Drug crises, epidemics demand urgent action

It has been a deadly spring for Manitobans who use drugs. Outreach organizations such as Main Street Project, Sunshine House and RaY have been sounding the alarm about spiking mortality and the need to declare a public health emergency to meet the scale of this crisis.

The Manitoba Health Coalition supports this call, and we stand in solidarity with the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network, which has recently emphasized that Manitoba is not just experiencing one crisis, but a set of synergistic epidemics, including HIV, hepatitis C, syphilis and congenital syphilis, drug poisonings and homelessness.

These crises are not the result of individuals making bad choices. Instead, they are, as MHRN notes, the predictable outcomes of structural failure and the ongoing harms of colonization in these territories.

Outreach organizations suggest that, for drug poisonings alone, we are losing about 30 people a month. These deaths are preventable and tragic, and they are also not the full story when assessing the scale of this crisis. Without the work of outreach organizations distributing harm-reduction supplies, performing drug testing and administering naloxone, the death toll would be far higher.

As Main Street Project’s executive director Jamil Mahmood has emphasized, “This is the worst spring I’ve ever seen in my time, my work, in terms of the number of overdoses that we are reversing.”

By the numbers alone, overdose deaths are down in Manitoba. In 2024, we lost 570 Manitobans to the toxic drug crisis. In 2025, preliminary provincial data indicate that the number fell to 388. This is not a sign the crisis is lessening, however. The reduction in deaths is due to the life-saving work outreach organizations do every day.

The scale of the crisis calls for much greater urgency and increased, sustained investment. The organizations currently doing the work have built incredibly important relationships with those they serve.

They have built these relationships in part through their commitment to having peers (people with lived experience of using drugs) play a major role in the design and implementation of their programs.

We need all of these organizations and the specialized approaches and community connections they have developed. While the provincial government continues to work toward establishing Manitoba’s first permanent supervised consumption site, with over $5 million allocated to support the site in the March budget, more provincial funding to address the toxic drug crisis is direly needed.

Consider the example of Sunshine House.

Among its important outreach programs, Sunshine House operates the mobile overdose prevention site. It provides harm-reduction supplies, drug testing and referrals to treatment and health-care supports. Crucially, it also provides a safe, warm space for people to use drugs with staff trained in overdose response. Since its founding in October 2022, the mobile site has had thousands of visitors, done hundreds of drug checks, supervised thousands of drug uses and has distributed thousands of life-saving doses of naloxone.

There have been no deaths.

Despite this life-saving record, Manitoba PCs are still calling for it to be shuttered.

It is very encouraging that the province has not opted to go in this dangerous direction. Instead, the mobile site recently had its provincial funding increased, after it briefly lapsed in March 2026. This is a start, but more action is needed.

Programs such as the mobile site need stable, increased funding to drastically scale up their operations. They also need funding models flexible enough to allow them to respond to emergent needs in times of crisis. They need increased capacity to operate longer and have enough staff to allow them to properly take care of themselves and their teams, so they don’t burn out from the trauma they experience on the job.

In addition to more funding for staff and peers, there is a great need to increase public funding so these programs can expand the amount of harm- reduction supplies they can freely distribute to the public.

For example, while nasal naloxone is more expensive than the injectable version, it is also much easier to use. Manitoba’s community naloxone distribution program currently provides only injectable naloxone to individuals who need it. This must change. Outreach teams and other front-line organizations also need more support from the province to provide free nasal naloxone to the public.

Manitoba has declared a state of emergency in the face of rapidly rising HIV rates. This is an important and necessary step but making real change will involve taking a much more holistic, interconnected look at the overlapping crises of toxic drugs, homelessness and rising sexually transmitted and blood-borne infection rates.

Most deaths due to drug poisoning are preventable. It takes political will to publicly fund the grassroots-, peer- and community-led approaches that are proven to save lives.

Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith has recently said the government is taking a “balanced” approach to the toxic drug crisis.

What’s needed is a far more urgent one.

Noah Schulz is the provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition.