the Alberta substance use surveillance system, an online tool they released in 2020 to track data regarding drug and alcohol use in the province.

The update includes second quarter 2025 data for deaths, EMS response, and supervised consumption site usage.

In this article, I break down the stats for deaths, EMS responses, and SCS usage during the second quarter of 2025, compare them to previous years, and see if there’s a correlation between SCS usage and the rate of deaths and EMS responses.

Deaths

During the second quarter of 2025, 4 people had been reported to have died from “drug poisoning”. That’s up from the 2 that occurred in the first quarter.

Here’s how the second quarter’s death numbers compare to those of previous years.

After skyrocketing in 2023, second quarter drug deaths fell in every subsequent year, including a significant drop this year. This is the lowest number of deaths of any fourth quarter since the supervised consumption site closed and the second lowest on record, tied with 2019.

Now, let’s break the quarter numbers by month.

The second quarter of 2025 saw a drop in the number of drug deaths because each month in that quarter saw lower numbers of drug deaths. In April and May, deaths were reported at their lowest levels on record, and June was the second lowest on record.

Here’s the rate of drug-related deaths per 100,000 person years for June 2025 among the cities Alberta’s reporting tool includes:

Red Deer	50.8
Edmonton	39.6
Lethbridge	22.8
Calgary	19.2
Medicine Hat	16.7
Grande Prairie	15
Fort McMurray	0

During the second quarter, Lethbridge had the fourth highest rate of drug deaths per 100,000 person years of the 7 cities tracked by the province’s system, driven primarily by having no deaths in April. It was third highest in both May and June

	Apr 2025	May 2025	Jun 2025	Q2 2025
Edmonton	62.1	72.9	39.6	58.2
Red Deer	10.2	30.5	50.8	30.5
Medicine Hat	16.7	16.7	16.7	16.7
Lethbridge	0.0	22.8	22.8	15.2
Calgary	12.0	10.4	19.2	13.9
Grande Prairie	0.0	15.0	15.0	10.0
Fort McMurray	14.1	0.0	0.0	4.7

Now let’s look at the number of deaths in 2025 in relation to total annual deaths over the previous 9 years.

In 2023, we had the highest number of drug deaths since 2016, continuing a worrying trend of record deaths in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

However, the 43 deaths we saw in 2024 were significantly lower than in 2023. In fact, it’s the lowest they’ve been since the UCP shut down the supervised consumption site in 2020.

That being said, they were still higher than every year prior to 2020.

During the first half of 2025, Lethbridge saw just 6 drug-related deaths. If that rate continues in the second half, we could end up with 12 deaths for the entire year, a number not seen since 2016, the first year we started tracking deaths.

We averaged 3.6 drug-related deaths a month during 2024. In 2024, the average was 10.0, which itself was higher than the average of 6.6 in 2022, 5.6 in 2021, and 4.0 in 2020.

In comparison, 2025 has seen an average of just 1 death per month so far, tied with 2016 for the lowest monthly average. The monthly median for 2025 was also 1 death per month, tied with 2019 for the second lowest median—2016 was the lowest at 0.5 deaths per month.

And remember, these are just deaths that have been certified by the medical examiner. It’s possible the number of deaths could’ve been higher.

In September 2020, the Lethbridge supervised consumption site, which had been run by ARCHES, closed its doors following the UCP government’s refusal to renew funding.

During the first 12 months after the SCS had closed (September 2020 to August 2021), 46 people died from drug poisoning in Lethbridge.

Here’s how that same period (September through August) compares to previous and subsequent years.

That 2020–2021 period had more drug-related deaths compared to similar periods going back to 2016–2017. But we easily surpassed that record the following year. We were just 4 deaths away from doubling the first year’s numbers.

In the third full year since the SCS was shut down, we see that drug-related deaths increased even more, rising to 119 between September 2022 and August 2023. That’s a 35% increase over 2021–2022 and 159% increase over 2020–2021.

This also means that we surpassed 300 drug-related deaths—322 to be precise—since the SCS was shut down due to government defunding.

However, in the fourth year since the closure—September 2023 to August 2024—deaths dropped dramatically to just 64. That’s almost half of the previous 12-month period’s numbers and the second lowest since the closure.

Deaths so far, with just 2 months left to go, in the 5th year since the closure are at just 11. If that rate continues, the 5th year might finish off at just 13.2 deaths, which would be the lowest rate on record.

Here’s a look at Lethbridge’s average monthly deaths for the September–August period.

But before we get too excited, let us look at EMS responses, which show a possible worrying trend in the third quarter.

EMS responses

EMS response data goes up until 22 September 2025.

During the second quarter of 2025, the number of calls Lethbridge EMS responded to had decreased compared to the third quarter, driven by a huge drop in both November and December.

In fact, December’s numbers were the lowest the city has seen since January 2024, almost a year prior.

Here’s a look at all the months on record.

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Jan	14	25	10	14	40	44	3	5
Feb	39	17	8	23	41	49	12	8
Mar	19	13	14	43	17	33	22	10
Apr	41	12	15	14	12	39	25	6
May	38	16	20	28	12	43	11	4
Jun	35	20	49	27	21	39	13	7
Jul	35	28	56	52	23	44	33	21
Aug	24	10	42	49	24	33	10	12
Sep	18	16	14	35	21	18	15	10
Oct	28	10	15	32	29	12	11
Nov	28	16	38	43	39	20	4
Dec	21	13	20	22	28	29	7

The second quarter of 2025 was the lowest second quarter on record, as well as the lowest quarter overall since the start of 2018, with EMS responding to just 17 drug-related events.

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Q1	72	55	32	80	98	126	37	23
Q2	114	48	84	69	45	121	49	17
Q3	77	54	112	136	68	95	58	43
Q4	77	39	73	97	96	61	22

As well, during the 12 months since the SCS closed down in August 2020, Lethbridge saw 337 opioid-related events that EMS have responded to. This was the highest number of such events during the same period over the previous 3 years.

Sep 2018–Aug 2019	236
Sep 2019–Aug 2020	269
Sep 2020–Aug 2021	337
Sep 2021–Aug 2022	322
Sep 2022–Aug 2023	441
Sep 2023–Aug 2024	208
Sep 2024–Aug 2025	110

Between September 2021 and August 2022, EMS responded to 322 events, passing the 2018–2019 year and 2019–2020 year. That averages out to about 26.8 per month.

And then during the period between September 2022 and August 2023, that number increased to a new record, with Lethbridge EMS responding to 441 drug-related event, an average of 36.8 per month.

This following year, however, that number dropped to its lowest level since September 2018, to just 208 events, less than half of what it was in the previous 12-month period. That’s an average of 17.3 per month or just 4 per week.

This past year, however, it dropped even more, to 110 events, almost 100 fewer than the previous year.

Remember, the death data goes only to June 2025, so I data just up to the second quarter. When we look at EMS data up to the second quarter, as indicated above, we see lower numbers, which would make sense. If the EMS are responding to fewer events, we should expect to see fewer reported drug deaths during the same period.

But did you notice the EMS data for the third quarter of this year?

It nearly tripled from the second quarter, jumping from just 17 to 43, the highest Lethbridge has seen since the third quarter of last year.

Here is a look at the number of EMS events, by month, for 2025 so far.

We see a huge spike in July, compared to the previous months, driven by the last week of that month, which saw 12 events. August had the second highest number of events this year, so far, and September tied for third highest.

Keep in mind that this data goes until just the 22nd of September, so we still have 1 more week of data to report. Potentially, September’s numbers could still increase.

The week ending 15 September, for example, reported 4 deaths.

Now, August and September are quite a bit lower than July’s numbers, so perhaps July ends up being an anomaly, but it will be interesting to see the third quarter death data when it is released.

Which brings us to our next dataset.

SCS usage

Technically speaking, Lethbridge isn’t completely absent of any supervised consumption facilities. The UCP chose to replace the 21-seat (13 injection, 8 inhalation) supervised consumption site with a remodeled RV that has 3 seats. And that’s just for injection. It has no inhalation capacity, unlike the defunded SCS location.

And are deaths and EMS responses down last year because of the UCP recovery-only approach? Well, let’s take a look at SCS usage.

During the second quarter of 2025, the mobile SCS van saw 12,306 visits. Here’s how that compares to the second quarter in previous years.

The number of SCS visits increased during the second quarter of both 2021 and 2022, but it dropped in the second quarter of 2023. But now we’re back up again over the last two years.

Which is interesting, given how much drug deaths has decreased. But more on that in just a bit.

The number of unique visitors per month, on the other hand, is at its highest level of any second quarter on record and the third highest quarter overall on record.

Let’s take a look at average visits per visitor.

See what I mean?

So, while the number of visitors increased in the fourth quarter of 2024, the average number of visits each person makes to the SCS van has increased only slightly. Even though more people are visiting it than a year ago, those who are using it do so only a bit more frequently.

How SCS usage affects everything else

Now that we have all that data on the table, what relationships can we draw? Well, we can look at the difference in deaths and EMS responses when SCS usage is high and when it’s low to see if there is any sort of connection between the three.

Here’s the number of deaths:

Here’s the number of EMS responses:

What we see in these charts is that the more supervised consumption services are used in Lethbridge, the fewer substance-related deaths and EMS responses there are.

The higher the number of visits to the Lethbridge supervised consumption site, the lower the number of deaths and EMS responses. And the reverse is also true: as visits dropped, deaths and EMS responses increased.

And the relationship is quite pronounced, as seen by the red trend lines in those charts.

That wasn’t quite the same for the number of visitors: the relationship between the number of visitors seemed to have little effect on deaths or EMS.

However, the frequency at which the average visitor used the SCS had an inverse relationship with both death and EMS responses. The more often the average visitor used the SCS, the lower the number of deaths and EMS responses, and like the first usage stats, the reverse was also true.

These new numbers add 5 more years of data to confirm the conclusion I made in 2020 that there is a relationship between SCS utilization and drug death numbers.

It shouldn’t be that surprising that both drug-relates deaths and EMS responses to drug events decreased this past year, considering that more people are using the available supervised consumption services.