In total, there were 409 poisoning deaths (overdoses) in 2020 and 8 in 10 of them involved a mix, or cocktail, of different drugs.
THE NUMBER OF drug poisoning deaths – commonly known as overdoses – has risen in recent years, the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use heard this morning, with chairperson and former HSE CEO Paul Reid describing the findings as “quite grim and quite stark”.
“Using more than one drug increases a person’s risk of overdose and makes them more likely to succumb to a poisoning death,” said Lyons. “In 2020, there was an average of four different drugs implicated in each poisoning death.” Lyons also said that there had been a more than fourfold increase in cocaine-related deaths since 2011.“If more people are using cocaine in the general population, we can’t be surprised to see them appearing in poisoning deaths,” she said.
When it comes to the circumstances in which people died from drug poisoning, 1 in 8 were homeless, 1 in 5 had injected drugs before and in 40% of cases the person died alone, which Lyons said represented “a missed opportunity for prevention”.“There was no one there to call 999 or 112. There was no one there, for example, to administer naloxone, which is a reversal agent for opioids.”
He also recommended involving people with lived experience in the process, making prevention a key point in dealing with drug problems, more alignment of services to get away from the “patchwork quilt” that is currently in place, specific services for women among others. Alfred Uhl, an addiction treatment expert from Austria also presented the history of his country’s treatment-led approach to tackling the harms of drug use.
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