Substance Abuse On The Rise During Pandemic

Recent data from Ensemble Moncton shows that drug use has risen in this pandemic.

Ensemble Moncton is compiling numbers to compare the effects COVID-19 has had on the services they provide.

Executive Director Debby Warren says they’ve seen a big increase when comparing April and September of last year to the same period in 2020,”76,000 increase in needles going out. Not to mention the other stuff, that is just an easy track. But just to show, when they say substance abuse is on the rise, and people dealing with issues.”

Warren says the drug of choice now appears to be Crystal Meth, “Now they are all using that awful drug crystal meth, and we don’t know where it is coming from because the supply has been disrupted with COVID and everything that is going on around it.”

She says Crystal Meth is a stimulant and is used more frequently per day as compared to an opiate, “An opiate might be used three to six times a day, but a stimulant could be up to 20 times a day.”

Warren says, “We know that drug use across the country has increased, and the opiate crisis has increased. As a matter of fact, as Dr. Dow says, more people die from the opiate crisis than people do from COVID.”

She adds, “The government needs to stop the education programs, to ‘Just Say no to drugs’, and address poverty and mental health instead.”

COVID-19 has had some positives for Ensemble Moncton.

Warren says and they have been able to access additional funding that they didn’t have before.

She adds, this will allow them to more than double their space, and they are also now working with Vitalité Health Network offering primary healthcare in their office for their clients.