Former Ontario inmates saw their risk of dying from a toxic-drug overdose jump as much as 50 per cent at the start of the pandemic compared to the years before COVID-19, says a study.

The study in the medical journal PLOS One compared pandemic impacts on opioid toxicity death rates between people who had and had not been incarcerated in Ontario between 2015 and 2020.

It found overall risk jumped substantially when COVID-19 emerged with a slew of infection control measures, but the increase in risk was particularly large for people who had been behind bars or released during the years studied.

Lead author Amanda Butler, assistant professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, says COVID-19 further exacerbated risk by 1.5 times for men and 1.2 times for women who were incarcerated.

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CTV News
October 28, 2023