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Language of Resource
Full Text Available
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Peer Reviewed
Objective
Illegal drug toxicity (i.e., overdose) is the leading cause of death in British Columbia (BC) for people aged 10–59. Stimulants are increasingly detected among drug toxicity deaths. As stimulant use and detection in deaths rises, it is important to understand how people who die of stimulant toxicity differ from people who die of opioid toxicity.
Findings/Key points
Of the 3788 deaths, 11.1% had stimulants but not opioids deemed relevant to the cause of death (stimulant group), 26.8% had opioids but not stimulants deemed relevant (opioid group), and 62.1% had both opioids and stimulants deemed relevant. People with ischemic heart disease and people with heart failure had approximately twice the odds of being in the stimulant group as compared to the opioid group. Findings suggest that people with heart disease who use illicit stimulants face an elevated risk of drug toxicity death.
Design/methods
BC Coroners Service records were retrieved for all people who died of unintentional illegal drug toxicity (accidental or undetermined) between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2019, whose coroner investigation had concluded and who had an opioid and/or stimulant detected in post-mortem toxicology and identified by the coroner as relevant to the death (N = 3788). BC Chronic Disease Registry definitions were used to identify people with chronic disease. Multinomial regression models were used to examine the relationship between chronic disease diagnoses and drug toxicity death type.
