Inside Ontario hospitals and emergency rooms, the same scene has played out hundreds of times. A patient, advised they need medical care, decides to leave against a doctor’s advice. Within a week, they’ve died of an overdose.
This is the grim picture painted by new research from the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network and Public Health Ontario, examining a staggering rise in accidental drug and alcohol-related deaths — up from an average of 4.5 deaths each day in 2018 to eight deaths daily in 2022.