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 2024 data for deaths 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 2024, 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 2024, 18 people had been reported to have died from “drug poisoning”. That’s up from the 14 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 significantly this year. That being said, they’re still higher than they were while the SCS was operational (2018–2020). In fact, it’s the highest second quarter since the province started recording death data.
During the previous second quarter, Lethbridge had the highest number of drug-related deaths it had seen in any second quarter since the province began tracking data in 2016.
The next highest was 15, set in the second quarter of 2020, and that’s about a third of what we saw last year.
Now, let’s break the quarter numbers by month.
The second quarter of 2024 saw a drop in the number of drug deaths because all the months in that quarter saw lower numbers of drug deaths.
It was the second highest second quarter on record primarily because the number of deaths in both April and May were at their second highest level. This past June was only the fourth highest on record.
Here’s the rate of drug-related deaths per 100,000 person years for June 2024 among the cities Alberta’s reporting tool includes:
| Fort McMurray | 42.8 |
| Edmonton | 39.2 |
| Lethbridge | 34.7 |
| Calgary | 19.5 |
| Medicine Hat | 16.8 |
| Grande Prairie | 15.1 |
| Red Deer | 10.3 |
During the second quarter, Lethbridge had the highest rate of drug deaths per 100,000 person years of the 7 cities tracked by the province’s system, driven primarily by high rates in April and May.
| Apr 2024 | May 2024 | Jun 2024 | Q2 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lethbridge | 92.5 | 80.9 | 34.7 | 69.4 |
| Edmonton | 47.9 | 41.3 | 39.2 | 42.8 |
| Red Deer | 41.2 | 51.5 | 10.3 | 34.3 |
| Fort McMurray | 14.3 | 28.6 | 42.8 | 28.6 |
| Grande Prairie | 45.4 | 15.1 | 15.1 | 25.2 |
| Calgary | 17.1 | 15.4 | 19.5 | 17.3 |
| Medicine Hat | 0.0 | 33.7 | 16.8 | 16.8 |
Now let’s look at the number of deaths in 2024 in relation to total annual deaths over the previous 7 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.
We have data for only the first half of 2024, but we’re currently on track to have fewer deaths than last year. If drug-related deaths continue at their current rate, we can expect to see 64 deaths by the end of the year, almost half of what we saw last year.
That being said, they’d still be higher than every year prior to 2021.
We averaged 5.3 drug-related deaths a month during the first half of 2024. Last year, the average was 11.6, which itself was higher than the average of 6.6 in 2022, 5.6 in 2021, and 4.0 in 2020.
And remember, these are just deaths that have been certified by the medical examiner. It’s possible the number of deaths could’ve been even 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 the highest number of drug-related deaths compared to similar periods going back to 2016–2017. But we easily surpassed that record last year. We were just 4 deaths away from doubling the first year’s numbers.
And now, in the third full year since the SCS was shut down, we see that drug-related deaths have 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 have surpassed 200 drug-related deaths—253 to be precise—since the SCS was shut down due to government defunding.
Finally, Lethbridge’s average monthly deaths for the September–August period has increased compared to similar 12-month periods of previous years, as seen below, almost doubling.
Another record high, just shy of 10 drug deaths per month occurred between September 2022 and August 2023. The previous high was set last year, at 7.33, which itself superseded the previous high set the year before.
In fact, every year the UCP have been in power, Lethbridge has seen a new high in the average monthly death for the 12-month period between September and the following August.
EMS responses
During the second quarter of 2024, the number of calls Lethbridge EMS responded to had declined compared to the first quarter; although numbers more than doubled between May and June.
In fact, June’s numbers were the highest the city has seen since August 2023, almost a year ago. And even then, the two months were tied at 33.
Here’s a look at all the months on record.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 14 | 25 | 10 | 14 | 40 | 44 | 3 |
| Feb | 39 | 17 | 8 | 23 | 41 | 49 | 12 |
| Mar | 19 | 13 | 14 | 43 | 17 | 33 | 22 |
| Apr | 41 | 12 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 39 | 25 |
| May | 38 | 16 | 20 | 28 | 12 | 43 | 11 |
| Jun | 35 | 20 | 49 | 27 | 21 | 39 | 13 |
| Jul | 35 | 28 | 56 | 52 | 23 | 44 | 33 |
| Aug | 24 | 10 | 42 | 49 | 24 | 33 | |
| Sep | 18 | 16 | 14 | 35 | 21 | 18 | |
| Oct | 28 | 10 | 15 | 32 | 29 | 12 | |
| Nov | 28 | 16 | 38 | 43 | 39 | 20 | |
| Dec | 21 | 13 | 20 | 22 | 28 | 29 |
The second quarter of 2024 was the third lowest second quarter on record, as well as the sixth lowest quarter overall since the start of 2018, with EMS responding to 49 drug-related events.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 72 | 55 | 32 | 80 | 98 | 126 | 37 |
| Q2 | 114 | 48 | 84 | 69 | 45 | 121 | 49 |
| Q3 | 77 | 54 | 112 | 136 | 68 | 95 | |
| Q4 | 77 | 39 | 73 | 97 | 96 | 61 |
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 |
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.
SCS usage
And finally, we come to 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.
During the second quarter of 2024, the mobile SCS van saw 11,238 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 last year. But now we’re back up again. In fact, the second quarter has the highest number of SCS visits in Lethbridge of any quarter since 2022.
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 since 2018.
I find it interesting that the number of visitors has increased, but the number of actual visits has decreased, compared to other second quarters.
Let’s take a look at average visits per visitor.
See what I mean?
So, while the number of visitors increased in the second quarter of 2024, the highest number in any second quarter, the average number of visits each person makes to the SCS van has decreased to its second lowest level. Even though more people are visiting it than a year ago, those who are using it do so less frequently.
On top of that, the second quarter of 2024 saw the third lowest visit per visitor rate (21.1) of any quarter since the UCP defunded the SCS. The lowest was in the the third quarter of 2020, the first quarter after the original SCS closed down, when the visit per visitor rate was only 19.5.
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.
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 very pronounced, as seen by the red trend lines in those four 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 more than three years of data to confirm the conclusion I made in 2020 that there is a relationship between SCS utilization and drug death numbers.
Defunding the SCS and replacing it with only 14% of its capacity is directly connected to more deaths in Lethbridge and a greater burden on Lethbridge’s emergency services.
